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Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#241

Post by peacetreefrog »

tryitnow wrote: post #235
peacetreefrog wrote: post #188

Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is... Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing ope…

I couldn't disagree more. There's a lot of jobs that add little to no value. In a fictional efficient market economy that conforms to neoclassical assumptions, sure, every job is value adding. But does anyone believe that that is the world we live in? It's comforting to think that just going to work and doing your job is actually contributing to something, but I just don't see how that can be generally true and defin…

"It's comforting to think that just going to work and doing your job is actually contributing to something, but I just don't see how that can be generally true..."

I can't imagine how it would NOT be true. Say you buy something from the store. Presumably you're getting more value from it than it costs, if you weren't, you wouldn't buy it. Same with a company. If an employee provides more value than their salary, it makes sense to hire them. Otherwise it doesn't. Sure it's not perfect and wages are sticky and people skate by etc, but you have to be pretty cynical to think most people aren't providing net value at their jobs. Maybe we have a different definition of "contributing to something."

Also:

"...there have been several studies showing that the average company destroys shareholder value on net."

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something or this is a typo, but how could this be true? Shareholder value isn't an abstract concept like love or blue, it's the number of shares in a co*their price. The SP 500 is not negative.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#242

Post by imjustsaying »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #188

Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is... Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing ope…

The obsession with doing visible social good comes from a certain part of society, reinforced by academic advisors and admissions criteria as a requirement for advancing into the next academic tier.

Nevermind that by merely participating in a marketplace as a service provider or consumer you're providing a social benefit; that benefit's just not as easy to understand and doesn't get you any vanity points.

But if you're on a mission trip carrying a third world orphan in a microloan-built vaccination tent while on the phone with companies asking for food donations, you're just the most selfless person ever - clearly such charity is just an innate part of who you are.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#243

Post by simplicitea »

lazerwalker wrote: post #124
tacostakohashi wrote: post #12

Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.

I went through a similar period of soul-searching as the OP (or so I would imagine) back in November, and this is the conclusion I ultimately came to. Even if you're willing to take e.g. a 50% paycut to write code at a nonprofit, you're likely doing more good taking the obscenely high-paying industry job and donating that half of your salary, as unsexy as that is. Which isn't to say there aren't meaningful social pro…

And yet, there must be a supply of hackers to which you donate that money.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#244

Post by streblo »

vlaaad wrote: post #17
tacostakohashi wrote: post #12

Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.

...Unless it's advetising. Or Uber. Or government wanting you to implement yet another freedom-restricting bullshit.

I work in advertising and I don't think it's immoral or unethical.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#245

Post by simplicitea »

holmesworcester wrote: post #196

I work at fightforthefuture.org and I've thought a lot about this. My first answer is to develop your skills to the point where you are strong on design and UI/UX, not just coding. I say this because we've worked with some people who have this ability, and they're extremely effective as activists once they focus on a mission. Aaron Swartz is one person who had this ability, but you don't have to be a genius polymath…

Since you mention a YC-like fund for activism projects, and at the risk of breaking a rule i may not be aware of (let me know) I'm gonna quote myself and hope you are interested or know people who may be interested

" OP here, actually floored by the rapidity and variety of responses. Thanks HN.

I'll take this opportunity to float an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a long time. The premise is to:

1) (this is almost certainly the easy part) build out a platform that is like a two-way khan academy - teacher and student, with at least the teacher having a tablet and a stylus that function well, sharing a digital blackboard, with a video chat optional -- where a student of something in a relatively privileged situation teaches a student of the same thing in a relatively less privileged situation -- where the sessions are stored and rewindable, both video and blackboard input.

2) the hard part; selling it as something to invest in and driving it to a point of having an endowment behind it, like Harvard's endowment, that allows the service to pay for moderation of student-teachers something like $12.00 USD an hour to teach, while subsidizing well-chosen students to have to pay something like $2 an hour to learn

it's been an idea for a passion project for a while "

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#246

Post by ouid »

Social utility is not easy to define. The main problem is that it's impossible to speak for all timescales at once. Particularly when you take some sort of norm on all the individual utilities. This sounds overly technical, but I have a point.

Don't work towards maximizing the utility of everyone, it's nonsense. People aren't that cooperative, even. Work towards bounding the minimum utility. There's lots of social and physical extinction events that humanity faces. Even if you have nothing directly to contribute to these problems, perhaps you can realistically contribute to the welfare of other people who are contributing to these problems.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#248

Post by peacetreefrog »

imjustsaying wrote: post #242
peacetreefrog wrote: post #188

Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is... Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing ope…

The obsession with doing visible social good comes from a certain part of society, reinforced by academic advisors and admissions criteria as a requirement for advancing into the next academic tier. Nevermind that by merely participating in a marketplace as a service provider or consumer you're providing a social benefit; that benefit's just not as easy to understand and doesn't get you any vanity points. But if you'…

Well said. I'm certainly in favor of people being free to decide how they want to spend their time and money, but I think you could make the argument that a lot of these visible social good activities, e.g. starting a the upteenth and one non-profit to provide clean water in third world countries, could very well be doing less "social good" and wasting more resources than someone donating their salary or even engaging in regular marketplace activity.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#249

Post by simplicitea »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #188

Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is... Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing ope…

The goal is a 'normal job' which encourages me to learn through it's end impact. Further the goal is to take skills learned through developing for impact rather than profit and build something to draw enough of a salary on which has a disproportionate impact compared to it's cost. I want to be the driving factor, not be payed by or pay the driving factor.

Re: Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

#250

Post by simplicitea »

imjustsaying wrote: post #242
peacetreefrog wrote: post #188

Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is... Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing ope…

The obsession with doing visible social good comes from a certain part of society, reinforced by academic advisors and admissions criteria as a requirement for advancing into the next academic tier. Nevermind that by merely participating in a marketplace as a service provider or consumer you're providing a social benefit; that benefit's just not as easy to understand and doesn't get you any vanity points. But if you'…

If you took a few minutes to consider that I may be a completely different person than the one you're conjuring up, you might have something more useful to say.
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