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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?

#331

Post by soVeryTired »

peacetreefrog wrote: post #241
tryitnow wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

By your logic I can make the world a better place by selling heroin to schoolchildren.

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

#332

Post by azernik »

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…

To take this to a less absolutist neoliberal place - find a for-profit job where you are actually creating value. A service that saves low-income people money when they use it, that helps small (like, actually small) businesses become profitable, etc.

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

#333

Post by TeMPOraL »

nyargh wrote: post #327
TeMPOraL wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that you mention this and it's an important datapoint for OP's question. That said, I don't think OP gave any indication anywhere to dismiss them as fly-by-night techie seeking social status. There are people (myself included) honestly asking how they could maximize their positive impact on this world, especially using the skills they already have.

Yes yes, #notalltechies - but as stated above, best thing you can do is to take your wildly disproportionate capacity for earning, do the due diligence and find a group worth sponsoring. edit: Let me explain why donations like these are particularly valuable for orgs that survive on donations. Every bit of grant money comes with a huge amount of donor service attached to it, from the initial grant writing, to metric…

As someone currently running a nonprofit (a Hackerspace), I can sign under what you wrote. Grant money is utterly annoying to secure and requires spending huge amounts of time that would be better spent on actually doing the things the organization exists for.

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

#335

Post by anigbrowl »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #310
anigbrowl wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like half-reading Adam Smith but OK

Please expand.

Well it's true that simply participating in the market helps to create value, viz the famous quote about it ot being from the good will of the butcher and baker that we enjoy our meal, but from their acting in their own self-interest. But Smith also mulls the need for regulation (due to market participants' habit of rigging markets to suit producers over consumers) and the downsides of pursuing pure efficiency (eg after praising the gains that come from the division of labor at a pin factory, he goes on to point out that getting people to do the same job over and over all day isn't good for them over the long term).

Smith was a very thoughtful economist but people have a bad habit of cherry-picking his work to suit their own needs while ignoring the bits that would constrain them.

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

#337

Post by nowarninglabel »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #336

Take care about your own family and children. Do not harm others. It is that simple. If everyone would do that, we would be all better off.

I find your comment very interesting, because I view it somewhat the opposite. Basically, many take your statement just the way you ordered it:

#1 Take care about your own family and children #2 Do not harm others

Then, it becomes very easy to cause harm to others and justify it through the idea that one's first priority is taking care of your own family and children and that outweighs the harm you are doing to others.

Which is just to say, it's not that simple.

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

#338

Post by nowarninglabel »

asciimo wrote: post #225
lazerwalker wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

50% is a conservative estimate. If you are a software engineer in the SF Bay Area you can expect a 75% pay cut or more.

Hmm, depends on the non-profit, but in tech-forward non-profits we are often only about 20% below market for most positions: https://www.ctosforgood.org/

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

#339

Post by steven_noble »

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…

Sometimes yes -- sometimes no.

Yes, if you're creating better entertainment, but furniture, better toys, better gadgets, and people are willing to pay for them, you have made the world better.

But people are also willing to pay for weapons, for software that helps them to violate the privacy of others, for financial products that promise much and deliver little, for products that have addictive properties from sugar to gambling to everything else.

So, yes, just building things that other people want and getting rich in the process CAN be a good thing to do. But it is not AUTOMATICALLY a good thing to do.

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

#340

Post by gkop »

bradyo wrote: post #180

I recently went through a job search focusing on organizations doing social good. Full disclosure, I now work at Remix ( https://www.remix.com/jobs ) and we're hiring! We're a for-profit founded by a collection of former Code for America fellows helping to improve cities. I have a list of resources that I collected while I was searching as well: - The Fast Forward accelerator's tech nonprofits job board and directory…

Thanks for mentioning Binti! We help people become foster parents and help foster care agencies approve foster families. More foster families means vulnerable children can get out of group homes and into family homes, where they're more likely to have a good experience. With the help of Binti's web software, social workers spend less time doing paperwork and more time helping families, so they have a greater impact and are less likely to leave the field.

We're needing generalist full-stack engineers, as well as lead engineers in the areas of data, devops, and security: https://binti.com/binti-careers/

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