41–50 of 108 posts
You can't. Go for a more traditional job instead. Eg: finance or law.
Hey, here on HN we never say "You can't." I've done the finance thing, and it's got its good side. But now, I want to see how I can help more directly. And yes, it's possible.
We hackers are sustained by WILLPOWER, even when mocked as reckless and crazy! If there's a wall in our way, we smash it down! If there isn't a path, we carve one ourselves!
(Mandatory)
http://80000hours.org/ http://80000hours.org/earning-to-give http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/ http://www.givewell.org/ http://home.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/
- have as much private insurance as you need
- are debt-free
- can provide for yourself & your family upon retirement
Being financially independent is the greatest gift you can give to those who depend upon you, & to the rest of the society in which you live.
I work at Knewton (not as a software engineer, though we have many of those) because it seems so obvious once I thought about the state of formal education on this planet and how far we can take it.
Knewton is an education technology company quietly laying the groundwork for a future full of digital educational materials (lessons, quizzes, MOOCs, mobile apps, etc.) that offer differentiated learning experiences driven by deep personalization. We've built an adaptive learning infrastructure that will power any learning environment.
The core teams are mixtures of software engineers, data scientists, and teaching experts developing the world's leading models of how students learn and how to help them.
We can predict a student's quiz score before they take it. We can predict whether someone is on target to finish in four months based on all content, possible paths, and a history of student data to compare against. We can recommend the next 5-minute activity that most efficiently moves a student toward a learning objective set by a teacher in a third-party learning product. We can sift through wrong answers to determine whether a student lacks proficiency, disengaged, forgot, or simply encountered a poorly formed question. And we're just getting started.
Education -- K12, higher ed, language teaching, vocational training, professional certification, adult learning -- is one of the biggest industries in the world. We are already partnered with some of the world's biggest names, including Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Macmillan, Cambridge University Press, and more.
http://www.amplify.com/careers (disclaimer: I work here) - we make educational apps for kids
If you are creating products that people are willing to pay money for, then most likely you are being a huge help to society.
Pretty sure each answer reveals a bit about each of our value functions (and what we read on-line). Here goes: ProPublica http://www.propublica.org/about/jobs Maplight http://maplight.org/content/jobs-at-maplight Sunlight Foundation http://sunlightfoundation.com/jobs/ Rootstrikers http://www.rootstrikers.org/ resource.org https://public.resource.org/ Code for America http://codeforamerica.org/ Engineers Without Borde…
Thanks! That's a good list. Some are non-profits looking for volunteers, some are non-profits or for-profits looking for employees. But I'm wondering if there is some sort of job listing or board that brings together all the salaried jobs (sorry, gotta eat), that help humanity directly in some way.
Edit: You'll most definitely want to avoid the big organisations. Also, right now you could join about any NGO and get sent to the Philippine, small NGOs usually work as meritocracy. And networking is key in this field.