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Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.
by tacostakohashi 9y ago
Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.
- vlaaad 9y ago...Unless it's advetising. Or Uber. Or government wanting you to implement yet another freedom-restricting bullshit.
- romanovcode 9y ago> Or Uber. There are plenty of companies 10x worse than Uber. Hivemind.
- falcolas 9y agoThat there are worse companies than Uber doesn't make Uber good, or even worth working for.
- romanovcode 9y agoBut pointing it out makes OP look like he just read some clickbait titles two weeks ago and is now some cringey Anti Uber SJW.
- falcolas 9y agoI think it makes the point that there are some cases where the cost of negatively impacting society is not worth the benefit of making more money to give to charity.
- beachbum8029 9y agoUmmmmmm but Uber made the world a better place? (for me anyway)
- vlaaad 9y agoSorry, I said Uber a bit provocative. I meant companies doing unethical things and asking you to do unethical things.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWhich Uber is definitely a good example of, but I agree it was a bit provocative :).
- falcolas 9y agoDid it make your world a better place, or just add a bit of convenience whose cost was distributed to people you don't know?
- paulgb 9y agoWell, the benefits are also distributed to people I don't know, so this type of accounting is tough.
- Kiro 9y agoDisrupting the taxi mafia has definitely made the world a better place.
- falcolas 9y agoDid the "taxi mafia" encourage a class of laborers who sleep in their cars for less than a minimum wage while depriving them of any kind of protections normally associated with employment?
- Epenthesis 9y ago...yes? Are you really unfamiliar with how medallion owners used to treat their drivers?
- 9y ago
- davidcbc 9y agoOr do work for those places if you don't find them morally questionable.
- patja 9y agoI believe that over time your environment shapes you. I agree that you should devote your working hours to something more than shareholder value or increased clickthrough rates. Sure you can pull down the big bucks working on the next version of biological warfare weaponry and make large donations to Red Cross or whatever, but not without a personal toll.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoA better rule is: just don't take a job in which your negative impact on the society will be greater than the positive impact of the money you donate.
- streblo 9y agoI work in advertising and I don't think it's immoral or unethical.
- andreasgonewild 9y agoAdvertising is about creating artificial problems and needs, making the world a shittier place for profit. Maybe pulling your head out of your ass would help?
- popeshoe 9y agoIf you're on HN you're probably also conscious of your philanthropy being used for the maximal good, in which case you may be interested in projects like https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
- siquick 9y agoThanks for posting
- bluetwo 9y agoThis is exactly the advice a sociology professor in college gave to the sociology majors.
- tacostakohashi 9y agoA sociology professor advised sociology majors to work as programmers? That's much better advice than I'd expect from a sociology professor, if I'm to be honest.
- bluetwo 9y agoYes. Any high paid job actually. Point being don't do this solely because you "want to make a difference".... making a lot of money at a different job and giving to causes you care about is a legitimate way to make a difference. I always thought that was interesting.
- nyargh 9y agoPeople are going to shit on the parent comment - but honestly, anyone with more than a few years of experience in a tight tech job market is going to easily be in the top decile of earners. The highly-committed individuals that do the brutally hard work on the ground for non-profits or NGOs make a pittance in comparison. Committing a quarter of your salary would pay the entirety of theirs. Consider that for a moment.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vivekd 9y agoI'm suspicious of the notion that throwing money at problems can solve them.
- jonnybgood 9y agoThis is where due diligence comes in. You throw money at people and orgs who are good at solving those problems.
- nyargh 9y agoYou throw money at people who have the domain knowledge and are actively solving the problems.
- westbywest 9y agoAgreed. Money can't buy everything, including experience and awareness gleaned from personally facing the problems such NGOs target. The knowledge accrued could demonstrate value later.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoTrue, but you need to consider what you care about more - to have the problem solved, or to solve it yourself? Or to put it differently - do you care about increasing utility, or your own fuzzy feelings? Either of those goals are good, but they're better done separately. See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_separately/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa....
- lazerwalker 9y agoI 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 problems that technology can solve, but rather that the cost/reward curve is often suboptimal if you're optimizing for impact.
- asciimo 9y ago50% is a conservative estimate. If you are a software engineer in the SF Bay Area you can expect a 75% pay cut or more.
- nowarninglabel 9y agoHmm, 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/ https://www.ctosforgood.org/
- bjelkeman-again 9y agoIs CTOs for good US only?
- nowarninglabel 9y agoNot by design, but by circumstance yes. I'm sure we'd be open to folks joining from other nations though as long as they could travel to our once-a-year in-person meetup.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- simplicitea 9y agoAnd yet, there must be a supply of hackers to which you donate that money.
- bjelkeman-again 9y agoOne can do that. But I'd like to believe that I make a bigger impact in actually applying my skills directly to the problem.