4 ms·

It's a good question - and one that hopefully more and more people will start asking. The problem with a forum (or any kind of announcement system) for this is

by jka 7y ago

It's a good question - and one that hopefully more and more people will start asking. The problem with a forum (or any kind of announcement system) for this is that the people who want your skills most and who can afford it will be the loudest voices (or will pay for the loudest and most convincing voices to broadcast their job offerings). It's possible to take another approach though - consider it like a search problem. Start with the kinds of projects you'd like to work on, and then try to find the companies and projects that match those by searching HN's archives, GitHub projects, Google search. I think people in general tend to get used to the existing career funnels (job search sites where you enter your profile; LinkedIn; or looking at big-name company job listings). There's a lot more out there though.

_bxg1 7y ago
> the people who want your skills most and who can afford it will be the loudest voices Personally I'm looking even for just volunteer stuff. A local charity where I can spend 5-10 hours a week helping maintain their website, or a weekend or two building out a business process tool that makes them more efficient. That sort of thing. The problem is I don't see this stuff very often on HN either, and on GitHub what you mostly see are highly generic, pure-tech solutions. These may indirectly help a nonprofit down the line, but usually at several levels of abstraction. Most of the SE work out there is getting hands-on with one specific organization's problems. Even if off-the-shelf components are a part of the solution, you still need someone technical at the end of the chain to actually utilize most of those, certainly the kind you'd find on GitHub.
- jka 7y ago
  Volunteering sounds like a great way to spend some time, yep. Are there any local (city/regional) volunteer mailing lists or websites you might be able to find? I've often wondered whether the foundational documents & infrastructure of organizations could be, by default, hosted in public source control as text-files / basic markup. Technology is still a bit too alien for most people I'd guess - software literacy (and, frankly, software simplicity) still has a way to go. And there's a fear of developing and making mistakes in the open. But if every organization had infrastructure developed via code -- even if what they actually achieve as a group has a strong basis in the real world -- that'd make it a lot easier for developers like us to contribute back. Until then, volunteering time and expertise locally sounds good :) Would be great to hear if you find any useful sites / communities for this.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    I'm thinking about building one, honestly. Probably local to my city. Reaching out directly to organizations and listing their current needs. Maybe later I'd add a form they could submit to post new needs or take down ones that are out of date.
    - jka 7y ago
      Good luck! I just discovered https://app.code4socialgood.org/ https://app.code4socialgood.org/ as well which might be of interest to you. Their codebase is available at https://github.com/Code4SocialGood/c4sg-web https://github.com/Code4SocialGood/c4sg-web

by jka 7y ago

_bxg1 7y ago

> the people who want your skills most and who can afford it will be the loudest voices Personally I'm looking even for just volunteer stuff. A local charity where I can spend 5-10 hours a week helping maintain their website, or a weekend or two building out a business process tool that makes them more efficient. That sort of thing. The problem is I don't see this stuff very often on HN either, and on GitHub what you mostly see are highly generic, pure-tech solutions. These may indirectly help a nonprofit down the line, but usually at several levels of abstraction. Most of the SE work out there is getting hands-on with one specific organization's problems. Even if off-the-shelf components are a part of the solution, you still need someone technical at the end of the chain to actually utilize most of those, certainly the kind you'd find on GitHub.

jka 7y ago
Volunteering sounds like a great way to spend some time, yep. Are there any local (city/regional) volunteer mailing lists or websites you might be able to find? I've often wondered whether the foundational documents & infrastructure of organizations could be, by default, hosted in public source control as text-files / basic markup. Technology is still a bit too alien for most people I'd guess - software literacy (and, frankly, software simplicity) still has a way to go. And there's a fear of developing and making mistakes in the open. But if every organization had infrastructure developed via code -- even if what they actually achieve as a group has a strong basis in the real world -- that'd make it a lot easier for developers like us to contribute back. Until then, volunteering time and expertise locally sounds good :) Would be great to hear if you find any useful sites / communities for this.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  I'm thinking about building one, honestly. Probably local to my city. Reaching out directly to organizations and listing their current needs. Maybe later I'd add a form they could submit to post new needs or take down ones that are out of date.
  - jka 7y ago
    Good luck! I just discovered https://app.code4socialgood.org/ https://app.code4socialgood.org/ as well which might be of interest to you. Their codebase is available at https://github.com/Code4SocialGood/c4sg-web https://github.com/Code4SocialGood/c4sg-web