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

Re:Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming? by lazerwalker on Friday May 19, 2017 @11:29AM (#14376607)

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 problems that technology can solve, but rather that the cost/reward curve is often suboptimal if you're optimizing for impact.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming? by asciimo on Friday May 19, 2017 @02:38PM (#14378276)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming? by nowarninglabel on Friday May 19, 2017 @08:00PM (#14380214)

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/

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Re:Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming? by bjelkeman-again on Saturday May 20, 2017 @02:01AM (#14381242)

Is CTOs for good US only?

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Re:Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming? by nowarninglabel on Sunday May 21, 2017 @02:52PM (#14388578)

Not 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.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming? by simplicitea on Friday May 19, 2017 @03:13PM (#14378571)

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

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