It's not, but unless you are working on something that is directly impoverishing someone to this point, then the economic or social system that allows people to go hungry and without basics is more to blame than your particular role.
People don't go hungry anymore due to lack of societal resources. It's due to either a lack of sufficient collective concern, or even a belief that it is largely acceptable that this occurs.
That the effect of your inequality inducing job is hunger for someone can only be countered with policy and incentives that work at societal, not with individual choices to disengage from jobs that optimize productivity.
It's similar to the fallacy of asking Warren Buffet to cut an additional check to the IRS vs raising tax rates, or the fallacy of thinking that an individual's choice not to eat meat has any meaningful effect on climate change.
> I don't want to just donate to charities, I want to end systemic problems that lead to charities needing to exist in the first place.
This is actually a great way to think about it, and if you have the personal means to pursue the systemic issues without having to worry about your own survival, then go for it. But know that this will almost certainly involve spurring on the collective human will to act towards that goal, not inventing a technology as an individual that will fix the problem.
But individual acts of sacrifice for the common good are not scalable in the same way, due to our inherent aversion to loss.
Usually large scale acts of sacrifice are the result of worse alternative consequences, like imprisonment or penalties for cheating on taxes.
I submit that this is a convenient excuse. You have to be the change you want to see in the world. It is easy to say "yeah, I'm making things worse, but its ok because so is everyone else", and thus nothing changes.
More of an observation that people will tend toward their local maximum utility even while global utility is compromised. Sometimes you might discover a way to increase both, but for most ongoing concerns the way to balance the two is via laws and regulation.
I know that my individual contribution to capitalism by working for a major corporation is a drop in the bucket, and simply refusing to work for a corporation has no real impact on poverty worldwide. But I could definitely put more energy into radical action than I do right now.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/14/63-million-am...
I'd say that "exposed to potentially unsafe water more than once during the past decade" is pretty far from "20% of Americans don't have clean tap water". If anything, I'd rather say it's impressive that 80% of Americans haven't been exposed to potentially unsafe water more than once in a decade!
On top of this, the accepted career progression for many programmers seems to be that you become a manager and don’t even get to solve the fun problems yourself - now you’re doing harm and not even enjoying doing it!
But hey, at least we get paid a lot...
Maybe that's because so much of tech nowadays is a branch of the finance industry (mostly through VC), and that's all finance has ever been.
There’s a lot of traditional industries that do not exploit people or paychology any more than they’ve been doing for hundreds of years. Those companies need programmers as well.
You won’t get your FAANG salary, but that is the sacrifice you make. No need to give up on IT altogether.
My answer is just aggregation of all biggest problems I face in my life and programming. The biggest challenges often have to do with cooperation between 2 or more people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism
They are basically thinking about exactly this question, what is most important for the society / humanity / the world, and how can you make the biggest impact to achieve such a goal. This very much depends on your background and abilities, of course.
One might argue that technology not only won't fix our issues but, used as it is today, is the cause of a lot of them.
I actually went to school for history, but I'm self-taught in tech. Thankfully, I never had to work at any dishonest or unethical companies (I stayed out of the startup world), but it still feels like most of the Bay Area companies are not really improving society much, and only a very small section of the population benefits, and they benefit heavily.
A large part of why things are the way they are is because both wealth hoarders and consumers incentivize the status quo with their economic influence. Building systems, writing software, trying to raise awareness, etc does little to displace an economic system centered on exploiting weakness and maximizing profit. The most any one person can really, truly do is amass such a substantial portion wealth that they can dictate and control to be a force for good and not evil.
It doesn't help with your systemic problems directly, but it can provide valuable service to groups that need all the help they can get.
Often this includes groups like children's mentoring organizations that provide access to education and other extracurricular activities. In that way it can indirectly help dig at the root of a variety of problems.
https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en
https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities?f[0]=fie... (development tasks)
Technology can only supplement a mindset where people are agreeable to solving problems in the first place. Most social and political woes are intentional, someone is "winning" for someone else's "losing", and often neither party wants the arrangement to change even if from the outsider perspective it would be "so easy" to fix, especially technically.
I'm fairly certain the problem is the systems are written to reward those behaviors. It's technically not hard to solve that, but modern social media companies have this baked into their business model.
(Yes, I have a scheme in mind that solves it, sorry not sharing :-)
The economy/society is not a zero sum game as you are suggesting. It's a cooperative game. In some local scenarios it is a zero sum game, but to look at the whole economy/society like that is misleading. But yes, if people are looking to destroy each other, then yes, technology will just facilitate that. It is in most people's best interest to cooperate though.
So you're saying even if we do have platforms for thinking that help people navigate complex issues, it wouldn't have any economic or political benefit?
I've been thinking a lot of similar thoughts and have been wishing I had more people to discuss this with.
If it sounds good to you, reach out to me at the email in my profile. I'd be interested in hearing more about your diagnosis of how systems are malfunctioning, what systemic fixes might look like, and how it could be practical to work on that and still pay bills.
Technology offers speed, ease of use, and freedom:
It's allowing the population to educate itself. The sheer number and diversity of media allows people to find material about a topic that captivates them instead of walking away from the topic because the "classical" texts are not matching the student's needs.
It's allowing the population access to news beyond the standard topics and formats of newspaper, radio, and TV.
It's allowing a staggering amount of recording and publication that leads to increased transparency and reduced corruption.
It's allowing the population to bypass government controls. Encryption, cryptocurrency, etc.
I agree.
I work at an education company on a digital product. I got on board excited because I deeply believe education is the best way to change the world.
After 4 years I've realized tech is just another tool. The quality of education depends entirely on the quality of the educators and the pedagogic system they are using. Tools are pretty much irrelevant.
So basically the only reason the company has a digital product is because it looks great on sales presentations and everyone expects us to have tech since our competition has tech too.
I won't go so far as to call them irrelevant cause I've personally found them very useful during my education. Whilst they're useless by themselves if the quality of the content itself is useless they can definitely help studying more easier and efficient.
There's this study by the OECD which finds that not only there is no correlation between maths/reading/science skills and the use of computers, but in some cases using computers only makes things worse:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-34174796
https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa-digital
In France they recently completely banned tablets and phones in primary schools.
Estonia, Finland, and Singapore have some of the best K12 education in the world and they barely use computers if at all.
The evidence is slowly piling up that learning, at least until before college (where most of the cognitive skills are learned) does not benefit from using digital tools.
Everyone wants this. The problem is that it's intrinsic to human nature. We might get away from it some day, but until we can universally trust the people who have power we won't get there.
When I was Catholic, I liked the serenity prayer (I still meditate on this from time to time). It helped me scope what I accepted as my own personal responsibility to fix. Picking a job where you can code on something that actually helps people AND make a living is a great experience. It shouldn't be everything, but sometimes it's enough.
You could give some of your salary to political groups that you think will help fix those systemic problems. If you're working for a FAANG, you're probably making like twice as much as you need anyway.
Because I am me, and they are them? I mean, if I can get both at the same time then that’s obviously best. But I won’t compromise my own happiness for someone elses.
I don’t think that is mutually exclusive with wanting to end systemic problems with inequality though.
I'm still shocked how come you don't see the effect of the 21st century where in the past all those world wars, genocides, ignorance etc.
Really sorry but I couldn't find any profession other then engineering and science if you ask me what makes us prevail in the long run!
I took a long break from software and started learning politics, philosophy, and history, and eventually came to the conclusion that most of the world's problems are social/political and won't be fixed by technology.
And in many ways, the type of work we do directly cause harm to people. (Unfortunately, with the long gap in my career I need to build up work experience before switching to anything else)
How can I continue to work at a corporation that directly causes wealth inequality? Sure, I might personally enjoy working on math and software related problems. But why is my own intellectual curiosity more important than whether someone else gets to eat?
I don't want to just donate to charities, I want to end systemic problems that lead to charities needing to exist in the first place.