News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment... by eru on Sunday April 05, 2020 @03:12AM (#22784249)
> Fixing this system will make the difference between real people getting unemployment checks or nothing. That's worth enduring a bad boss for.

In absolute terms, perhaps. But if you are moving away from taking jobs out of self interest, and into doing something for the public good; you might as well check out https://80000hours.org/ and pick the job that has the most positive impact.

My guess is that working any kind of 'normal' programmer job and giving 10% of your income to an effective charity would beat out enduring the bad boss in New Jersey.

Re:New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment... by scarface74 on Sunday April 05, 2020 @08:54AM (#22785344)
10% of my salary wouldn’t be nearly as impactful as helping millions of people get unemployment checks quickly.
Re:New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment... by eru on Monday April 06, 2020 @02:20AM (#22791295)
You'd have to look at the marginal impacts.

You working for them would most likely not push them from failure to success. It would perhaps make success marginally more likely, or perhaps decrease schedule overruns slightly. Or perhaps make not much of a difference at all, depending on how screwed they are.

Of course, the estimate of impact also depends on how you value humans. If you value all humans fairly equally, then Americans who had a job until fairly recently (ie those eligible for unemployment insurance) are already fairly well off compared to the people who benefit from more malaria nets. Especially since their unemployment benefits would merely be delayed, not lost.

Lots of people value those closer to them higher. The most prominent example are family and friends. But valuing compatriots higher is fairly common as well.

Of course, you can give more than 10% of your income as well.

Re:New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment... by Cobol78 on Thursday April 09, 2020 @03:04PM (#22826016)
Would do it myself. For free because of the unemployed. But I see no link to who is hiring, not going thru a head hunter who takes a rake, and states cannot send you a firewall link and password without a month or more of red tape. And rightly so if it is a payroll system, the opening it would make for abuse.
Re:New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment... by coribuci on Monday April 06, 2020 @08:06AM (#22792958)
Then why don't _you_ do it ?
Re:New Jersey needs COBOL programmers for their unemployment... by scarface74 on Monday April 06, 2020 @11:16AM (#22794469)
I didn’t say I would do either. It is a generic discussion about tradeoffs.