I did for the last couple of years, working in the public sector for GDS. While personal circumstances changed and I’ve gone back to agency life again, I’d recommend digital transformation of government services to anyone who’s a bit burnt out on the steady diet of startups destined to fail and brochureware sites. The USDS even advertise their open positions as ‘tours of duty’: https://www.usds.gov/join#tours-of-duty
I don't know what society is. I don't think there's been a society for me to contribute to. All of us have our group of friends maybe, and our work life. But the rampant individualism and abandonment of the family unit leads us to no dialogue between peoples. Things just happen and we react to it. Go accumulate money and take vacation.
I can't remember the last time I've seen more than three neighbors within a year time span.
So no, I don't think I'm contributing to society. I'm only a student, after all.
>But the rampant individualism and abandonment of the family unit leads us to no dialogue between peoples.
It's not like that everywhere. I live in a midwest metropolitan area (~230k people), when I walk passerbyers always say hi or wave. People are relatively friendly by default. Yesterday an older lady I'd never met before told me about the pace maker she had put in the Friday before.
I'm rambling, but if you desire a sense of community or whatever there are parts of the US where this is very much a thing.
I live in San Francisco. Grew up in the South Bay. Last month I took a motorcycle trip up to Seattle along the California and Oregon coastline. I took my time, stopped a lot along the way. I was shocked at how friendly and inquisitive the people from the <5-digit-population towns were. Everyone was polite, seemed genuinely interested in conversation with me (a lot of questions about my motorcycle, but other topics too). Completely the opposite of the urban/suburban areas I was used to. This began immediately outside the greater Bay Area and let up only when going through medium sized towns or larger. Portland and Seattle were much like being back in SF.
Anyways, I'm also rambling, but just wanted to add another piece of anecdotal evidence to yours. It's almost enough to make me want to try living in one of these towns for a while, which never really occurred to me before (at 25 it seems like everyone I know wants to be as urban as possible).
I agree that there is no society any longer at least in developed countries. With rise of automation, there is no longer 'common good' and good old Communist class morale comes back into force: what's good for the creative class is bad for the working class. They can have a compromise based on force (compromise in speed with which creative class eats working class), but can't really have an agreement.
Assuming of course you mean contributing positively...
I felt that way for dozen or so years I was in our Airforce, less about fighting down under, more about helping out.
But then...
I left for money, now I have a fancy business card, a house, more cars than I can drive at once and habits I couldn't have sustained in uniform, now if I'm contributing, it's not positive, and sleep, it was easier before.
Spending your money on that stuff is contributing. By purchasing a house you contributed to the housing workers. And contribute more property tax. You supported the salaries of people in the automobile industry. You are literally contributing by consuming.
Don't apologize for it. Every idea about society has been tried a dozen times over. Capitalism has the best track record. Some of the worst hell holes on earth had great intentions in the minds of their leaders.
No judgement intended in asking, but does the contribution question factor into you deciding to work for a hedge fund? If it does, what keeps you there?
I'm curious because I've had a few coworkers come from hedge funds and they left for a lot of reasons.
Sure no problem. No the contribution question was left aside. I went to work for a hedge fund because I wanted to live in NYC and go through the immigration process easily (I'm French). It turned out that the people I work with are very smart and super nice. So overall I don't feel like contributing much, but I kind of sorted the money issue and I work on challenging problems with a bunch of smart guys, so I feel fine.
yes, I help individuals and small businesses build sensible web strategies and mentoring where required, my clients are nice people running socially conscious enterprises in interesting and progressive fields, that's positive, for me anyway.
well, it's work that is several steps removed from directly impacting an individual. Nobody's ever come to my lab to tell me I saved their life. (but if our work bears fruit, everyone will have better hearing aids!)
I worked EMS in undergrad; none of my patients ever found me afterwards to thank me, but we _probably_ saved a life or two. (narcan is magical)
Im working in automatization. So no!
Im a wrecking ball to societys foundation, im taking peoples jobs away or prevent those from existing in the first place.
I secretly wish this whole Ponzi scheme would come crashing down to bury this nightmare.
I wish i could dress up in some delusional ideology, like others can, that this is for some greater good and 72 virgins after the singularity hits, but logic, that cruel mistress wont allow those too last.
Automatization is one of the best contribution to society that can exit, i can't wait to live in a world where we all acknowledge that not everyone needs to work and we can focus on really important things like NOT reinventing the wheel and spend life on useless jobs.
That is at least if everything (or almost) goes as planned and things like universal income become a reality.
Also, i thought everyone from hackernews thought this.
> I can't wait to live in a world where we all acknowledge...
Why do you think "we" (as a world) will all acknowledge anything together?
If anything, the current trajectory of automation is leading to an intensification of the difference between have's vs have-not's. Many powerful people in the "have's" group WANT this, they want another gilded age where you have fantastically wealthy people and serfs.
UBI isn't a given and making it a reality is going to get ugly even if it succeeds.
The benefits from automation still exist, even if currently the only way to realize them at scale is to steal from the rich robot owners.
Thus, working to increase automation is still useful, because it is likely that we will soon either tax the owners of automated capital more, or economically disenfranchised people will have a bloody revolution, and the new owners of the automated capital will be slightly more inclined to voluntarily share for the next 70 years or so.
The end result is that mopping floors and cleaning toilets becomes a robot job, and no human anywhere does it, freeing them up for tasks that actually require human brainpower. I think everyone needs to work, but the BS jobs we have been inventing are not fit for that purpose. Everyone needs to do a thing that is productive by the loosest definition and makes them happy. Like jarring your own pickles. Or making an online comic with stick figures. Or domesticating foxes. When freed of the requirement that people have to do work to perform certain critical functions that keep civilization running, like growing food and paving roads, people can instead put more effort into things that are niche interests.
It might be playing video games for 12 hours a day. That's okay. You don't need that guy to raise chickens for your dinner. But you might need him later, when you decide to spend 4 hours every week to play a video game, and you don't want to waste your time on one that is not fun, or too deep for that level of time commitment. That guy will soon become an subject matter expert on video games, and you can trust him to blow away the chaff, because he loves video games.
Some people still do the niche stuff even after working 40 hours or more in a week. If you think about what they can do in their leisure time, just imagine what they would accomplish if their hobby was their full time job.
Haha, you think that's bad?!?! You are moving society forwards enabling faster and faster technological growth. I, however, make software for market speculators. The greater good doesn't even know I exist.
Automation, making it take less work to achieve things, is as close to an inherent good as I can imagine. A political and economic system that turns automation into something that harms people is bad.
If this time is not completely different, automating jobs will have positive benefits for all, esp those working in jobs automated away. Automation has happened continuously since the 1800s and new machines were always feared to take away many jobs (or earlier, e.g. by the mechanical knitting machine in ~1589). Looking at datasets of popular jobs from just a century ago it's amazing to see how many of those ceased to exist and how little we miss them. I'm sure most of the jobs to be automated away are not "dream jobs" that people will miss thoroughly.
Not to say that it doesn't bear risks but there's currently no indication that this time jobs wouldn't be replaced by something better. Just because many think so doesn't make it true, Keynes also firmly believed in the 1930s that we would run out of work and yet I cannot see that anywhere.
% of population working has declined significantly since 1600. Right now we are under 2/5 of the US population (~38.8%) is working a 35+ hour a week job.
So, I suspect they have been costing jobs. Society has simply shifted to use a lower percentage of peoples time vs. having large numbers of people never work.
However, unless we start reducing the retirement age down to late 40's or other very large scale changes that's only going to keep working for so long.
And we will probably continue to do so. Life expectancy in many countries is likely to rise so that further automation can help to keep the retirement age. Most people in Europe today retire at around the same age as 100 years ago (~65) while living much longer.
But still, we don't see joblessness or masses of people unqualified for the market. Faster developments will lead to many having 3-5 careers over their life time but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
What's different this time is rather than replacing physical effort we are replacing judgement. Automated checkout lines, self driving cars etc are attacking the kind of jobs you can train people to do.
It's true we are creating more jobs, but mostly by having people do things that are low priority and thus low paying. There might be unlimited demand for service jobs like raft guides, but they pay crap because they compete with things like video games.
I only partly agree. We create jobs for both, high value added and low value added. The low value added still increase productivity (Amazon warehouse workers serve more clients than retail cashiers) but most focus will be on high value-added.
What disappears is the middle. This means we have to ensure that as many people as possible can get an education preparing them for higher value-added jobs. More diverse university courses and free education could help with that, vocational training can do the same.
Amazon warehouse workers are hardly the kind of jobs safe from automation. Self checkout lines supliment cashiers, but that means you end up with fewer cashiers in the short term not zero. Amazon clearly uses automation when cost effective and competing head to head with machines is not a long term viable option.
Maybe you are moving society to an cyberpunk dystopia, but who knows what you come after that? Maybe after some time this 'new society' stabilize and the world(s) will be a better place.
It's a mixed bag for me. I work in children's entertainment and educational apps. While I feel quality fun educational experiences on devices are positive, I also feel like they are contributing to kids getting addicted to these screens at a young age which concerns me deeply. I'm not really sure where to go from here to address these concerns.
Out of curiosity, from someone in the education arena.. Would you think augmented-reality style apps would
be a step in the right direction?
I remember being told it would bring forward the 'outside world' to people otherwise
glued to their phones. But then, I drove past a pokemon go party the other day and
the only difference was they were all stood outside...
I think AR and VR have incredible educational potential, but I don't know that it will do anything to decrease screen addiction in children. It will likely only increase it.
Yes! I'm the lead developer for the ground control software for the Mars rovers. The missions are expanding the bounds of human knowledge, and doing my job right means we get more/better science data back from the rovers!
I work for a company which is owned by a big health insurance company and we make consumer-facing applications. Our products have a varying degree of public benefit from online insurance open enrollment (turbotax for benefits) to provider transparency (find doctors and see how much common services cost).
In general, I'm glad I'm working on improving consumer experience in one of the more stressful human experiences, but I know at the end of the day, I'm still improving the bottom line of a huge company and enabling the propagation of a broken system.
Having things like Juicero exist gives me a little bit of relative ethical reprieve: "at least I'm not wasting a ton of money to make an elitist, wasteful food fad product".
My answer right now would be a timid yes. But in no way in an impactful way, even to very few, so I still feel I need to work on this regard.
Now, I want to merge this topic with one that comes naturally to HN: startups. I keep feeling like the projects that are for the good make no money, and that the easy money is to be found in negative or maybe irrelevant solutions. I know this is not 100% accurate, and that's why I keep trying to think of projects I can pursue, make a living on, that feel just RIGHT. But hell is this hard.
I work in international development - studying why some developing countries prosper, learning lessons from that, and seeing if it can be applied elsewhere. We do a mix of theoretical paper-publishing and also small policy engagements. Nothing I do (data munging / backend / ops / web dev / bit of data visualization) single handedly saves anyone or improves anything, but I think it helps the people actually working on this stuff, so there's that.
I think there are a lot of cases where people (likely yourself) contribute positively to society but don't realize it. There are so many facets to how technology can interact with someone's life during some circumstance. Some of these positive circumstances may not be obvious or frequent- but that doesn't mean your efforts aren't worthwhile or that you shouldn't look at your work from different angles and appreciate your positive contributions. IMO affecting one stranger's life positively is worth celebrating.
Ex. I work on on a social music app[1] in my spare time. From my perspective I'm just making it easy for devs to share music while they work: marginal contribution to society at best. But a little while ago I got an email from a father who thanked me for the building something which gave him the opportunity to reconnect with his daughter across the world. Remembering nice stories like that help keep me motivated and hopefully you can find some nice stories in your line of work as well :).
It is true that contribution can often seem intangible. However, if you lower the cost of goods, or increase productivity in any way, you have helped large numbers of people. Repeat that for 20 years and you have probably helped a few million, or if you are lucky a few hundred million people.
That can be a very good sign. People like to feel important but it's very dangerous to be irreplaceable. Key man risk is often underestimated and can kill companies.
In a way, I am through my work. However it is primarily from doing tickets of people complaining about $feature or $bug or $access_rights. It certainly feels soul-sucking doing it. And most certainly does not feel like positive contributions. But I know that what I work on, many millions of people count on in the end. And my hands are a small part of that.
In the grand stream of things, I've done more actionable and powerful work outside of my job I attend 5 days a week. If I had more time, I could push more innovation in many areas. The money would be nice as well. It's a hard choice, balancing money and time.
I yearn for the days when we finally have UBI or something guaranteeing us the rights to live without being coerced into selling our bodies and minds. Because right now, I feel there's little between me selling my body and mind and that of a prostitute selling theirs. I just don't do sex as work, so it's somehow "better".
And having rights to live for everyone would allow me to work much more in automation tech without the ethical qualms that I am putting many more people out of work - and thusly depriving them of living. Automation tech can work for a limited amount of people (now), or it can work for everyone.
I believe that simply treating others the way we'd like to be treated is a positive contribution to society. Treating others with respect, and trying to keep common places clean already goes a long way for society as a whole.
Like many, I help in a number of small ways I'm sure, and perhaps I've even made a big impact on a few lives for the better, but I can't help but think I should be able to scale up and do more for a far, far greater number of people.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 96.7 ms ] threadIt's not like that everywhere. I live in a midwest metropolitan area (~230k people), when I walk passerbyers always say hi or wave. People are relatively friendly by default. Yesterday an older lady I'd never met before told me about the pace maker she had put in the Friday before.
I'm rambling, but if you desire a sense of community or whatever there are parts of the US where this is very much a thing.
Anyways, I'm also rambling, but just wanted to add another piece of anecdotal evidence to yours. It's almost enough to make me want to try living in one of these towns for a while, which never really occurred to me before (at 25 it seems like everyone I know wants to be as urban as possible).
I felt that way for dozen or so years I was in our Airforce, less about fighting down under, more about helping out.
But then...
I left for money, now I have a fancy business card, a house, more cars than I can drive at once and habits I couldn't have sustained in uniform, now if I'm contributing, it's not positive, and sleep, it was easier before.
Don't apologize for it. Every idea about society has been tried a dozen times over. Capitalism has the best track record. Some of the worst hell holes on earth had great intentions in the minds of their leaders.
I'm curious because I've had a few coworkers come from hedge funds and they left for a lot of reasons.
(That's what I tell myself about my phd anyway)
I worked EMS in undergrad; none of my patients ever found me afterwards to thank me, but we _probably_ saved a life or two. (narcan is magical)
it's a fun conversation to have over a few beers.
I wish i could dress up in some delusional ideology, like others can, that this is for some greater good and 72 virgins after the singularity hits, but logic, that cruel mistress wont allow those too last.
That is at least if everything (or almost) goes as planned and things like universal income become a reality.
Also, i thought everyone from hackernews thought this.
If anything, the current trajectory of automation is leading to an intensification of the difference between have's vs have-not's. Many powerful people in the "have's" group WANT this, they want another gilded age where you have fantastically wealthy people and serfs.
UBI isn't a given and making it a reality is going to get ugly even if it succeeds.
Thus, working to increase automation is still useful, because it is likely that we will soon either tax the owners of automated capital more, or economically disenfranchised people will have a bloody revolution, and the new owners of the automated capital will be slightly more inclined to voluntarily share for the next 70 years or so.
The end result is that mopping floors and cleaning toilets becomes a robot job, and no human anywhere does it, freeing them up for tasks that actually require human brainpower. I think everyone needs to work, but the BS jobs we have been inventing are not fit for that purpose. Everyone needs to do a thing that is productive by the loosest definition and makes them happy. Like jarring your own pickles. Or making an online comic with stick figures. Or domesticating foxes. When freed of the requirement that people have to do work to perform certain critical functions that keep civilization running, like growing food and paving roads, people can instead put more effort into things that are niche interests.
It might be playing video games for 12 hours a day. That's okay. You don't need that guy to raise chickens for your dinner. But you might need him later, when you decide to spend 4 hours every week to play a video game, and you don't want to waste your time on one that is not fun, or too deep for that level of time commitment. That guy will soon become an subject matter expert on video games, and you can trust him to blow away the chaff, because he loves video games.
Some people still do the niche stuff even after working 40 hours or more in a week. If you think about what they can do in their leisure time, just imagine what they would accomplish if their hobby was their full time job.
> I wish i could dress up in some delusional ideology
Sounds a little like Accelerationism[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism
Not to say that it doesn't bear risks but there's currently no indication that this time jobs wouldn't be replaced by something better. Just because many think so doesn't make it true, Keynes also firmly believed in the 1930s that we would run out of work and yet I cannot see that anywhere.
So, I suspect they have been costing jobs. Society has simply shifted to use a lower percentage of peoples time vs. having large numbers of people never work.
However, unless we start reducing the retirement age down to late 40's or other very large scale changes that's only going to keep working for so long.
But still, we don't see joblessness or masses of people unqualified for the market. Faster developments will lead to many having 3-5 careers over their life time but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
It's true we are creating more jobs, but mostly by having people do things that are low priority and thus low paying. There might be unlimited demand for service jobs like raft guides, but they pay crap because they compete with things like video games.
What disappears is the middle. This means we have to ensure that as many people as possible can get an education preparing them for higher value-added jobs. More diverse university courses and free education could help with that, vocational training can do the same.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13696161
Maybe you are moving society to an cyberpunk dystopia, but who knows what you come after that? Maybe after some time this 'new society' stabilize and the world(s) will be a better place.
I remember being told it would bring forward the 'outside world' to people otherwise glued to their phones. But then, I drove past a pokemon go party the other day and the only difference was they were all stood outside...
I don't save lives myself, but I help collect the data that's used to do so.
I work for a company which is owned by a big health insurance company and we make consumer-facing applications. Our products have a varying degree of public benefit from online insurance open enrollment (turbotax for benefits) to provider transparency (find doctors and see how much common services cost).
In general, I'm glad I'm working on improving consumer experience in one of the more stressful human experiences, but I know at the end of the day, I'm still improving the bottom line of a huge company and enabling the propagation of a broken system.
Having things like Juicero exist gives me a little bit of relative ethical reprieve: "at least I'm not wasting a ton of money to make an elitist, wasteful food fad product".
My answer right now would be a timid yes. But in no way in an impactful way, even to very few, so I still feel I need to work on this regard.
Now, I want to merge this topic with one that comes naturally to HN: startups. I keep feeling like the projects that are for the good make no money, and that the easy money is to be found in negative or maybe irrelevant solutions. I know this is not 100% accurate, and that's why I keep trying to think of projects I can pursue, make a living on, that feel just RIGHT. But hell is this hard.
Ex. I work on on a social music app[1] in my spare time. From my perspective I'm just making it easy for devs to share music while they work: marginal contribution to society at best. But a little while ago I got an email from a father who thanked me for the building something which gave him the opportunity to reconnect with his daughter across the world. Remembering nice stories like that help keep me motivated and hopefully you can find some nice stories in your line of work as well :).
[1] https://www.jqbx.fm
In the grand stream of things, I've done more actionable and powerful work outside of my job I attend 5 days a week. If I had more time, I could push more innovation in many areas. The money would be nice as well. It's a hard choice, balancing money and time.
I yearn for the days when we finally have UBI or something guaranteeing us the rights to live without being coerced into selling our bodies and minds. Because right now, I feel there's little between me selling my body and mind and that of a prostitute selling theirs. I just don't do sex as work, so it's somehow "better".
And having rights to live for everyone would allow me to work much more in automation tech without the ethical qualms that I am putting many more people out of work - and thusly depriving them of living. Automation tech can work for a limited amount of people (now), or it can work for everyone.
Perhaps I'm just an idealist.
Like many, I help in a number of small ways I'm sure, and perhaps I've even made a big impact on a few lives for the better, but I can't help but think I should be able to scale up and do more for a far, far greater number of people.