Ask HN: How can I avoid just making rich people richer?

It would seem to me that asking the question is the answer. The "well if it is not me, it will be someone else is the answer George Soros gave when collecting the only personal valuables held by jews before they were gassed.

Sounds harsh and way out there , without a connection and conviction to what you want, this is how far it can go.

(Man I have been up too late )

You should focus on the outcome and the use case in general. Ask yourself what is my employer trying to solve for the wider public? Then pick a company that has the strongest mission. Life isn’t perfect my friend.

Find some freelance work or contract work that doesn't make your skin crawl and keeps what you deem a necessary amount of income to survive and spend the rest of your time on what you do care about. Even if it's entirely free forever. Even if you have to put money into it.

This is a very simple solution to making yourself happy.

Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too; but don't worry, the snacks aren't terrible.

Right now you only have 3 years professional experience; it's going to be hard to find the marriage between what you want and what you need with that short of a resume ("Put in the time" et al. cliches).

During the last 2.5 years I have been learning professional web development, doing consulting to make ends meets, and most importantly, spending significant amount of my time in education-related software project that I'm really looking forward to make impact with. Although I don't make anywhere close to what I did in the Valley in terms of money, I'm much more fulfilled cos I know I try to make value in what I'm best at.

So yeah, figure out what you really want, then gather the courage to go pursue it!

How many companies have you worked for in your 3 years? Maybe you just need a change of environment. The programming field is vast. It's possible to exercise personal morals in your work, you just have to do it at the right time, which is the job application process. For example, if you're morally opposed to gambling, you can decide that you will never work on gambling software and just not apply to those companies. Likewise, if the corporate/capitalist world gets you down, you can just work for non-profits.

Now, if you believe software development as a whole is unethical, then as a software developer you really can't do much with that conviction. I personally don't see automation as "automating people away." I see it as unlocking new types of labor that are actually more valuable. The example I like to use is agriculture. The invention of the combine automated most of what was considered "farm work," but it didn't destroy the agriculture industry in America; it actually expanded it.

Maybe you don't really feel that software development is unethical, but just... not fulfilling. That's not strange at all. At some point in your career, the things that motivated you to achieve more as a junior developer just don't anymore. You're looking for a higher calling. You may want to find that outside of work, by volunteering at a charity or leading a Meetup group or something.

https://www.ffwd.org/ https://www.codeforamerica.org/ https://labs.robinhood.org/

I was struggling with this question myself and the solution I found that I wanted to work on was a problem that made me so angry that I didn't even care if I wouldn't get paid. All that mattered was that this had to end.

There's a lot of societal ills and problems that you can help. What makes you the angriest? What do you think should not exist or be tolerated in this world? For me, it's period poverty. Some topics could be inequality, education, smart cities/municipal resources/transportation logistics, if you're a New Yorker (NYC needs a batman to save the MTA PLEASE), food waste, water scarcity, energy, climate change, privacy, and more.

did you mean sometimes always ?

> making every one else worse off.

do you mean all of the few people who's job you helped automate ?

> automate people

you are automating computers. People are already automatic.

Some of these are careers; others aren't.

It's easy to start volunteering as a first step.

Most of the time people get rich by doing exactly what you want to do: help others. The capitalist way of improving life for everybody is to engage in voluntary transactions that benefits both parties involved in such transactions.

With that said, if you work for a company that produces, let’s say, TVs and help them make TVs more affordable and efficient you will help people that couldn’t have TVs before get access to it.

That’s how we got to the place we are now where most people in somewhat developed countries can afford a TV or a chicken sandwich without having to spend 6 months and thousands of dollars in the process of making it.

The good thing about freedom is that your own benefit is often dependent on benefiting others as well since alone we can achieve nothing.

If you are more interested in helping your community or bigger causes you can keep working for these same companies and save some money and use that money to help whatever cause you feel good about. Maybe even create a business in the future to increase the rate of what you can help others.

There are plenty of companies that are founded on the principle of turning a profit but also help the communities they belong to while doing it.

Making people rich don’t conflict with improving others people lives and helping your community.

You will be much more useful to society if you are doing good yourself. Otherwise you can’t help anyone. You have to help yourself first.

They seem like they could develop like an business/economic version of what the GPL was in software - a way to form a community space using the rules of an unfriendly/indifferent system itself to maintain the space. But I think they need some better supporting spark. It feels to me like coop organizations are at a pre-growth period right now and need better ways to capitalize, coordinate, and compensate organizations.

My takeaway is this: If you feel bad about your current job and its contribution to society, start applying for other jobs. Just find something that looks better. Do it now. There are both jobs and businesses out there that aren't all bad. Once I quit I felt a huge relief, and after starting my new job, I've never come close to being as tired of work as I once was. (I'm working for the government now with no particular individuals earning too much off of me.)

Another option is of course to start your own company, if you feel you're up to the task. I kind of have a dream of starting my own company, not take out all the profit for myself, but as profits grows, hire people and giving them good conditions whatever job they're doing. Spread out the wealth and set an example for others. But I'm not there, and I probably never will be.

Someone mentioned education earlier. I think education is one of the areas I think humanity can benefit greatly from computers and software. The Khan Academy mathematics web training is a great example. There is no good reason why textbooks, instructional videos and interactive exercises shouldn't be free these days, and there are probably ways to get governmental financial support for this in Denmark. All the mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, language and social sciences we currently need to learn the first 8 years of schooling isn't really evolving that rapidly either, so good learning software would probably just need minor updates now and then.

After education, environmental issues are probably next in my book. But I feel they're connected in may ways. Education for everyone is crucial to understanding the importance of our current environmental issues around the world. It's also a fact that rise of education leads to fewer kids in a population, reducing the overpopulation of the earth.

Then you have distribution of wealth, which was you first point. In our part of the world we actually have the position to speak up against inequality, and we should use it. In other parts of the world, you can be too poor to have the means or energy to stick it to the man, because everything is about survival for the next couple of weeks. The western, developed world exploit the third world systematically to get cheap goods. We consume way more than our fair share of the planet's resources. But the ways our goods are produced aren't transparent, which is why we agree to keep up with it. We don't see all the child labor and the slaves who work 70 hours a week for almost no pay.

In short, the world is rotten and unfair, and my only advice is in my first paragraph. Don't let the world bring you down, but don't accept the current state either. Be happy but rebellious and do not accept unfairness.

What about one in an existing market that’s getting consumers better prices by bypassing middlemen?

Don't: Build deceptive products. Mortgage backed securities were created by programmers who lied about their randomization process.

Do: Analyze business to make products that assist people, making them more efficent and/ or less stressed.

Don't: Believe or let stand others belief that positions held by humans can be totally automated out. Perfect example is the automated telephone operator. Customers hate them, and companies still end up needing someone to answer the phone.