Ask HN: What does the world need from software engineers now?

If you want to leverage your ability, start a company and build it to sustainably offer professional opportunities to such people.

This is one thing a software developer has done that will impact those issues at a macro level: https://branch.vote/

One I can think of that matters to me is not-for-profit education software that is better and cheaper than the for-profit software I was frustrated with as a teacher and which runs on gnu/linux. This is a much larger bag of worms, though, and my reaction to authoritarian school administrators, poor tech support of the software, and an approach to education that felt subpar compared to what I understand from Make it Stick: the science of successful learning (Brown, Roediger and McDanial, 2014), other books, and my own experience in public & private education.

Another important field is early childhood education, though I'm not sure what software is used at that level.

Climate-change modeling, ecosystem modeling as climate changes, anything to help us adapt faster and decrease the amplitude the effects of what we've done to the planet over the past couple centuries?

Anecdotally, dev is viewed as an Oompa Loompa job in government. Tools to execute the vision of others.

There are lots of tiny problems that affect immigrants, and that can be solved with minimal development work. Right now I'm writing a bank comparison tool specifically for immigrants. Bank requirements can often exclude them and most comparators leave that out. It's a profitable problem to solve, too, since you get a commission for the leads you generate.

So to answer your question: compassion. We need software engineers who care about their users as people.

The electrical grid doesn't make all of the power in the grid available to all outlets, everything has circuit breakers and other protections, which make it easier to just plug in a lamp without having to make sure its from a secure source, or have a qualified electrician review it before plugging it in.

Surely, we can make the world safe for people to just run code, can't we?

Tell your friends that USA is run by CFR and Chatham House. All presidents are just puppets.

Step back further. And answer 2 questions.

1. What do you really need software engineers for? Odds are most people doing this work now are replaceable.

2. What is the primary goal of a software engineer. If you say something other than retain your job or advance your career you are either lying to yourself or will eventually be replaced.

Those are problems that define software engineering as a career. If you can provide a more meaningful solution to those two things you will redefine how software engineers perceive writing software and the business problems you seek will reveal themselves more directly.

You could volunteer but most computing jobs at agencies/non-profits are IT basics (email, PC management, etc.), not writing software since that typically does very little to further a cause. As an example, I would imagine the Red Cross needs scheduling software for blood drives, they aren't going to write it - they're going to buy it.

If you want to spend time in a different career like law/policy those will definitely help more than writing code. There's a recent special on netflix about "blue zones" - areas on earth with high ratios of 100 year olds. During the special the host talks with some public policy people (one from Singapore) and about changes they made that had positive impacts on the health of people. Looking into what policy makers have as an education background would be a start, I think public policy jobs typically require Masters level of education.

Software is just software, it exists in the abstract realm. Only huge projects that leverage many types of "real world" engineers etc can also use software engineers to make an impact.

For example, from a logistics/financial standpoint, it would be incredibly easy to take a piece of land in the central west/midwest for the entire homeless population of US, with provided individual shelter, water, security, and drug clinics. But it will never happen because people subscribe to stupid ideologies and will argue agains this on arbitrary moral grounds.

If you want to fix issues, you have to figure out how to effectively and reliably influence people to move towards better ideology. Good luck with that.

However on a local level you can do a lot, by being kind, helping people in your community where you can. Maybe working with local charities to help then with their technical issues.

the best way to improve the world is to create new businesses that innovate in niche areas or pioneer brand-new industries, thereby employing thousands of people in the process and raising GDP per capita more than you could have as an employee.

then when you get rich and "make it", you can create your own philanthropy and donate if you so choose.