Comment by wayne-li2
3 years ago
If you want to work at positive impact companies, Khan Academy is one that comes up in my head.
But take it from me, someone who has volunteered for civic tech organizations and have participated in ground work for political campaigns. The most positive impact you could possibly make is money.
Political campaigns need thousands of volunteers. But someone who has no skills or education can volunteer. The supply pool is giant! But campaigns need millions of dollars in order to survive. It’s way harder to raise a dollar because in order to donate to campaigns the person usually needs to have discretionary income. And to move the needle financially for a campaign, you need to be fairly wealthy.
At the end of the day, maximizing your salary and donating, say 10k (2.8k direct + 7.2k via PAC) to a political candidate that you believe will make a way bigger positive impact than working for minimum wage or free for that candidate. Because your skills aren’t being used optimally. If you take a paycut from 300k to 60k, are you still comfortable making that donation?
Anyways, my personal mantra is to maximize income at impact neutral companies or positive adjacent. And then commit to donate a significant chunk of income to positive impact organizations. Don’t know if this helps or not.
Two caveats to this approach:
- The work you're doing to make that 300k doesn't happen in a vacuum; it has an impact on the world too. Make sure it's not doing more harm (including the political donations that might get made by the owners you're making richer) than your donations are doing good.
- People aren't robots; intrinsic motivators are important for some. In some cases it can be worth making a smaller impact with your own hands, vs a larger impact that's unsustainable because your soul isn't being fed with a sense of purpose, because you're too far removed from the purpose.
I'm sure your approach works for some people, but I don't think it's an end-all answer to the question
I agree with all of your points. I also choose to avoid companies that have an outsized negative impact on the world. Intrinsic motivations is important too. Totally get all of that.
At the end of the day, it’s all about what you want. I do think that if you want to make the biggest positive impact as a software engineer, and that is your only directive, then I believe my approach is a worthwhile option.
And if you are in a FAANG, remember that you probably have a very negative impact in the world. There's no money you can donate to compensate the amount of disinformation in YouTube or Facebook or WhatsApp.
> There's no money you can donate
I understand you don't mean that literally, but (to minimize disinformation among others): There is absolutely some number of lives saved which would compensate for that.
https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
Before writing off an entire industry, I beg you to consider that $45,000 could save 10 lives and improve many more (Yes; it's not precise. No; it's not out of their ass - read their extensive discussion of the calculations)
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Well said. I agree with everything you say except perhaps the focus on politicians. It's a group of people self selected for the ability to sell us a vision with only a distant, vague prospect of realizing it. On the other hand, there are non-profits with readily visible outcomes.
> It's a group of people self selected for the ability to sell us a vision with only a distant, vague prospect of realizing it.
That's unnecessarily and destructively cynical. There are plenty of politicians (and others working for governments) at all levels who are there to do a good job.
The showboats and bad actors (which are almost coextensive) of course by definition get most of the press. Don't let them distract you.
The whole point of checks and balances is to deal with the cold reality that politicians can't be trusted. But they can still be useful! As long as the system of elections work, they need to find a set of policy priorities that builds a winning coalition.
That leads me to the conclusion that the best way to influence politics is not through the politician themselves, but through advocacy groups that can shift the political incentives.
Even the politicians celebrated by history made awful compromises to maintain a winning coalition. LBJ's relationship with MLK for example.
> There are plenty of politicians (and others working for governments) at all levels who are there to do a good job.
The statement was about how they're selected. They're selected by their eagerness to be in politics, and their ability to talk a good game.
> But take it from me, someone who has volunteered for civic tech organizations and have participated in ground work for political campaigns. The most positive impact you could possibly make is money.
I don't really agree. Perhaps we're incredibly lucky as a civic tech non-profit, but our limiting factor generally isn't money. It's skilled people who can take responsibility and deliver. So if OP is an experienced developer who is willing to look a bit beyond just code, but still bring serious tech skill and experience to the table, I'd like to talk to them.
Why not mention the company you're working for? You're missing an opportunity here for others to see your post and find out about the positions you have open? Although I'm replying late, maybe there are others like me who open tabs and read them a few days later
they did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31523367
Could I posit that your limiting factor is actually money, which prevents you from hiring more skilled people?
That doesn't bear out in interviews and the remuneration stage of hiring.
The main struggle is lack of sufficiently skilled applicants.
The problem might be our ability to attract them! But it's a tough market.
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Can’t speak for OP but if you’d like to talk to me please shoot me a DM :)
If your skills are relevant and good, you ought to be able to have way more impact on a political campaign than a 17k donation, which at most levels of developed world politics barely scratches the surface and isn't going to teach you anything about politics either.
It's a little different if the volunteering is something low impact or something you're way out of your depth in, or if the cause wanting money has a way of getting very tangible rewards (which are quantifiably greater than whatever free time you can spare on it)
Have you ever donated 10s of thousands to a political campaign? For anything congressional-level or lower, this gets you calls from the politician, face-to-face access, emails, meetings, and up-to-date info. You will soon be fielding calls from people you haven't donated to, who think you may donate, and they will also listen to you.
And this is for congressional-level. For state senate, state house, local gov, etc. I imagine this could go even further. City councils and mayors have lots of impact but little donations.
I can confirm. After donating a similar amount, I regularly field calls from candidates (directly, not from their staff). Granted it’s usually just asking for more money, although I’ve had some interesting chats to say the least.
10k is not a lot at the presidential election sure, and maybe not for Senate either, but it is a lot of money even in House races. And for many state races.
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> At the end of the day, maximizing your salary and donating, say 10k (2.8k direct + 7.2k via PAC) to a political candidate that you believe will make a way bigger positive impact than working for minimum wage or free for that candidate.
I think there's a buried over-simplification here. It's rare to find politicians whose views 100% line up with your own, and too often, politicians are willing to flip their views to satisfy a donor (who, even if you donate 300k-60k=$240k, will not be you). Even if you mostly agree with the politician, you're taking a gamble that your contribution doesn't really end up with the positive impact you desire.
A better argument would be to put the $240k/year into a WayneLi2 Foundation, which directly acts only on whatever you define as good. Of course, in the beginning, the endowment is too small to do anything, but give it several years, and perhaps the donations of a few people who share your vision, and you'll have more control over the direction of the positive impact.
For those of us who don't have that kind of cash, picking an organization whose focus is limited to its mission serves as a boon to know that our efforts will create the impact we'd like to see.
This is true in investing as well. If you look at the impact of investing in some company doing something you like for some cause vs choosing the best in class company and then donating the dividends to your cause, you almost always have a much larger impact donating the dividends.
He said positive impact on the world, and your suggestion is to donate money to a politician? It would have a better impact to set your money on fire.
Exactly, setting your money on fire will slow down inflation
Agreed, earning more so you can give more is the most pragmatic approach to having the largest possible positive impact. There was a really good conversation on Sam Harris's podcast about this with Sam Bankman-Fried [1].
Based on the question though, the OP's goal might either be to (1) maximize impact or (2) just earn a living while also feeling good about their company's impact. If (1) is the goal, I'd say listen to that podcast, look into effective altruism [2], and find the highest paying job you can. If (2) is the goal, I'd recommend including GoFundMe and Rivian in the list of companies to check out!
[1] https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/271... [2] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
I don't know. I feel like most jobs that earn the most are doing so because they are contributing to, or exploiting, ESG problems.
Sure donating to PACs can have positive impacts but it also fuels what has made politics so bad: a back and forth ever-growing battle for absurd campaign war chests.
Agreed 100%. I have spent my entire ~15 year career working in the clean energy space. Salaries in the industry and pretty low. While I would love to one day own an EV and charge it with some solar panels on my roof, buying a home on my salary is a pipe dream right now.
Another issue is that these problem domains are constrained by government policy, not by private investment. For example, the US solar industry is really hurting right now because of tariffs and a recent anti-dumping investigation[1]. Imagine working at a company in this space and watching all your projects get put on hold over an issue that has bipartisan support in the Senate (a very rare thing), but an executive branch that wants to be "tough on China" (yes, believe or not I am talking about Biden). We are literally putting an entire industry on hold so we can prop up a handful of domestic manufacturing businesses.
If you really want to help, you have a few options. Make a lot of money and become a customer of companies that are doing good. Buy an EV, put solar on your roof, buy clothes and goods that are manufactured sustainably. I am personally not a huge fan of carbon offsets, but even if I don't think they are effective in their current form, supporting that industry does allow for motivated professionals to spend their time on that problem.
You can also volunteer in your free time. Lots of organizations out there that could use some help. I regularly volunteer for beach cleanups. But if you want to use your technical skills I am sure it would be easy to find someone in need of those as well.
And thinking outside the box. It is possible that one of the biggest contributors to reducing our CO2 footprint in this current century was Netflix. "Netflix and chill" was a fun meme, with the idea being that you would hang out at home and watch Netflix (among other things) instead of going out. Imagine the number of vehicle miles avoided because of that meme! So if you want to have your cake and eat it too, consider working on projects that keep people in their home (especially if it keeps people working from home, imagine all those commute miles avoided).
And another outside the box idea. Join a company that is doing bad things (whatever that may mean for you). Then work your way up the ladder and change the company for the better from the inside. If ladder climbing is not for you, simply become an internal advocate for change. Or more cynically, make them less efficient. You could do this by simply being ineffective at your job. Or you could more actively steer projects in suboptimal directions.
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/america-first-c...