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Comment by nyargh | Hacker News Reader

People are going to shit on the parent comment - but honestly, anyone with more than a few years of experience in a tight tech job market is going to easily be in the top decile of earners. The highly-committed individuals that do the brutally hard work on the ground for non-profits or NGOs make a pittance in comparison. Committing a quarter of your salary would pay the entirety of theirs. Consider that for a moment.

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That's great but you have to consider the social cost of the day job, which the parent comment assumes to be neutral even though in practice this may not be the case. I think the OP's real question is how to pick ethically efficient employment, not how to make money in order to be more charitable.

I guess I have the advantage of starting out with close to a decade of low wages doing something that I enjoy ;)... I'm definitely attracted to billboard tech wages -- but I really could get by pretty comfortably with half were I building something I had faith in.

The premise that NGOs need tech more than they need money is shaky at best.

I wouldn't know but I'd venture that makes sense... Thanks for the perspective.

My $.02 - good for you for asking the questions. Don't stop there :)

I'm suspicious of the notion that throwing money at problems can solve them.

This is where due diligence comes in. You throw money at people and orgs who are good at solving those problems.

You throw money at people who have the domain knowledge and are actively solving the problems.

Agreed. Money can't buy everything, including experience and awareness gleaned from personally facing the problems such NGOs target. The knowledge accrued could demonstrate value later.

True, but you need to consider what you care about more - to have the problem solved, or to solve it yourself? Or to put it differently - do you care about increasing utility, or your own fuzzy feelings?

Either of those goals are good, but they're better done separately. See also: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa....

I'll admit that I didn't read the link that you shared. However, I'd like to assert that I feel fuzzies yield utilons to the individual in a similar manner as utilons yield fuzzies, each requiring refinement in their acquisition to be optimal. I think it's a more-grey area than your comment or the title of the article you linked implies (having not read said article).

Please read it, it's not long. In the article, utilons refer to the utility your help brings, and fuzzies to the feelings they generate in you (which indeed you can see as utility for you, but you could also count it separately).

The point of the article is that if you optimize for utilons, fuzzies and status points separately - e.g. by doing one thing for maximum utility, and then another for maximum fuzzies - you'll be more efficient in all of them than if you try to find one thing that maximizes all three at the same time.

To quote 'Eliezer, this is how adults solve problems. Professional specialization has huge leverage. If you can find a way to use your professional skills to help society, go ahead and do it. If you can't, it's more effective use of your time to leverage your professional skills into money, and then use that money to fund professionals helping society directly.

But it's pretty hard to solve a problem without money. There are a lot of people out there already trying to solve problems. But not enough giving them the money they need to do so.

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