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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

What this doesn't talk about enough is work impact -- mentioned yes but doesn't emphasize it. These are shitty years and it eats me I am working for an enterprise gardening their websites instead of literally making the world a better place. I mean, sure, it pays and challenging and whatnot but I miss NowPublic dearly because we made a god damn difference. We ran one of the biggest Katrina missing person boards. We were one of the first "citizen journalism" sites and had photos and reports from places where noone else had. It was amazing. I miss it so badly.

And you know what, I would be open to changing, I am still doing Drupal and I need the money but ... if you are doing something meaningful with Drupal, Elixir or Go and have some part time opening? Let's talk :) Click my username for email address.

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> These are shitty years and it eats me I am working for an enterprise gardening their websites instead of literally making the world a better place.

It's a peculiar quirk of the tech industry that "changing the world through X" is a reasonable expectation. Bus drivers don't wonder how they can make a difference through bus driving. They do their shifts and then go volunteer at the hospital, food bank, homeless shelter, etc.

Point being, you have an urge to help people. Then help people.

Now, you'll obviously add the most value to organizations that need Drupal, but free technical help is usually not "free as in beer" as much as "free as in puppies". Setting up someone with a slick technical solution almost always comes with some required maintenance fees, organizational knowledge, operational costs, etc. That is, it's hard to give away tech in a way that's sustainable. Even tech training has limited use if you're not prepared with next steps for the trainees (college applications, concrete job prospects, immediate personal benefit, etc.).

That being said, information can be given away effectively, as you learned after Katrina. Maybe some community is just missing certain information presented well. Drupal is great there. Other people are great at writing middleware for CAN buses. They probably have fewer opportunities to apply tech to help humanity than you do. They'd be better off pitching in at Habitat for Humanity, and maybe you would be too, just to start.

People want to climb Maslow's hierarchy in every area of their lives. If bus drivers had better pay and job security (so much so that they hit the region of diminishing returns), maybe we'd see more talk from drivers about wishing they were driving especially important buses.

> If bus drivers had better pay and job security...

City bus drivers are often public employees represented by a powerful union. Hence their pay and job security are often pretty good by most peoples' standards.

I really need to stick up for city bus drivers, speaking as a regular passenger. They deal constantly with crazy, disruptive, violent people whilst getting other riders safely from point to point operating a large vehicle.

It’s a difficult and socially valuable job and they earn their money.

And so do Uber drivers

>It’s a difficult and socially valuable job and they earn their money.

I was not implying otherwise, if that's what you thought.

Not at all! It was a reply to further back comments about bus drivers.

Depending on where you're from, there might be a refugee code school in your neighbourhood. I love that: it's volunteering, but in a way that effectively uses my skillset.

[1] http://hackyourfuture.net/ (warning: autoplaying video with sound)

I worked in a ad agency and people had the same gripes about their role in the society. Helping brand X to get market share from brand Y can feel like a huge waste of one’s life .

I’d expect it to be the same for a lot of media industries.

BTW a bus driver physicaly helps people by moving them from A to B. Isn’t it one of the most useful job of our society, until driveless cars come along ?

I didn't mean to degrade or single out bus drivers. I tried to pick a normal blue collar job. I don't think there's anything wrong, and a lot right, in people just doing a great job with the job they have, whatever it is. I don't really know how to compare:

* getting people to work

* keeping the web pages for N businesses all up and running

...but I do know that if it doesn't feel like enough, there are lots of organizations that need volunteers and donations, often both.

USDS is hiring. Defense Digitally service is hiring. VA Digital service is hiring. Other government agencies responsible for these missions every day are hiring.

It’s a weird climate, sure, but all those missions still need doing.

Further, organizations like Urban institute, NCRC, other advocacy groups are getting deeper into data visualization and web platforms for advocacy and need help - sounds like you know where to find the opportunities.

Totally agree with you - mission is one of the key parts of any job description and ranks above comp for me.

I am Canadian here.

Heh - yeah, then obviously the US versions won't work.

Perhaps the Canadian one? https://digital.canada.ca/work-with-us/

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