Ask HN: How to Build Pro Bono

2 points·coderatlarge··4 comments

I’ve written js python at big tech and would like to build a saas app for a friend whose employer won’t invest in their team’s productivity.

This is a simple scheduling app for a team of 20 to collaborate more effectively.

What’s the right stack to use for something like this? It has to be adopted virally by the team it can’t be sold as an enterprise solution to the formal organization.

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I'm going to put aside the urge to say to just not do this as corporations don't need free work, and instead answer the question at face value. I see two correct answers:

1) Whatever stack you know best.

2) Whatever stack they already run.

If those match up, it is an easy answer.

My goal is to help my friend who is suffering in current situation . Not give free labor to a major corporation.

One thing I wonder is whether there’s an out of the box available login system I can just adopt for such an app. In big tech these things are just ambient available. Similarly what’s the cheapest hosting option for pro bono? AWS seems expensive. Vercel?

The corp is not going to provide any support for an action like this.

That much is certain. My hope is that a narrow tailored action like this could show such strong nps support within the group, that the corp would have to have to look at its own internal metrics and conclude they should have taken a different course if only from a fiduciary perspective. I doubt such a thing will happen because the company already displays dystopian levels of cynicism and my friend has been there long enough to have observed bad behavior over long periods but has some strong personal incentives to remain (both reputations and financial).

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