
Ask HN: Where can I find a software job that helps society? - scottalpert
I&#x27;ve tried many different things in the corporate world and entrepreneurship.<p>I&#x27;ve enjoyed it, but I&#x27;m pretty jaded by the usual stuff. A job with social impact--something that makes someone&#x27;s life better--would be the right thing for me now.<p>Any thoughts on convenient ways to find these? Some sort of board or listing?
======
MBlume
Consider just getting the highest-paying job you can and then giving as much
as you can afford to the most effective charities you can find.

[http://80000hours.org/](http://80000hours.org/)
[http://80000hours.org/earning-to-give](http://80000hours.org/earning-to-give)
[http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/](http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/)
[http://www.givewell.org/](http://www.givewell.org/)
[http://home.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/](http://home.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/)

~~~
jchung
This makes sense if you believe that the organizations you support are already
optimized to turn money into impact. It is often the case with young
organizations that bringing exceptional talent to the team is more important
than getting an incremental dollar.

------
gmisra
Pretty sure each answer reveals a bit about each of our value functions (and
what we read on-line). Here goes:

ProPublica
[http://www.propublica.org/about/jobs](http://www.propublica.org/about/jobs)

Maplight [http://maplight.org/content/jobs-at-
maplight](http://maplight.org/content/jobs-at-maplight)

Sunlight Foundation
[http://sunlightfoundation.com/jobs/](http://sunlightfoundation.com/jobs/)

Rootstrikers [http://www.rootstrikers.org/](http://www.rootstrikers.org/)

resource.org [https://public.resource.org/](https://public.resource.org/)

Code for America [http://codeforamerica.org/](http://codeforamerica.org/)

Engineers Without Borders [http://www.ewb-usa.org/](http://www.ewb-usa.org/)

EFF
[https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/jobs](https://www.eff.org/about/opportunities/jobs)

Nexleaf Analytics [http://nexleaf.org/contact-us](http://nexleaf.org/contact-
us)

~~~
scottalpert
Thanks! That's a good list. Some are non-profits looking for volunteers, some
are non-profits or for-profits looking for employees.

But I'm wondering if there is some sort of job listing or board that brings
together all the salaried jobs (sorry, gotta eat), that help humanity directly
in some way.

~~~
kgmpers
I don't know how many tech related job listings they have, but you could look
at [http://www.idealist.org/](http://www.idealist.org/).

This is their mission statement:

"Idealist connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world
where all people can live free and dignified lives.

Idealist is independent of any government, political ideology, or religious
creed. Our work is guided by the common desire of our members and supporters
to find practical solutions to social and environmental problems, in a spirit
of generosity and mutual respect."

------
wittyphrasehere
I don't know where specifically to look but these organizations are doing cool
(and positive) things with tech:

Raising political awareness and transparency \-
[http://sunlightfoundation.com/](http://sunlightfoundation.com/) \-
[https://www.govtrack.us/](https://www.govtrack.us/) \-
[https://www.popvox.com/](https://www.popvox.com/)

Defending rights in the information age \-
[http://www.fightforthefuture.org/](http://www.fightforthefuture.org/) \-
[https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/)

Alternative fundraising: helping the little guy raise money \-
[http://www.indiegogo.com/](http://www.indiegogo.com/) \-
[https://www.wepay.com/](https://www.wepay.com/)

Facilitating online activism campaigns \-
[https://www.change.org/](https://www.change.org/) \-
[http://front.moveon.org/](http://front.moveon.org/) \-
[https://secure.avaaz.org/en/](https://secure.avaaz.org/en/)

------
spartango
If you are interested in getting your hands dirty around the world, you might
checkout Engineers without Borders[1] or the Peace Corps[2], or one of many
similar non-profit organizations that employ skilled people to help others
around the world. You might even volunteer with the Red Cross to help victims
of the typhoon in the Philippines.

On the less philanthropic end of things, there are a host of organizations
solving problems in the biomedical world. From hospitals to biotech companies,
there are many possibilities. I've found working in this space incredibly
fulfilling, especially given that I've had a chance to see patient cases where
we can make a difference.

[1] [http://www.ewb-usa.org](http://www.ewb-usa.org) [2]
[http://www.peacecorps.gov](http://www.peacecorps.gov)

~~~
scottalpert
Volunteering's good. I do it. But ya gotta earn a living somehow.

And yes, biomed is a good space to do well while doing good.

~~~
RougeFemme
[http://unos.org/](http://unos.org/) \- primary mission is to maintain organ
transplant lists.

You won't get rich, but you'll have money left over after paying your bills.

Vision statement

To promote long, healthy and productive lives for persons with organ failure
by promoting maximized organ supply, effective and safe care, and equitable
organ allocation and access to transplantation.

Mission statement

To advance organ availability and transplantation by uniting and supporting
its communities for the benefit of patients through education, technology and
policy development.

------
SingingBurrito
I work for a public safety agency in Southern California and we have a medium
size IT organization within it we have a small developer core that help design
and build applications. These applications are used daily to save people's
lives. It does not pay much but at the end of the day you go home knowing that
the work you did helped saved someone's life. Not sure where you live but if
you are interested, I can point you in the direction of the listings.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Does any of this get open sourced for other departments to use?

~~~
SingingBurrito
Yeah, almost all of it is shared with other departments for free if others are
interested. For the most part lot of it is internal to an organization and the
business practices and technology differ from agency to agency and as a result
lot of it does not implement well. But lots is shared.

~~~
toomuchtodo
That's awesome. Thanks for the response.

------
vijucat
Why should one help society? Is this your thought or is this a thought that
arose out of what other people taught you over the years? For example, you may
think that you want to be "good". If so, you should first start by defining
"What does it mean to be 'good'?".

The danger of skipping this process of thinking for yourself is that you may
spend many years in a direction that you may ultimately feel dissatisfied
with. That's how conditioning works : parents, teachers, and society teach you
what is "good" and "bad" and you basically choose the red pill or blue pill
without realizing that there could be pills of many other colours (or that you
could swallow BOTH the red and blue pills and go, "Hmm..that's
interesting...", as one cartoon based on "The Matrix" shows! :-) )

There are several alternative directions that your thoughts could flow in once
you start this introspection. Just as an example : by society, you probably
mean, "the society of humans". Why are humans the only society to be helped?
Isn't all evidence pointing to the fact that we are killing off the planet,
including several species A DAY? Maybe the rest of Earth needs your positive
energies more?

------
duncan_bayne
Find a nice high-paying job and as quickly as possible ensure that you:

\- have as much private insurance as you need

\- are debt-free

\- can provide for yourself & your family upon retirement

Being financially independent is the greatest gift you can give to those who
depend upon you, & to the rest of the society in which you live.

~~~
pknerd
awesome advice!

------
robbiemitchell
Take a look at VC portfolios and look through industries that might appeal to
you -- education, health, poverty, law, transportation, etc. You'll find
companies attacking the norm openly from the outside, growing quietly through
the industry core, or creating entirely new areas to explore.

I work at Knewton (not as a software engineer, though we have many of those)
because it seems so obvious once I thought about the state of formal education
on this planet and how far we can take it.

Knewton is an education technology company quietly laying the groundwork for a
future full of digital educational materials (lessons, quizzes, MOOCs, mobile
apps, etc.) that offer differentiated learning experiences driven by deep
personalization. We've built an adaptive learning infrastructure that will
power any learning environment.

The core teams are mixtures of software engineers, data scientists, and
teaching experts developing the world's leading models of how students learn
and how to help them.

We can predict a student's quiz score before they take it. We can predict
whether someone is on target to finish in four months based on all content,
possible paths, and a history of student data to compare against. We can
recommend the next 5-minute activity that most efficiently moves a student
toward a learning objective set by a teacher in a third-party learning
product. We can sift through wrong answers to determine whether a student
lacks proficiency, disengaged, forgot, or simply encountered a poorly formed
question. And we're just getting started.

Education -- K12, higher ed, language teaching, vocational training,
professional certification, adult learning -- is one of the biggest industries
in the world. We are already partnered with some of the world's biggest names,
including Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Macmillan, Cambridge University
Press, and more.

------
jhspaybar
[http://www.google.com/about/jobs/](http://www.google.com/about/jobs/)

Now, before you down vote me consider they have been instrumental in making
knowledge accessible that generally just couldn't be found. They're likely to
be on the leading of eliminating most traffic deaths with their self driving
cars, and they're providing free Internet to the world with Loon.

Big and successful companies across the industry are doing great things and
having amazing social impacts.

~~~
scottalpert
Yes, been there, done that. I'm all in favor. But now, I want some of those
warm fuzzies....

~~~
Technophobe
So I take it you're aware of the concept of buying good feelings, and true
positive impact separately?
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_separately/)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Ah, and here I was _looking_ for an example of LessWrong being neoliberal in
outlook!

You can't presume that the exploited-away surplus-value or negative
externalities from your high-paying-donate-to-charity job actually exceed the
good you're doing by donating to charity with the proceeds of your work. Warm
fuzzies are, at the very least, a reasonable guide to doing work that's
relatively sure to be relatively purer good.

------
joelgrus
My life would be better if someone built some kind of revenue-per-
advertisement optimization system.

I'm just saying.

~~~
adpfr
Wait, what exactly would you need? I've been working for about a year now on
an application which determines optimal (i.e. profit/revenue maximizing)
advertising keyword bid values. It's nearly finished now! Is that something
you could make use of?

------
josh_fyi
There's my [http://meaningful-jobs.fiveyearitch.com](http://meaningful-
jobs.fiveyearitch.com) (so long as you are in the US).

We've got jobs in medical research, green energy, and others.

~~~
mehmedrecip
Nice selection of "meaningful jobs." But the listings are US only (though the
other features have international support). When will you expand the
"meaningful jobs" to the UK?

------
jchung
I imagine that when you're considering a career move, it can be helpful to
hear the perspective of the people looking to hire you, so I'll venture an
answering as the Executive Director of a nonprofit. We use Tech as tool #1 to
serve our mission and are always looking for devs, ux designers, etc. There's
no natural place I would "obviously" go to find devs who are interested in
social causes. The talent market lives mostly in word of mouth, although we do
post periodically in craigslist or on the job sites like linkedin and monster.
In general, we do go to hackathons, socially-oriented accelerators and
incubators (such as CivicX, code for america, or even the hub), and we post
job listings at the universities. It's not a very robust set of cause-specific
work. At the same time, we're in a race for talent just like everyone else, so
when we're looking for people who can truly accelerate our impact, we try to
poach talent. The pitch goes something like this: "You're obviously doing
awesome stuff at company X. Why don't you put your considerable talent to
better use and help us change the world for real?"

If I can make a suggestion, if you can get a sense for what cause(s) you care
about most (education? health delivery? poverty alleviation? something else?)
and start to explore the organizations serving those causes, you'll certainly
find your way to a job posting here or there for an organization that truly
excites you. And excitement is what makes a good match when you're doing work
that makes the world a better place. Good luck.

(edited for grammar)

------
sieva
How about bringing teachers better tools for their classroom? I'm working on
this project because I feel like education is the solution to most things in
the world. Over 1.2M student dropout of high school yearly in the US
alone...we're working on taking the load of teachers, so they can focus more
on the art of teaching and engaging their students.
[http://studysoup.com/careers](http://studysoup.com/careers)

------
secfirstmd
Well if you can donate your time and want to do something different,
meaningful and help build a product from the ground up which will save lives
of some of the most vulnerable people in the world every day? - come and join
us!

An early stage human rights start-up (the founder has just spent five years at
another human rights startup which he helped setup and is now a market leader)
in East London (still in the fun garage shed stage!), is looking for a mobile
app developer or CTO. (Also people with associated skills such as LAMP, UI/UX,
HTML5, etc would be great)

The start-up focuses on addressing a significant gap in the security of human
rights organisations, journalists and activists - through the use of a web and
mobile application. It builds on years of cutting-edge security operations in
this field.

With the product features and business plan nearly complete we are looking for
the right person to bring us to the next technical stage. Ideally you will be
in London but remote working is also a possibility.

Interested? Drop a mail to secfirstmd@gmail.com

------
lazyjones
Many projects that aren't NGO-driven or obviously built around the general
idea of helping society could fit this role.

For example, we run a CSE (comparison shopping engine) that, while it is a
successful commercial project, we like to also see as helping society by
saving people time and money (or, if you're into class warfare, distributing
wealth from merchants to customers) and also giving smaller merchants a fair
chance to compete against huge advertising budgets.

In the same way, some other projects help society by breaking existing cartels
(e.g. taxi apps in cities like Vienna where taxi dispatch fares are extremely
expensive and basically negotiated between a few large providers).

On the other hand, there may be projects that pretend to help society by
educating about various issues, but in fact are pure marketing web sites with
the aim to promote particular vendors.

So if you cannot find anything NGO-related (with acceptable pay!), look for
commercial projects that help society in a broader sense.

------
rmchugh
I think open source can be an important tool for socially beneficial projects.
Since open source tools are free, they can be accessed by anyone. Since they
are open, they can be modified easily to suit local needs. By removing the
cost of intellectual property, products leveraging open source software can be
cheaper and thus more accessible. In the long term, open source makes it more
difficult for companies to develop monopoly positions due to their control
over this software and thus helps to prevent the problems that follow.

I think working on open source software within a suitable good cause niche
would be a good fit. I can't really think of any examples where you could
easily find a paying role, but I'm personally inspired by projects like Open
Source Ecology, Open Street Map and Wikipedia. I work in the library world,
where I try to use and contribute to open source software whenever possible.
It's not revolutionary, but it's okay.

------
KiwiCoder
It sounds like you need to focus your job-hunting efforts on charitable
organisations. Phone those orgs and ask to speak with the people in charge of
software development.

In the meantime you could volunteer as a programmer - it's a niche that is
growing rapidly.

[http://socialcoder.org](http://socialcoder.org) (UK based but international)

Disclosure: I run it

------
steveinator
[http://www.idealist.org/](http://www.idealist.org/) is the classic outlet for
nonprofity jobs. I've found all nonprofit tech jobs to be incredibly
unchallenging though, so if you are motivated by hard problems and engineering
challenges then you've got some serious job hunting ahead of you.

------
Yoric
Hey, Mozilla! We're fighting the good fight!
[http://careers.mozilla.com](http://careers.mozilla.com)

Edit: Fixed the link

~~~
nry
Pretty sure the URL should be:
[http://careers.mozilla.com](http://careers.mozilla.com)

~~~
Yoric
Thanks.

------
warmfuzzies
Mutually Human:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6139938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6139938)

Amicus: [http://amicushq.com/](http://amicushq.com/)

------
SpikeGronim
Etsy.com! We're hiring, and we're turning a great many creative people into
small business
owners.[https://www.etsy.com/careers](https://www.etsy.com/careers)

------
elizabethriley
There are several accelerator programs that focus on social impact. (Full
disclosure: I work for Impact Engine.) You could check these out. Many of
these startups are looking for talent:

Impact Engine - [http://theimpactengine.com/](http://theimpactengine.com/)
Greenstart - [http://greenstart.com/](http://greenstart.com/) Hub Ventures -
[http://hub-ventures.com/](http://hub-ventures.com/)

Hope this helps!

------
dleve123
I am leading the technical team at Healthify. We are a seed stage HIT startup
based out of NYC tackling the social needs (e.g. food access, domestic
violence, living situation) of patients (mostly Medicaid). We have a strong
business model and are ready to grow our team. If you want to code for the
greater good (RoR stack), visit healthify.us and send Dan an email with your
resume, Github profile, and cover letter!

------
catnass
[http://www.idealist.org/search/v2/?qs=QlpoOTFBWSZTWTzzymAAAF...](http://www.idealist.org/search/v2/?qs=QlpoOTFBWSZTWTzzymAAAF-
fgAMAcAIBAAQAv_XfoCAAiBpJtTyTRkGQzUAlTTKeoM1TaJpiMS5nP7eeMSgg6bARGiVKlVfRg_U7OLNvLrBXBABZa9YMOA7ItvkqPkB9jRTumWxqIvQDpDrM0k-ODpzeY9IMbQpqx3xlEYzQUpqT4oZ1GsRILDOu8F_cpT8PUKXKqXpwRccrutRsM_4u5IpwoSB555TA)

------
systemizer
This isn't a job, but if you follow #hack4good on twitter or geeklist's
hack4good feed ([https://geekli.st/#hack4good](https://geekli.st/#hack4good)
), there are some cool projects going on around social good. Most recently
there was a hackathon around the typhoon that hit the Philippines.

~~~
scottalpert
I've been involved in volunteer projects. Ideally, I'd like to be able to do
this sort of thing all day long.

------
Fishkins
I just found my job[0] through stackoverflow, but I second the recommendations
of idealist.org. If you're in the NYC area, you might also want to check out
developersforgood.org.

[0] - [http://www.donorschoose.org/jobs](http://www.donorschoose.org/jobs)

------
johnamccarthy
We're hiring at Purpose! Open source rails platform: [https://careers-
purpose.icims.com/jobs/1057/lead-architect%2...](https://careers-
purpose.icims.com/jobs/1057/lead-architect%2c-purpose-platform/job)

~~~
johnamccarthy
[https://github.com/PurposeOpen/Platform](https://github.com/PurposeOpen/Platform)

------
stevejalim
Considered working for [http://www.mysociety.org/](http://www.mysociety.org/)
? (They're hiring
[http://www.mysociety.org/jobs/](http://www.mysociety.org/jobs/))

------
wikwocket
The natural food and natural products industries are on fire right now.
Double-digit yearly growth. A lot of companies that serve this space are
growing fast, and a lot of new companies are popping up to meet needs, and
even a lot of conventionally-focused companies are turning in that direction.

By "natural" products I mean organic food, fair-trade products, allergen-free
products, green products, and so on. There is a lot of money being made in
these markets right now, but it's undeniable that many of these products help
some people lead better lives (even if it's just the ability to eat a wider
range of foods without worrying about e.g. gluten contamination).

------
a3n
Work for a medical device manufacturer, or something similar in health care.

I have a BSCS and I work in SWQA for a medical device manufacturer. Most of us
carry around patient testimonials in our badge pouches that were given to us
when we hired in. The testimonials can be overwhelming when you really think
about them.

If you were going to code here, you'd want to be good at C++ on embedded
systems. There are probably other technologies at other places.

Peoples' lives are often literally saved by what I work on, and at least
vastly improved. It feels pretty good, and helps keep my head straight when I
have the inevitable encounter with BigCo administrative nonsense that goes
with the territory.

~~~
voltagex_
How are security issues handled by these manufacturers?

~~~
a3n
I do not speak with any authority on this, all I know on this subject I read
on HN, and I only speak for myself: I've read that the FDA is starting to talk
about security of devices on, for example, hospital networks, and that
manufacturers are starting to think about it. And I haven't read, or know, a
thing about implantable or other personal devices.

tldr: I don't know.

------
gaplus
Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory is always hiring hackers:
[http://cjo.lbl.gov/](http://cjo.lbl.gov/) . I currently work there building
software that helps scientists discover new lithium batteries.

------
gcapiel
We have a developer position open at
[http://benetech.org](http://benetech.org) \-
[http://benetech.org/?career_redirect=1](http://benetech.org/?career_redirect=1)

~~~
gcapiel
Here's a better direct link to the job:
[http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/benetech/engineering-leader-
to-...](http://www.jobscore.com/jobs/benetech/engineering-leader-to-serve-
humanity/d1muPMGeSr4Oy7eJe4egig)

------
volandovengo
A few companies with a social impact who I know who are looking for talented
devs. Please ping me (naysawn at artsumo . com) if you'd like to be put in
touch.

Actively Learn (activelylearn.com) Moving Worlds (movingworlds.org) Vittana
(vittana.org)

~~~
volandovengo
idealist.org is another place to look.

------
hkdobrev
[http://www.charitywater.org/about/jobs/](http://www.charitywater.org/about/jobs/)
Charity Water is helping people in Asia and Africa to have access to clean
water.

------
kiyanforoughi
Watsi www.watsi.org YC-backed, crowdfunding healthcare treatments for high-
impact, low-cost treatments in developing countries I'm an advisor there and
came put you in touch if you'd like

------
etanazir
If you want to improve medical education and work with doctors and
contemporary web applications; there is a crack in the door with the USC-SOM
as a graphics artists right now.

------
nicolethenerd
[http://www.amplify.com/careers](http://www.amplify.com/careers) (disclaimer:
I work here) - we make educational apps for kids

~~~
zura
Any world-wide REMOTE engineering positions? Or maybe H1B and relocation
sponsoring?

~~~
nicolethenerd
We do have a handful of remote engineers and QA folks - typically, they're
employees who started on-site and then moved elsewhere, and they do visit the
office fairly regularly (with frequency depending on distance) - but it is
something the company is open to, though I think we prefer to hire people who
can work on-site. Also, anecdotal evidence, as I don't know much about our
hiring policies, I think one of my teammates is on an H1B and our legal dept
has helped him navigate that.

------
lencioni
I work at Causes. It sounds like it might fit your criteria.
[https://www.causes.com/jobs](https://www.causes.com/jobs)

------
spicyj
I don't have any advice about how to find such jobs in general, but at Khan
Academy we're changing education for the better. We need designers, devs,
community managers, anybody who lives to create a great product. Full-time and
interns hired year-round.

[http://www.khanacademy.org/careers](http://www.khanacademy.org/careers) or
email me at alpert+HN@khanacademy.org if you have any questions.

------
fiachamp
i would check out www.breakthrough.com , they are creating a platform that
could help tens of millions of people deal with the stigma / difficulty of
getting treatment for mental health. this is a huuuge social issue, probably
10% of the entire population of the US deals with mental illness and a lot of
people are undiagnosed or can't get treatment because it is expensive,
embarassing, stigmatized, etc.

------
zjohnson
Cerner:
[http://www.cerner.com/About_Cerner/Careers/](http://www.cerner.com/About_Cerner/Careers/)

------
amarantha
Take a look at escapethecity.org.

It'd not software-specific, but they've got lot of "escape corporate life"
jobs (with a focus on the UK).

------
gembird
You should go to Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and build an
ecosystems like Silicon Valley, promote IT industry there...

------
kevinskii
If you are creating products that people are willing to pay money for, then
most likely you are being a huge help to society.

~~~
Theodores
This is so true. The problem with charities is that so much money needs to be
raised to pay for the people that manage the people that raise money. Then the
people that spend the money raised expect to be treated like heroes. Plus
charities don't pay tax so it is all a bit silly.

Compare with getting into ecommerce and working with some small businesses
that don't yet sell online. For example, suppose you team up with a business
in the Himalayas that sells genuine Tibetan Monkey Stones to passing tourists
that just so happen to be newly wed. Put their business online so that people
all over the world can buy traditional Tibetan Monkey Stones for friends
getting married. Get the orders in, make people happy on their special day,
help some business get more than passing trade, potentially to grow and take
on new employees, everyone is a winner. No inane fundraisers needed.

------
ellemno
Electronic Medical Records! [http://careers.epic.com](http://careers.epic.com)

------
madibell
Don't know how to find jobs like this in general, but I'd suggest checking out
Nextdoor.com

------
j45
One place is you can likely find software focussed on helping non-profits be
more effective.

------
dc_ploy
Make your life a way to have a social impact and not your "work."

------
amitklein
check out [http://rework.jobs](http://rework.jobs) \- they are basically a
recruiter for folks looking to transition to "meaningful" jobs

------
dev_jim
Get a job in trading and you can change the world.

------
ChrisNorstrom
Wanna join me? I want to remove as many cars off the road as possible. I hate
traffic and I hate public transit. I want to crowdsource carpooling.

After wrapping up other projects I want to begin work on "Carpoolians.com".
It'll allow anyone to enter their morning & evening commutes to work and the
site will match them up with others around them who are along their route and
have the same schedule so they can carpool together.

Sounds dangerous? So is cleaning the gutters and walking under coconut trees
but people still do it. In fact Carpoolians is loosely based on Washington
D.C.'s Slug lines (hitch a ride with strangers so you can both use the HOV
lanes and not be late for work). [http://www.slug-
lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp](http://www.slug-
lines.com/Slugging/About_slugging.asp) Hundreds of thousands have hitched
rides with strangers with no oversight what-so-ever and there haven't been any
muggings or homicides. And this is in Washing D.C. (double the national crime
rate).

Users can enter their pick up time, general locations, return time, weather
they're looking for a driver or a passenger or either, and which days of the
week they need carpool services. The site will match them up from a list of
potential drivers or passengers and they can make a decision based on price
and their gut feeling. Trips are paid in cash peer to peer. But the site will
keep an evidence trail of who's riding with whom. Members can certify
themselves so they have a "clean background" aka no criminal history icon next
to their picture.

Because it's peer to peer so you don't have to worry about taxi cab
regulations like Uber does, but we also don't have revenue other than
government and city grants. There's plenty of other startups like ridejoy.com
doing transportation but they just do 1 trip. Carpoolians will focus
exclusively on commutes (re-occuring trips) which make up the bulk of traffic.

It's not twitter or facebook but you can feel good knowing you can:

\- Reduce emissions which lead to asthema and lung desease (people living near
highways & busy roads have increased risk of both including death!).

\- Reduced traffic accidents and saved lives.

\- Improve productivity and save time helping the economy.

\- Reduce pedestrian hits and deaths (2007-2012 over 5,700 pedestrians were
hit in Orlando Florida alone.)

\- Help low income people get to work without having to wait in the rain for
buses.

\- Helped people save money, wear & tear on their car.

\- Help clear more parking spots!

\- reduce government waste spent on driving empty buses back and forth (buses
get about 6 miles per gallon) My mother works as a bus operator. Believe me,
there is a LOT of waste. Public Transit can be an extremely ineffective,
expensive, and inefficient method to transport people. Especially outside of
dense cities like San Fran, Chicago, and New York.

If 4 people sign up and use Carpoolians that's 2 cars off the road each rush
hour. If 150 people sign up and use the service that's about 70 cars off the
road during morning and evening rush hour. It adds up very easily.
[http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/cars-
bu...](http://www.howwedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/cars-bus-bike.jpg)
and makes a HUGE difference in communities.

My contact info can be found in my HN profile. As you can tell I've got a few
loose ends to tie up with some other projects that I'm finishing up.

------
ctempp
check out the teams at TheImpactEngine.com Some awesome companies looking for
great talent and trying to change the world.

------
sheshbesh
The usual job boards have a lot of good stuff using the right search terms
like 'social impact'.

------
andoncemore
palantir [https://www.palantir.com/](https://www.palantir.com/)

~~~
codygman
Wouldn't a government contractor and helping the world be a toss up these
days? I guess it's possible to have a net good overall (questionable) but it's
also possible your contributions could go to spying on (or killing) citizens
of the world (and for those that care more about Americans, Americans).

------
glord
Palantir Philanthropy! Check them out

------
binceipt
try binceipt.com. It committed to kill receipt book in order to reduce paper
usage.

------
ericturri
Samasource.org

------
davidhhaddad
openmhealth.org

------
ffrryuu
You can't. Go for a more traditional job instead. Eg: finance or law.

~~~
scottalpert
Hey, here on HN we never say "You can't."

I've done the finance thing, and it's got its good side. But now, I want to
see how I can help more directly. And yes, it's possible.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Hey, here on HN we never say "You can't."

We hackers are sustained by WILLPOWER, even when mocked as reckless and crazy!
If there's a wall in our way, we smash it down! If there isn't a path, we
carve one ourselves!

(Mandatory)

