Ask HN: Doing moral work as software engineer?

4 points by rk65536 221 days ago | 2 comments

Recently I've been thinking about my job (fintech) and realised I'm having (at best) a neutral to negative impact on society.

Does anyone have experience working in an organisation or on their own that is fulfilling their moral compass/needs? Is it even possible to do this in a for-profit corporation? Maybe working for an NGO could help with this moral vacuum? Doing some volunteering outside of software could be an option but a lot of those require a significant commitment which is hard to manage with a full-time job.

Would be great to hear your experience if you faced this problem and how you dealt with it? And if you managed to do it within the software industry?

al_borland 221 days ago |

I work at a for-profit corporation and don’t feel it’s immoral. We offer a service that helps companies and ultimately helps the employees of those companies… if we do our job well. As far as I know, no one is being exploited in the process.

I like to believe that most businesses, at least those that have stood the test of time, make money by selling some thing or service to people or companies that need it, at a fair price.

I’d personally have a lot of trouble working on the bank app I use that pop-up with some kind of “free” money every time I open it, that I can only assume is some kind of manipulation, so I ignore it all. I’d also have an issue working for an ad company, or email marketing (I haven’t a standing offer from someone who works at one, but don’t think I could do it).

While a lot of financial services companies do seem to prey on people, that isn’t the case for all of them. There are also other sectors of the market. If you’re asking the question, it’s probably worth looking for companies that better align with your values, but I don’t think you need to go all the way to an NGO or non-profit to make that happen.

If you want to volunteer, and have the time, you should. But I don’t think you should seek it out as a means to atone for your day job. That sounds less healthy long-term.

xyzzy123 221 days ago |

Fintech companies in particular seem really prone to becoming "hyper-parasites", but pure software companies can have this feel too. It seems like the more abstracted things get the more prone they are to collapsing into scams or parasitism.

But there are plenty of people working boring software jobs that can point at the impact they have in the world and say to themselves "yeah, I'm doing a useful thing".

IMHO it's simpler if you work for companies that directly produce some kind of real-world outcome like logistics, manufacturing, health, ag etc. Then you mainly need to ask yourself if are you aligned with the actual real-world outcomes the company is effecting rather than having to meta reason about everything or whether the entire existence of your field makes any sense. What I mean by this is, people need things to be made and moved from A to B and they need groceries and care etc etc, those things gotta happen. Someone needs to work on the software that facilitates that. Knowing that your work contributes to necessary and concrete outcomes soothes the existential despair a bit.

If the real problem is that you hate capitalism itself then... you are going to have a bad time.