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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

Two caveats to this approach:

- The work you're doing to make that 300k doesn't happen in a vacuum; it has an impact on the world too. Make sure it's not doing more harm (including the political donations that might get made by the owners you're making richer) than your donations are doing good.

- People aren't robots; intrinsic motivators are important for some. In some cases it can be worth making a smaller impact with your own hands, vs a larger impact that's unsustainable because your soul isn't being fed with a sense of purpose, because you're too far removed from the purpose.

I'm sure your approach works for some people, but I don't think it's an end-all answer to the question

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I agree with all of your points. I also choose to avoid companies that have an outsized negative impact on the world. Intrinsic motivations is important too. Totally get all of that.

At the end of the day, it’s all about what you want. I do think that if you want to make the biggest positive impact as a software engineer, and that is your only directive, then I believe my approach is a worthwhile option.

And if you are in a FAANG, remember that you probably have a very negative impact in the world. There's no money you can donate to compensate the amount of disinformation in YouTube or Facebook or WhatsApp.

> There's no money you can donate

I understand you don't mean that literally, but (to minimize disinformation among others): There is absolutely some number of lives saved which would compensate for that.

https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities

Before writing off an entire industry, I beg you to consider that $45,000 could save 10 lives and improve many more (Yes; it's not precise. No; it's not out of their ass - read their extensive discussion of the calculations)

Again there are different people with different value systems.

1. Some people are happy with creating more positive than negative. 2. Some people want to do no negative.

The practical problem with what you proposed is that now I need to vet the charities I donate and make sure its not a scam. Its a hard task to (i) spend 8 hours a day doing net negative (ii) spend more time per day to make sure you as a whole are net positive (iii) be social and have family etc.

That is a practical problem, but it does not apply to the proposed solution. The proposed solution is an organization whose purpose is literally to do the vetting for you. You only need to vet GiveWell, you can then outsource the rest of the vetting to them.

From their website: "GiveWell is a nonprofit dedicated to finding outstanding giving opportunities and publishing the full details of our analysis to help donors decide where to give."

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