Show HN: Why the most popular ways to do good in careers aren’t best
The article starts of suggesting a strategy of working and then donating your money, referencing Bill Gates and a Google software developer as examples.<p>This strategy is basically, vacuum up a bunch of money and then pour it into doing good. But necessarily a lot of this money gets pulled out of places where it would do good, even if that good is simply putting food on the table of a poor family.<p>If you&#x27;re an engineer or someone who creates things, it&#x27;s probably actually creating value, not just moving it around and siphoning off some of it. But often that value you create is harmful: the Google engineers, for example, probably spend a lot of time working on ads, user data collection, partnerships with banks, etc.<p>And with CEOs like Bill Gates, the harm is much clearer. The money that has been spent by for example the US government, on Microsoft products could have been spent on building equivalent Linux products for a fraction of the cost, and the remainder spent directly on help programs. Bill Gates isn&#x27;t some savior because he inserted himself as a middle man in the process of spending money on good. Sure, he&#x27;s putting money into good now, but only after taking money <i>out</i> of good for decades, spending a lot of it on himself, and still keeping a sizable chunk for himself.<p>This applies to almost any rich philanthropist. They look good when they donate billions of dollars, but the world would have been better off if they hadn&#x27;t amassed those billions of dollars in the first place. I&#x27;m not impressed when people decide to do a little good after building a fortune on a mountain of skulls.