I wonder what would happen if more software engineers viewed themselves like landscapers/plumbers/electricians. That is, you have a skill, people in your community need it, now you just need to find those people.

A friend of mine used to work in the bizdev side of a non-profit, managing donations and tracking groups to thank and follow-up with and so on. Incidentally she started complaining about how bad the user experience of the software she was using was, which got my ears tingling. What if people in her position at other non-profits had the same experience to the extent that I could distribute the cost of developing something this group of users found value in (increased efficiency/productivity) that their organizations would be willing to switch to?

I ended up not following through for personal reasons and there are some of the normal "cost of switching" stuff one would have to get past to make this work, but little things like this wouldn't generate hockey-stick revenue but could bring value to the world. If the Thibault can make a decent living making a good free open source chess website or Tarn can make a decent living making the most in-depth fantasy world simulator the world's ever seen, surely there are other modest opportunities out there to be the change we want to see in the world (interestingly both examples here live on donations rather than selling a service/product).

To me, the big difference is that I believe that I can have a greater positive impact by working at one of these megacorps and donating a ton of money to charity. Where I work, I am not generating money for my employer but helping improve an external software ecosystem. This I feel is a small positive thing at a company that might be a net harm to the world.

But the pay is way way way way higher than what I could get by building a website for the local food bank. Instead, I can donate five or six figures annually to charitable causes and still come out ahead for my own income.

If you're serious about it I hope you and everyone else that says this commit by picking an issue of society you're passionate about, researching charitable foundations, and contributing a recurring donation that hits the range of money you're willing to part with.

You should also keep tuned in to the organization (and those that receive grants from them) on what impact your helping create to build reinforcement.

I do. I donate a very large amount of money to an organization that I am deeply involved with that does a lot of good efficiently and effectively. I'm sure that a lot of people just use this as a justification and don't actually follow through but I really am donating an amount of money that would be completely infeasible if I was instead employed by this organization.

Software has a tendency to centralize more than plumbing because 1 plumber can only plumb 1 building, but 1 SWE can write code used by billions. Then you account for efficiencies of scale that generally make it easier for a big business to out compete a small business (e.g. data center costs; in the very extreme case you might think that having enough resources to build custom chips like TPUs falls into this category) and you end up with tech dominated by a few large companies, i.e. basically the situation we have today.

I make a good living building software for nonprofits. It’s true there are plenty of opportunities for better software out there. But, as is often the case, understanding the industry helps. I worked for 10 years at nonprofits in non-developer roles and that experience massively increases my value as a developer to my clients. Enthusiasm and being able to code are great, but making an effort to understand the problem space is even more valuable.