[jimrandomh]

For most skillsets, the answer is: pick the career that makes the most money, figure out what the best charity is, and give most of your money to that charity. Trying to be philanthropic directly is usually less effective than making money and then paying others to do good on your behalf. On the other hand, maybe you can do more good directly, by working for a charity.

In either case, you need serious research and numbers to figure out what the right path is. 80,000 hours (http://80000hours.org; I am not affiliated) is a charity that's set themselves up to research and give career guidance for people who want to maximize their positive impact. They will probably give a better answer than StackOverflow.

[kevinconroy]

Perhaps, but there's a dramatic difference in the psychological reward that one gets working for a charity verse supporting one. There are lots of tech savvy non-profits that need top-notch tech talent to help them get better, faster, stronger. Non-profits can't hire teams of 50+ programmers. Usually it's 1-10 people that move fast and ship constantly. Although it's not right for everyone to do this, they do need some people to do this. See my other comment with links.

[dbaupp]

For the second step, GiveWell (http://www.givewell.org/) does a good job of sorting out some top charities.

[erikpukinskis]

> Trying to be philanthropic directly is usually less effective than making money and then paying others to do good on your behalf

Have you tried? What's that based on? I know lots of people doing great direct work.

In my experience, money is NOT a good substitute for concerted, focused, long-term attention in a problem domain.

[mindslight]

That's only an answer if you're just trying to appease your own conscience instead of earnestly solving the problem. Working for the NSA while donating most of your income to the EFF is still net evil.