In my experience, few people get jobs that help others. There just aren't that many of them. Doing something that has a direct and measurable impact on people's lives is, unfortunately, something that you do in your spare time. Obviously that's a generalisation, there are a handful of jobs that meet the criteria, but aiming to get one is shooting for the moon.

But that doesn't matter. You can do good things outside of your job.

At the moment I'm building a mobile/web app that will help people keep track of their mental health state and the internal and external factors that affect it. By building up a set of data points I'll then be able to work out what factors help people feel better. Ostensibly it's for people with mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, and so on, but the reality is that it could help pretty much everyone. Whether or not it'll go on to be something big that helps millions is an unknown, but I hope so. To be honest though, that shouldn't be a motivating factor - helping a few hundred people is just as important. One day I'll do a "Show HN" for it, but not yet.

Look for a problem and think of a solution for it. It's that easy (e.g. really hard :) ).

There is the direct method of finding an organization that is helping people and working for them.

Not everyone believes this, but working for the government is/can be a good way to help people. I work for the government and I think our website helps people, in at least two ways.

1. We cut down the number of times people have to write the same information by at least a factor of 3 compared to the days of paper forms. It's small, but I think it's important to be kind to people about their time, especially when you are legally requiring them to do something.

2. Our website and associated systems are at the forefront of fisheries management. When it comes to actually making a difference in preserving our corner of the ocean's fish, I think we are in the lead.

the tldr; is find a big boring helpful organization and work for them

Monknomo, would you mind sharing the link to your website?

I work in healthcare. Basically the stuff I do has a direct impact on funding given to vaccinations initiatives, disease prevention and disease management.

Doing this, in my experience, is easy - find an organisation that does meaningful work and go work for them.

I've been a programmer since a very young age, having both parents as teachers I never saw it as noble or a job with any ROI. Spending my first year, after 3 years of industry, I realized it's more rewarding than anything I've done before (it's been 12 years now). Everything related to development can still be done, interaction with industry and I also get to see, 2, 3, 5 years down the line how successful companies spawn from inspired students.

Besides teaching I could also recommend contributing back to open source projects and just getting active in your community.

I'd say the simplest way is...

1. Identify organizations that you think very clearly help people.

2. Apply for a technical role with them. (Id say the majority of companies in any industry have tech roles to fill)

In the above scenario, each line of code may not be saving a life but you'll be contributing to the organization in doing what they do better. Additionally, you'll have more opportunities within the organization to capitalize on doing things that align with your ethics.

No :(