Being a software engineer, what meaningful things can I do for humanity for rest of my life?

Donate and contribute code to open source.

Visit any underprivileged village and try to teach some basics of computers. Take your laptop and show it to the kids. There are people who have not seen a laptop in their life time. If you cannot practically do that, become an online volunteer. http://www.onlinevolunteering.org United nation's online volunteering site is awesome. There are various projects that as a software engineer you could contribute, like website building, managing projects, coordinating with other volunteers, and so on. They expect you to work few hours in a week, and you can base it out on your schedule. Good luck.

You could perhaps try building an app that has the potential of bringing a positive impact? An example, a social network based around blood donations. Offer to help charities around you to automate tasks that are repetitive for them through code. Perhaps aid them in developing an online presence for fund collections if they do not have one already? Pass on your knowledge of your profession to those who aren't fortunate enough to acquire it on their own?

Thank you for asking such a nice question! As a general consensus, software engineering is considered to be the best job from various perspectives like pay packages and other noteworthy remunerations but we are clueless on how to pay back to humanity who has given us such a nice opportunity. Regardless of the company we work for, we all software engineers have (almost) same set of routines to perform throughout the day. We pass most of our time in office space tackling some tricky, ambiguous (sometimes seemingly NP-H) problems. Hence, we hardly get time to think for the rest of the world. By the way, according to me, a software engineer could be useful to humanity in following ways:    1. Choose a topic which interests you (i.e., NLP, Machine Learning, etc. ) and do research on continuous basis aiming to publish promising results at some point in your career    2. Open up your channel on Youtube and make qualitative videos on technical and non-technical stuff    3. Ask peoples from different backgrounds about the problems they are facing in their daily lives and if possible conceive an effective solution using current technology    4. If you don't have a creative idea, there will be others who might have it, so be part of their project by supporting them technically and/or economically    5. Come to Quora and share your life story with others by inspiring them to do something useful (in short, inspire n ignite!)

Having a hefty pay is a boon sometimes. You can always pay back to society through donating to NGO. What I would prefer is to sponsor the education of economically backward child. You will always find happiness in his academic progress and a sense of fulfillment that you gave this great opportunity to him/her which wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

1. Write well documented code. It is the most meaningful thing you can do as a SW engg. 2. I have been planning to build a website, would like to call it http://giftaweekend.org.  You can take it forward. There are many jobs in india which require full 7 days of work with no weekend holidays. Imagine what an impact can a person, willing to work on his behalf for one day, have on his life. You don't know how much his quality of life would improve, if someone could give them a small time for leisure! On this website you can post such people's profiles, and people(who have both sat and sunday off) can volunteer to work on their place for one day, and maybe give them enough money to watch a movie, and have a fancy meal.   I think this is the also a need of the hour in India, where we definitely lag behind the Americans and the Europeans when it comes to job experiences. As a child could you have washed your neighbors car for small money? In india there is a shame in doing certain kinds of jobs by certain kind of people. I think this would bring about a positive change where people would have empathetic understanding of all the smaller and the bigger cogs in the society. Especially, the SW engg people don't have a diverse set of job experiences. Java, C++, HTML5 -- yes. Waiting tables - No. Volunteering - No. Guarding house/property - No, assistanship - No. Ofcourse, there would be exceptions, but it is time when technical people actually start doing real world jobs like waiting tables, working as an assistant at cloth shop, doing guard duty for a day, and grow up not as just a star programmers, but a well-rounded person who can maybe in thier 35s and40s be competent enough to contest elections, or become social entrepreuners. To make things more attractive for volunteers. This website could also help in validation of such kinds of services done by people, with certificates etc. These could end up on resumes. Talk to me in comments below, if seriously interested. -- Copyrighted, no reporduciton, no Ctrl C + Ctrl V. no nothing.

You can either create software (which is your profession) that can solve common man's problem. or Since you are earning good salary, you can take care of a poor child's education expenses. or You can contribute back to the open source community/Wikipedia which would have helped you a lot for you to be in this position. or You can invent something new that can reduce millions of problems.

If u r privileged with earning a remarkable pay check at the end of the month, just try to help one or two people in your neighborhood e.g sponsoring the school fee of a poor child, you don't have to do something great...just a little bit of effort by many people like you can help to make Earth a better planet.

Meaningful contribution with software !!! As others have mentioned, online volunteering for NGOs, free teaching, open source contribution, giving your money for charity are all ways of giving back to the community. If you want to make  a greater impact, then i think that one should acknowledge the fact that software is a R&D intensive industry and work from that angle. (or else one gets stuck in code-maintenance and support) Software is something that touches every sector of the economy (Agriculture, finance, Healthcare, Transportation, Education). Getting into a domain that appeals to your core, will be the first step. Learn everything in that domain  and identify the most important problems or pain-points that people face. Work with a team or alone and solve the problem completely. If the solution is perfect, people will definitely be willing to use it and there is your meaningful contribution. Depending on how basic/important the problem you have solved, the number of people using your solution will be more and wider will be the impact of your effort. Software is characterised by "less-barrier-to-entry and high-competitive" industry, which means that unless one's effort is superior, probably he/she won't be contributing in any bigger way. All the best!!