[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact
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Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact
I am interested in finding a job at a company that is having a
positive impact in the world. I think this probably rules out FANG
(MAMAA?) companies. Does your work make at least a small
contribution to a better world? If so, where do you work?
Author : sepiasaucer
Score : 130 points
Date : 2022-05-26 14:44 UTC (8 hours ago)
| hairysmelly wrote:
| I work for Nova Credit - we're a fintech with many roles open. We
| work on expanding financial services to immigrants (most
| immigrants need to start over financially when they move) and
| those without credit scores.
|
| https://novacredit.com/
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Most businesses are social good. They're providing goods/services
| to people. Stripe is enabling customers and entrepreneurs on a
| massive scale. Pretty much any legitimate business from your
| local bakery to General Electric is providing value to people.
| They're improving the world.
| quigebo wrote:
| At Super (https://super.mx), we are working to provide insurance
| to the 100+ million people and families in Mexico to protect them
| against natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes) and their personal
| belongings (e.g. theft). Mexico residents are often living
| without insurance because there are trust issues (people getting
| ripped off).
|
| We're here to fix that! We are based in Mexico City and are
| working to show that insurance can be different, not only by
| being trustworthy and paying out claims when they happen but also
| by making the products more accessible and friendly for our
| customers. For example, we simplified our earthquake product by
| designing it to require NO ADJUSTORS. If you have a policy with
| us and live within a certain radius of where an earthquake
| originated, you will get a payment _even if there is no damage to
| your home_. It 's that simple.
|
| I am the CTO of Super and would love to tell you more about what
| we're trying to accomplish! Feel free to email me at
| stephen.wooten@super.mx - i'd love to chat!
| idealmedtech wrote:
| I'm a cofounder over at Ideal Medical Technologies, and we're
| working towards building one of the first fully automated blood
| glucose control devices for hospital use, which could save
| hundreds of thousands of lives per year in the US alone!
|
| We're not currently hiring, but once our first human data comes
| in, we will be looking to scale up our team quite a bit! If
| that's something you're interested in, drop me a line, email is
| in my bio.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| I just want to get paid.
| probablycarrots wrote:
| How about working for an educational institution or other non-
| profit rather than a company?
|
| I love working for a small college that is truly dedicated to
| educating the next generation. I find it very rewarding to know
| that my tasks and goals at work are not driven by profits and
| there are no overpaid executives sitting at the top of my org.
| There are no shareholders to answer to.
|
| Yes, I am well aware that colleges still have bottom lines, still
| have 'customers', and are often run similarly to many businesses.
| I regularly see faculty and staff giving their all to the
| students. I've been here long enough to see students graduate and
| begin to make their own positive impact on the world.
|
| There's always a trade-off... In exchange for not 'working to
| make a rich guy richer' and an almost unheard of balance between
| work & life, I accept lower pay than I'd make elsewhere. Without
| hesitation I can say that every member of our IT team could
| easily make more money working in the private sector.
|
| I rarely work over the 37.5 hours per week expected of me, minus
| a few hours on the half-day Fridays we get during most of the
| summer. No org is perfect, but after nearly 20 years at this
| institution I'm still growing, learning, feeling appreciated,
| finding new ways to contribute, and am happier than I've ever
| been.
|
| Sound good? We're currently searching for an experienced Network
| Engineer. https://jobs.reed.edu/positions/2022/network-
| engineer.html
| BadCookie wrote:
| The techjobsforgood.com jobs board is useful for this, but a lot
| of the postings are from nonprofits and the pay is often below
| market (or so it seems to me).
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| My advice is to join a company that is not making a negative
| impact on the world that pays well.
|
| Many times companies that are trying to make a positive impact on
| the world can be miserable places to work. Many times there is
| this unsaid assumption that workers needs are secondary to the
| larger goal of helping the world (instead of increasing your
| salary, we could use that money to save even more babies). Also,
| people who think they are doing good for the world, will excuse
| bad behavior in themselves, since the good that they have done,
| so far outweighs the bad).
|
| So I would recommend, going to a job that pays well and doesn't
| harm the world. Learn skills, make money, and do your own
| positive impact for the world on your own terms.
| qwedf wrote:
| I've been at OPAL-RT for about a year now, providing real-time
| simulation tools for power electronics. So clients include
| electric vehicle manufacturers, renewables companies, grid
| operators... pretty much everyone who is involved in electricity,
| which is a lot. The exec team is also directly committed to being
| good, so work-life balance + conditions + compensation are great
| and they contribute something like 2% of net profits to local
| charities and organisations.
|
| And yes we're profitable, demand is going up because of the push
| for electrification everywhere and we are hiring very
| aggressively. Roles have geographic designation, but can pretty
| much be from anywhere
|
| https://www.opal-rt.com/careers-search-job-posting/
| moonOverMarin wrote:
| As another commenter mentioned, what makes a better world is
| subjective, depends on what you value.
|
| I joined my current company because I believe that as our species
| grows (over huge time scales) one 'world' will not be enough, and
| that our current manufacturing model is too wasteful and slow to
| adapt to meet our and our planet's needs, which impacts day-to-
| day life for all of us.
|
| https://www.relativityspace.com/mission
| sepiasaucer wrote:
| Sounds like a cool place to work! I interned at SpaceX in
| undergrad and worked at ONERA while getting PhD. I work as Data
| Sci now. I see an open Data Sci position that looks like good
| fit. Do you think I could negotiate for being remote or is the
| on-site policy pretty strict?
| giantg2 wrote:
| You could start by looking at companies that comprise ESG ETFs.
| Granted many of the companies included in there could be
| semineutral or debatable as to actual benefit.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > You could start by looking at companies that comprise ESG
| ETFs.
|
| You could, if you believe that oil companies deserve a better
| score than Tesla.
| turtledove wrote:
| Oil companies definitely don't belong. But also Tesla
| probably doesn't either.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't believe either are in ESG indexes at this point.
| Tesla was but was later removed.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Tesla has a lot of issues. It's not a stretch to see their
| material risks (lithium, cobalt, nickel, plastic aka oil) as
| being pretty bad. The source of the electric powering the car
| matters too. As does the fact that they still use oil based
| or CO2 emitting roadways and the effects of the brake pads
| and tires.
|
| They certainly have problems. Tesla and oil companies have
| material and process (environmental) risks. Tesla also has
| the risks associated with poor societal and governance
| stances.
|
| So back to my original comment - you'll have to look into the
| companies themselves because their "benefits" are debatable,
| including Tesla's.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/why-tesla-was-kicked-out-
| of-...
|
| Edit: wow getting a lot of hate without any reply. I guess
| just because I'm critical of Tesla?
| dbrueck wrote:
| > I guess just because I'm critical of Tesla?
|
| No, it's because the ESG stuff seems more about virtue
| signaling than doing actual good, and the fact that that
| one main list _includes_ oil companies but _excludes_ Tesla
| is really compelling evidence of this.
|
| Other downvotes are probably for stuff like "the fact that
| they still use oil based or CO2 emitting roadways". I
| mean... c'mon.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Relevant Google talk on sloppiness of ESG arguments:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6b7K1hjZk4
| giantg2 wrote:
| "the fact that that one main list includes oil companies
| but excludes Tesla is really compelling evidence of
| this."
|
| This doesn't seem like compelling evidence without diving
| into why. Tesla is quite shady in trying to avoid things.
| For example, not complying with battery laws in Germany,
| working conditions issues, etc.
|
| The ESG score also include "S" and "G". It's not all
| about "E".
|
| But I agree that the scores don't mean much. Which, for
| the third time, I recommend looking into the companies
| because their "benefits" are generally debatable.
|
| "I mean... c'mon."
|
| Well I guess I'll like to evaluate from a systems
| thinking standpoint. N-order impacts are relevant.
| dbrueck wrote:
| > This doesn't seem like compelling evidence without
| diving into why
|
| Fair enough, but not only is a company pushing us towards
| renewable energy better than a company resisting that
| better in the abstract, the real issue is the specific
| companies that the ESG index kept while booting Tesla.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/exxon-mobil-is-the-
| wors... https://www.npr.org/2019/10/22/772241282/exxon-
| is-on-trial-a... https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-
| change-crisis-exxonmobi...
|
| The list goes on and on and on, and this isn't even
| taking into account all of their lawsuits from employees
| about inappropriate workplace things. Again, it's not
| that Tesla is some pristine company, but that it's
| extremely hypocritical for booting Tesla from a list but
| keeping at least one other company that is far worse in
| pretty much every way, and _that 's_ what really calls
| into question the legitimacy of the ESG ratings.
|
| > [criticism about criticism about Tesla relying on oil-
| based roads] > Well I guess I'll like to evaluate from a
| systems thinking standpoint. N-order impacts are
| relevant.
|
| Of course they are relevant, but dinging a company
| because they don't solve every tangential issue seems
| defeatist, and _every_ ESG index company has at least as
| many ways in which they could theoretically do much more
| if we start connecting the dots to everything in the
| system they 're a part of. So it's just back to the
| original point: the ESG scoring seems, at best, pretty
| inconsistent.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Those articles are about old actions of the company.
| Those issues have led to changes that cause the company
| to be on the list now. They are spending billions on
| reducing emissions, researching alternative fuels, and
| partnering with renewable companies.
|
| Meanwhile, Tesla and Musk have a very recent historical
| pattern of not caring about environmental regulations,
| with no indication of any change in belief or practice.
|
| So one is at least putting up money to try to improve
| things, while the other DGAF about the environment if it
| gets in their way of their business.
|
| https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKagy0oyMA/6qN1EZx2r1
| p7a...
| dbrueck wrote:
| Here's some newer articles about recent and even ongoing
| sketchy behavior by Exxon:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/exxon
| -te...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/28/california-subpoenas-
| exxon-f...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/11/exxon
| -ad...
|
| https://grist.org/beacon/did-exxon-know-about-plastics-
| too/
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-labor-board-
| impou...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/mass-top-court-
| skep...
|
| When a company has literally decades of bad behavior
| (including multiple instances of being caught and then
| promising to do better and then being caught lying about
| it), it's a little hard to immediately accept at face
| value their most recent good deeds (especially since even
| some of them are already looking shady).
| headelf wrote:
| You can reach out and join us at Stashrun- we're reinventing
| charitable giving and letting our users take action on
| causes/nonprofit-backed campaigns without spending any of their
| own money.
|
| Beyond bringing in new donations, the nonprofits receive more
| money per dollar, and it scales. It is truly a three-sided
| marketplace that benefits all parties
| wayne-li2 wrote:
| If you want to work at positive impact companies, Khan Academy is
| one that comes up in my head.
|
| But take it from me, someone who has volunteered for civic tech
| organizations and have participated in ground work for political
| campaigns. The most positive impact you could possibly make is
| money.
|
| Political campaigns need thousands of volunteers. But someone who
| has no skills or education can volunteer. The supply pool is
| giant! But campaigns need millions of dollars in order to
| survive. It's way harder to raise a dollar because in order to
| donate to campaigns the person usually needs to have
| discretionary income. And to move the needle financially for a
| campaign, you need to be fairly wealthy.
|
| At the end of the day, maximizing your salary and donating, say
| 10k (2.8k direct + 7.2k via PAC) to a political candidate that
| you believe will make a way bigger positive impact than working
| for minimum wage or free for that candidate. Because your skills
| aren't being used optimally. If you take a paycut from 300k to
| 60k, are you still comfortable making that donation?
|
| Anyways, my personal mantra is to maximize income at impact
| neutral companies or positive adjacent. And then commit to donate
| a significant chunk of income to positive impact organizations.
| Don't know if this helps or not.
| notahacker wrote:
| If your skills are relevant and good, you ought to be able to
| have way more impact on a political campaign than a 17k
| donation, which at most levels of developed world politics
| barely scratches the surface and isn't going to teach you
| anything about politics either.
|
| It's a little different if the volunteering is something low
| impact or something you're way out of your depth in, or if the
| cause wanting money has a way of getting very tangible rewards
| (which are quantifiably greater than whatever free time you can
| spare on it)
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Have you ever donated 10s of thousands to a political
| campaign? For anything congressional-level or lower, this
| gets you calls from the politician, face-to-face access,
| emails, meetings, and up-to-date info. You will soon be
| fielding calls from people you haven't donated to, who think
| you may donate, and they will also listen to you.
|
| And this is for congressional-level. For state senate, state
| house, local gov, etc. I imagine this could go even further.
| City councils and mayors have lots of impact but little
| donations.
| wayne-li2 wrote:
| I can confirm. After donating a similar amount, I regularly
| field calls from candidates (directly, not from their
| staff). Granted it's usually just asking for more money,
| although I've had some interesting chats to say the least.
|
| 10k is not a lot at the presidential election sure, and
| maybe not for Senate either, but it is a lot of money even
| in House races. And for many state races.
| jedberg wrote:
| How do you contribute more than $2700? Ask for an invite
| to a fundraising dinner? Find a PAC? I've given the max
| contribution before but never heard about the ways to
| give more.
| brundolf wrote:
| Two caveats to this approach:
|
| - The work you're doing to make that 300k doesn't happen in a
| vacuum; it has an impact on the world too. Make sure it's not
| doing more harm (including the political donations that might
| get made by the owners you're making richer) than your
| donations are doing good.
|
| - People aren't robots; intrinsic motivators are important for
| some. In some cases it can be worth making a smaller impact
| with your own hands, vs a larger impact that's unsustainable
| because your soul isn't being fed with a sense of purpose,
| because you're too far removed from the purpose.
|
| I'm sure your approach works for some people, but I don't think
| it's an end-all answer to the question
| neves wrote:
| And if you are in a FAANG, remember that you probably have a
| _very_ negative impact in the world. There 's no money you
| can donate to compensate the amount of disinformation in
| YouTube or Facebook or WhatsApp.
| orzig wrote:
| > There's no money you can donate
|
| I understand you don't mean that literally, but (to
| minimize disinformation among others): There is absolutely
| some number of lives saved which would compensate for that.
|
| https://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities
|
| Before writing off an entire industry, I beg you to
| consider that $45,000 could save 10 lives and improve many
| more (Yes; it's not precise. No; it's not out of their ass
| - read their extensive discussion of the calculations)
| hcnews wrote:
| Again there are different people with different value
| systems.
|
| 1. Some people are happy with creating more positive than
| negative. 2. Some people want to do no negative.
|
| The practical problem with what you proposed is that now
| I need to vet the charities I donate and make sure its
| not a scam. Its a hard task to (i) spend 8 hours a day
| doing net negative (ii) spend more time per day to make
| sure you as a whole are net positive (iii) be social and
| have family etc.
| wayne-li2 wrote:
| I agree with all of your points. I also choose to avoid
| companies that have an outsized negative impact on the world.
| Intrinsic motivations is important too. Totally get all of
| that.
|
| At the end of the day, it's all about what you want. I do
| think that if you _want_ to make the biggest positive impact
| as a software engineer, and that is your only directive, then
| I believe my approach is a worthwhile option.
| cheriot wrote:
| Well said. I agree with everything you say except perhaps the
| focus on politicians. It's a group of people self selected for
| the ability to sell us a vision with only a distant, vague
| prospect of realizing it. On the other hand, there are non-
| profits with readily visible outcomes.
| gumby wrote:
| > It's a group of people self selected for the ability to
| sell us a vision with only a distant, vague prospect of
| realizing it.
|
| That's unnecessarily and destructively cynical. There are
| plenty of politicians (and others working for governments) at
| all levels who are there to do a good job.
|
| The showboats and bad actors (which are almost coextensive)
| of course by definition get most of the press. Don't let them
| distract you.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > There are plenty of politicians (and others working for
| governments) at all levels who are there to do a good job.
|
| The statement was about how they're selected. They're
| selected by their eagerness to be in politics, and their
| ability to talk a good game.
| cheriot wrote:
| The whole point of checks and balances is to deal with the
| cold reality that politicians can't be trusted. But they
| can still be useful! As long as the system of elections
| work, they need to find a set of policy priorities that
| builds a winning coalition.
|
| That leads me to the conclusion that the best way to
| influence politics is not through the politician
| themselves, but through advocacy groups that can shift the
| political incentives.
|
| Even the politicians celebrated by history made awful
| compromises to maintain a winning coalition. LBJ's
| relationship with MLK for example.
| monroewalker wrote:
| Agreed, earning more so you can give more is the most pragmatic
| approach to having the largest possible positive impact. There
| was a really good conversation on Sam Harris's podcast about
| this with Sam Bankman-Fried [1].
|
| Based on the question though, the OP's goal might either be to
| (1) maximize impact or (2) just earn a living while also
| feeling good about their company's impact. If (1) is the goal,
| I'd say listen to that podcast, look into effective altruism
| [2], and find the highest paying job you can. If (2) is the
| goal, I'd recommend including GoFundMe and Rivian in the list
| of companies to check out!
|
| [1] https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-
| episodes/271... [2] https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't know. I feel like most jobs that earn the most are
| doing so because they are contributing to, or exploiting, ESG
| problems.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| Agreed 100%. I have spent my entire ~15 year career working in
| the clean energy space. Salaries in the industry and pretty
| low. While I would love to one day own an EV and charge it with
| some solar panels on my roof, buying a home on my salary is a
| pipe dream right now.
|
| Another issue is that these problem domains are constrained by
| government policy, not by private investment. For example, the
| US solar industry is really hurting right now because of
| tariffs and a recent anti-dumping investigation[1]. Imagine
| working at a company in this space and watching all your
| projects get put on hold over an issue that has bipartisan
| support in the Senate (a very rare thing), but an executive
| branch that wants to be "tough on China" (yes, believe or not I
| am talking about Biden). We are literally putting an entire
| industry on hold so we can prop up a handful of domestic
| manufacturing businesses.
|
| If you really want to help, you have a few options. Make a lot
| of money and become a customer of companies that are doing
| good. Buy an EV, put solar on your roof, buy clothes and goods
| that are manufactured sustainably. I am personally not a huge
| fan of carbon offsets, but even if I don't think they are
| effective in their current form, supporting that industry does
| allow for motivated professionals to spend their time on that
| problem.
|
| You can also volunteer in your free time. Lots of organizations
| out there that could use some help. I regularly volunteer for
| beach cleanups. But if you want to use your technical skills I
| am sure it would be easy to find someone in need of those as
| well.
|
| And thinking outside the box. It is possible that one of the
| biggest contributors to reducing our CO2 footprint in this
| current century was Netflix. "Netflix and chill" was a fun
| meme, with the idea being that you would hang out at home and
| watch Netflix (among other things) instead of going out.
| Imagine the number of vehicle miles avoided because of that
| meme! So if you want to have your cake and eat it too, consider
| working on projects that keep people in their home (especially
| if it keeps people working from home, imagine all those commute
| miles avoided).
|
| And another outside the box idea. Join a company that is doing
| bad things (whatever that may mean for you). Then work your way
| up the ladder and change the company for the better from the
| inside. If ladder climbing is not for you, simply become an
| internal advocate for change. Or more cynically, make them less
| efficient. You could do this by simply being ineffective at
| your job. Or you could more actively steer projects in
| suboptimal directions.
|
| [1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/america-
| first-c...
| solatic wrote:
| > At the end of the day, maximizing your salary and donating,
| say 10k (2.8k direct + 7.2k via PAC) to a political candidate
| that you believe will make a way bigger positive impact than
| working for minimum wage or free for that candidate.
|
| I think there's a buried over-simplification here. It's rare to
| find politicians whose views 100% line up with your own, and
| too often, politicians are willing to flip their views to
| satisfy a donor (who, even if you donate 300k-60k=$240k, will
| not be you). Even if you mostly agree with the politician,
| you're taking a gamble that your contribution doesn't really
| end up with the positive impact you desire.
|
| A better argument would be to put the $240k/year into a
| WayneLi2 Foundation, which directly acts only on whatever you
| define as good. Of course, in the beginning, the endowment is
| too small to do anything, but give it several years, and
| perhaps the donations of a few people who share your vision,
| and you'll have more control over the direction of the positive
| impact.
|
| For those of us who don't have that kind of cash, picking an
| organization whose focus is _limited_ to its mission serves as
| a boon to know that our efforts will create the impact we 'd
| like to see.
| jbothma wrote:
| > But take it from me, someone who has volunteered for civic
| tech organizations and have participated in ground work for
| political campaigns. The most positive impact you could
| possibly make is money.
|
| I don't really agree. Perhaps we're incredibly lucky as a civic
| tech non-profit, but our limiting factor generally isn't money.
| It's skilled people who can take responsibility and deliver. So
| if OP is an experienced developer who is willing to look a bit
| beyond just code, but still bring serious tech skill and
| experience to the table, I'd like to talk to them.
| wayne-li2 wrote:
| Could I posit that your limiting factor is actually money,
| which prevents you from hiring more skilled people?
| jbothma wrote:
| That doesn't bear out in interviews and the remuneration
| stage of hiring.
|
| The main struggle is lack of sufficiently skilled
| applicants.
|
| The problem might be our ability to attract them! But it's
| a tough market.
| jedberg wrote:
| Once you offer enough money you will attract the talent.
| And if you can't afford to offer competitive salaries,
| then you're back to your-problem-is-lack-of-money.
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| This is true in investing as well. If you look at the impact of
| investing in some company doing something you like for some
| cause vs choosing the best in class company and then donating
| the dividends to your cause, you almost always have a much
| larger impact donating the dividends.
| grink71 wrote:
| I work at Activated Insights -- we're a company that helps
| improve the lives of senior citizens through transparency in
| senior care facilities.
|
| We're hiring here: https://activatedinsights.com/jobs/software-
| engineer-remote/
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| There are not many anti-capitalist options in the market, if you
| want to talk about systemic impact
| antognini wrote:
| I work at Whisper AI, which is a startup building a better kind
| of hearing aid.
|
| The basic pitch is that by far and away the biggest problem
| people with hearing aids have is hearing in noisy, crowded
| environments like restaurants and parties. Classical DSP
| algorithms have a very hard time in these situations because the
| spectral properties of the noise look very similar to the signal
| since both are speech.
|
| What we do differently is we provide a small companion unit,
| about the size of a flip phone, that houses a much more powerful
| processor than you can fit behind the ear. Since we have more
| than three orders of magnitude more compute than a traditional
| hearing aid, we can run modern deep neural networks to denoise
| audio in real time.
|
| We are hiring for a variety of roles, but I in particular have
| been looking to hire a machine learning engineer for my team.
| wiskinator wrote:
| Hah! Came here to post about our work. I'm so proud to work
| here.
| lmc wrote:
| Companies exist generally to make money first, and any societal
| benefit is a side effect. Beware of companies that promise
| otherwise - they're lying either to themselves or to you. Either
| take the hit on the paycheck and work for a non-profit or
| academic/government institution, or just try and find something
| you find interesting - there's still lots of good stuff that
| comes out of the bleakest-seeming corporate environments, e.g.
| learning materials, open source projects.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Agreed but you can try to work in healthcare or education that
| have a more _linear_ potential "good" as opposed to
| propagating more meme and lols. I agree that OP has to decide
| to take a pay cut for a more socially focused company goal OR
| they can take all the fat cash and donate a large portion to a
| non-profit that is actually doing the work.
| lmc wrote:
| Yeah, to be fair it's not as black or white as I suggested.
| But it's super difficult to gauge the actual impact of your
| work anyway, most of the time.
| abetusk wrote:
| 80,000 has a jobs board that might be of interest [0].
|
| [0] https://80000hours.org/job-board/
| zkirill wrote:
| The Economist recently reported on "The coming food catastrophe".
| The subheading read "War is tipping a fragile world towards mass
| hunger. Fixing that is everyone's business".
|
| Our product is used in commercial and industrial food kitchens to
| make them run more efficiently. We help everyone from mom-and-pop
| shops to factories. Our customers use our apps to calculate
| production costs, reduce waste, calculate nutrition, find
| suppliers, and order ingredients. The last few months have been
| particularly busy for us because of inflation and rising food
| prices. We hope to help as many food SMB's make it through the
| recession.
|
| Our plan is to be in every business kitchen in the world so our
| core features are available for free and the subscription price
| is affordable to all. I18n is one of our biggest considerations
| because our users are all over the world and majority speaks
| languages other than English.
|
| We bootstrapped ourselves to 100,000+ kitchens so our customers
| aren't worried about us folding because we can't raise the next
| round of funding.
|
| Link in bio.
| slvrspoon wrote:
| If you care about freedom and privacy pls check us out: Abine -
| the online privacy company
|
| | https://www.abine.com/ and https://joindeleteme.com/
|
| WFH - full stack developers and other positions available.
|
| We are a growing profitable company focused on better, easier,
| online privacy.
|
| We make two products. Blur is a password manager foundation with
| privacy aliasing / tokenization built-in from the ground up to
| help people mask / control their PII credentials like email
| addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards. DeleteMe is a service
| for removing private information from many data broker sites that
| list and sell consumers personal profile data.
|
| We're looking for strong talent across the board as we are
| growing over 100% y/y and expanding both B2C and B2B divisions.
| Leaders and mid-level people who are interested in making a
| difference in the fight for privacy are encouraged to apply.
| Developers, product managers, growth marketers etc. are
| encouraged to apply.
|
| Please contact us at jobs at getabine dotcom. 1. no recruiters
| (please, really, please) 2. helpful if you can include both a
| full CV and desired comp range
|
| thanks!
| avinassh wrote:
| Thank you for Blur. It is just excellent. I have been using it
| for years now and I highly recommend it to anyone who cares
| about privacy
| roddylindsay wrote:
| Hustle (hustle.com) helps Democratic campaigns, progressive
| advocacy groups, nonprofits, schools, and other organizations
| mobilize their constituents via text and video messaging.
|
| We are hiring remote US-based software engineers:
| https://hustle.applytojob.com/apply
| walleeee wrote:
| consider first determining exactly what kind of impact you would
| like your work to have
|
| looking for something "positive" without principled and reasoned
| motivation to prefer any particular outcome is a great way to get
| yourself taken advantage of, or to make yourself a cog in a
| machine that takes advantage of others
|
| do you know how you want to change the world? if so, go work on
| it. if you're not sure how to achieve a well defined objective,
| then read, study, try things, and talk to people until you have a
| better idea. if your objective is vague, think about it until
| it's not
|
| if you want something "positive" but don't really know what, the
| first step is emphatically _not_ to go join somebody else 's
| movement, the first step is to determine precisely what positive
| means to you, then reason from first principles how to get there
| zweiasakura wrote:
| Bloomberg LP is essentially a revenue generating arm for
| Bloomberg Philanthropies with >80% of revenue getting donated.
| The volunteering culture at Bloomberg LP itself is also fairly
| strong, compared to other medium/large tech companies, so there's
| a lots of opportunity to give back beyond knowing your revenue is
| going towards good projects. See [1] below for more info.
|
| Aside from donating time and money, the company's service is also
| seen as a fundamental piece of the global economy today.
| Providing a common baseline of financial data and price
| transparency of assets creates liquidity and helps keep asset
| prices low. It also allows smaller players to enter the financial
| services industry without needing to be in the "Old Boys' Club".
| It also helps developing countries and other emerging markets to
| list their sovereign debt and manage investors.
|
| 1: https://www.bloomberg.org/
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Must be of profits, no? But agreed, Mr. Bloomberg seems to be a
| prolific giver (although he also did drop $1b on a vanity run
| for President, not sure how effective a use of funding that
| was, but generally his donations are very well thought out and
| high impact)
| a-dub wrote:
| > Bloomberg LP is essentially a revenue generating arm for
| Bloomberg Philanthropies with >80% of revenue getting donated.
|
| is there somewhere i can read more about this specifically?
| jpm_sd wrote:
| My employer, Saildrone is growing fast, currently hiring for 30+
| open roles (a handful of which are remote-friendly).
|
| https://www.saildrone.com/careers
|
| Our many and varied missions include measuring CO2 in the ocean
| for global climate science, and patrolling marine protected areas
| to prevent illegal fishing.
|
| https://www.saildrone.com/missions
| [deleted]
| asthar wrote:
| Would recommend looking for companies that are a B Corp. Nick
| Francis's https://www.helpscout.com/ is one. And otherwise,
| Natalie Nagele's Wildbit, Claire Lew's KnowYourTeam, and Brendan
| Schwartz's Wistia work in admirable ways.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| Here's a list of startups that have a positive social impact
| while still paying competitive salaries and showing promising
| growth:
|
| Fintech:
|
| Forage (https://www.joinforage.com), building Stripe for EBT,
| i.e. food stamps
|
| Nearside (https://www.nearside.com), banking for small businesses
|
| KeeperTax (https://www.keepertax.com), tax savings for
| independent contractors
|
| Bio/Pharma/Healthcare:
|
| Q Bio (https://q.bio), creating a more data-driven approach to
| health
|
| Reverie Labs (https://www.reverielabs.com), accelerating drug
| development with ML
|
| PathAI (https://www.pathai.com), increasing diagnosis accuracy
|
| Benchling (https://www.benchling.com), cloud for biotech R&D
|
| Mental Health:
|
| Alma (https://helloalma.com), providing easier access to therapy
|
| Headway (https://headway.co), same as Alma
|
| Juniper (https://www.juniperplatform.com), workflow tools for
| autism providers
|
| Real Estate:
|
| Orchard (https://orchard.com), buy your next home before you sell
|
| Ribbon (https://www.ribbonhome.com), cash offers to improve home
| access
|
| Hardware:
|
| Sofar Ocean (https://www.sofarocean.com), collecting ocean data
|
| Climate:
|
| Watershed (https://watershed.com), platform for enterprises to
| reduce carbon emissions
|
| Sweep (https://www.sweep.net)
|
| Pachama (https://pachama.com)
|
| Defense (if you believe that Western influence is positive
| impact):
|
| Anduril (https://www.anduril.com), building high-tech defense
| products and reducing gov waste
|
| Palantir (https://www.palantir.com), building data products for
| government
| goodpoint wrote:
| Please tell me you are joking.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| I'm not! I added the caveat to defense that not everyone
| thinks it has a positive influence, but the rest are hard to
| debate with. If you have reasons why they're negative, I'm
| open to hearing!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I think at least part of the objection would be to Palantir
| being on the list. They got into all kinds of hot water for
| helping Trump administration do various unethical things (I
| don't remember the specifics)
| lowkey_ wrote:
| I listed them in the defense category as it's not
| universally viewed as positive (though I think it very
| much is sadly necessary and positive), but in addition to
| that, Palantir works with tons of positive organizations
| including the NCMEC (National Center for Missing &
| Exploited Children) on tracking and preventing child sex
| trafficking.
| dougmwne wrote:
| This is actually not as hard as it seems, you just have to be
| willing to take a truly eye watering paycut. Think 4x. Think
| enough money over a lifetime to start your own charitable
| foundation.
|
| Head over to Idealist.org and pick a cause. Choose carefully, you
| better really f-n love it. Source: been there, done that, got the
| t-shirt somewhere around here. (And yeah, I changed the world too
| while I was at it.)
| benrmatthews wrote:
| Eye watering to you, close to a normal wage for most of the
| population at most nonprofits, especially in tech roles.
| dougmwne wrote:
| But those people cannot make FAANG money. Apparently OP has
| that option, so their opportunity cost is enormous compared
| to your average graduate.
| jaggederest wrote:
| It depends on your skillset, but something like Givewell would be
| interesting to look at.
|
| https://www.givewell.org/about/jobs
| stevenalowe wrote:
| Thoughtworks, pillar 3
| jphil529 wrote:
| I work at a company called GrandPad that makes tablets for senior
| citizens and a suite of apps and websites that allow companions
| and caregivers to connect with them. Sometimes we forget that
| there's a whole demographic of people that technology has left
| behind. Things that are simple to us, like being able to receive
| a video call from a child or grandchild, are invaluable for
| reducing social isolation and loneliness for the folks we serve.
|
| We're always looking for more engineers. Shoot us a message if
| you're interested!
| garysieling wrote:
| Certara - We have software products for accelerating the
| development of medicines.
|
| https://www.certara.com/certara-careers/
|
| https://www.certara.com/company/our-story/
| jbothma wrote:
| Openup.org.za and civic tech in general. I work there.
|
| See code for all and code for america.
| xupybd wrote:
| I help make furniture for a living. It's a small business making
| a big impact locally. It's not a grand problem but reducing the
| cost and increasing the availability of kitchens in my home
| country is satisfying. We have so many inefficiencies in the
| industry that we can make a big impact.
|
| Small businesses making lives better for locals can be
| meaningful.
| techwizrd wrote:
| I work at The MITRE Corporation. We're a not-for-profit that runs
| Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and works
| directly with industry and government agencies. More
| specifically, I work in the Center for Advanced Aviation Systems
| Development on developing AI/ML and applying systems engineering
| to improve aviation safety and transportation safety (including
| autonomous vehicles).
|
| It's a really interesting, impactful place to work. We work on
| everything from tracking illegal fishing, improving microweather
| meteorological modeling, applying GNNs to model air congestion,
| preventing aviation safety accidents, addressing inequity in
| criminal sentencing, and finding gaps in transparency and
| accountability for federal coronavirus aid.
|
| I like that we have good work-life balance, get to use the latest
| tech, publish papers and open-source code, work on challenging
| and impactful problems, and have a strong commitment to working
| in the public interest making the world a safer place.
| some_random wrote:
| One field I haven't seen anyone mention yet is cybersecurity.
| It's a huge problem, and one that could really use more people
| (and not just security researchers).
| aj-angaza wrote:
| Hi op! I work at Angaza, a social impact company. We've built a
| Saas platform which enables life-changing products, such as solar
| home energy systems, to be sold on payment plans in off-grid
| regions around the world. Angaza helped pioneer this industry by
| creating an embedded software solution, now open source, which
| connects a solar home system battery pack to a payment plan.
|
| Our product has helped millions of people gain access to clean
| and affordable energy for their household or microbusiness. We've
| also expanded our platform to support other impactful consumer
| products, such as smartphones.
|
| We have U.S. and East African teams. We're still a small, less
| than 100 people, but we support customers in Africa, Asia, South,
| and North America. Recently, I've been helping our customers in
| Sierra Leone handle a currency redenomination by the country's
| central bank.
|
| One last thing; my team is looking for a full-stack senior
| software engineer. Here's the job description:
| https://jobs.lever.co/angaza/8e4f159d-4085-4766-a813-0657eb5....
| Good luck with your job search! There are a lot of great social
| impact companies out there.
| Cilvic wrote:
| Come join us at eidu.com we impact education for children in low
| income countries, by providing an android phone to teachers and
| kids. We don't drop it from the sky but work with governments and
| have passionate coaches on the ground.
|
| It will be an epic journey from the 39k students we've covered in
| Kenya today to 600m who deserve it (3x every year).
| techmowgli wrote:
| Check out Prepform! We're an AI-based Edtech company expanding
| access to education for students of all backgrounds:
| https://prepform.com. We're not currently hiring, but we're
| looking to hire soon! If you're interested, feel free to send me
| a message.
| manufacture wrote:
| Oden Technologies (https://oden.io/careers/) is hiring... We
| build data and analytics solutions for manufacturing problems. We
| help factories improve their digitization; democratize data; and
| generally help real people make things, better. We work with
| customers who operate using pen and paper through to real-time
| streaming machine learning models on the factory floor - a wide
| range of fascinating technical problems. We're able to help
| reduce material usage, use less energy, make less "scrap" /
| throwaway product, and other ways of bootstrapping existing
| manufacturers to operate at their highest potential, by making
| their employees better at their jobs and minimizing the negative
| impact of production.
| no-reply wrote:
| https://techjobsforgood.com/ is where you can also look. I
| applied but never got a response back (need experience to get
| experience smh).
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I work at a medical device company. I definitely feel our
| products can change the lives of many people for the better. The
| business side of healthcare in the US is pretty dirty and work
| sometimes can be very slow due to regulation and the need to
| prevent patient harm (no "move fast and break things" here). But
| overall I think my work contributes to producing technology to
| make the world a better place.
| benrmatthews wrote:
| Good Here is a directory of social impact organisations at
| https://goodhere.org/ with a heavy lean towards organisations
| tackling climate change.
| throwaway879080 wrote:
| ryancnelson wrote:
| I came out of "early retirement" to work with the tech team at
| TED (the TEDTalks non-profit)
|
| It's a for-real media tech brand with a mission to incubate and
| spread good ideas. I love it. Find the TED jobs page -- we're
| hiring people in NYC and remote.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| In my experience, the companies that have spent the most time
| touting their positive social impact wound up being the most
| disappointing to work for. The thing is that you will always find
| people who will justify poor company behavior because it benefits
| them financially (just look at all of the Meta people that hang
| out here and make excuses about what that company is doing to
| society.)
|
| I hate to say this, but your ability to find a company making a
| positive impact in the world will largely depend on your
| tolerance for corporate PR and what you'll see behind the scenes.
| Because no matter what your company does, you're gonna see stuff
| you don't like. Capitalism is simply war by other means.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Hard to answer without knowing more about your values and
| perspective, friend. A lot of smart, experienced, well-informed,
| decent, and sincere people would say you can't do much better
| than Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, or Exxon Mobil (although maybe
| not so many of those people hang out here on HN). Less
| controversially/polarizingly, even more people would point you
| towards companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, SpaceX, Ford,
| Atlassian, etc
|
| However, since you mentioned that you think your goal probably
| rules out FANG, I'm gonna make some rough guesstimates about your
| values and recommend companies like:
|
| * Wikimedia Foundation
|
| * Khan Academy & to a lesser extent Brilliant.org, and to an even
| lesser extent Masterclass and Outlier
|
| * edX, YouTube (for the enormous amount of high quality
| educational content on there) & to a lesser extent Coursera
|
| * MIT & other major research universities, especially ones
| working actively to expand and improve their free/low-cost online
| offerings
|
| * Intercept Games, Zachtronics, Wube Software, Giant Army, Klei,
| Microsoft (cos of Minecraft), SCS Software, Dry Cactus, Fakt
| Software, and the many other companies making games that inspire,
| support, and develop intellectual curiosity, creativity, systems
| thinking, analytical reasoning, etc
|
| * Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, etc
|
| * Raspberry Pi Foundation
|
| * Blink Fitness & other companies that provide and promote low-
| cost, accessible fitness
|
| * Melodics & other tools that help people build their musical
| skills and confidence
|
| * Content creation software companies like Procreate, Image-Line
| Software, Adobe, Affinity, Apple (Logic Pro), Cycling '74,
| Cockos, etc etc
|
| There are many ways to feed a cat
| kradeelav wrote:
| Overall love your list! Definitely adding some of these
| companies on my mental list to pursue should the current work
| dry up, and would suggest perhaps adding the Electronic
| Frontier Foundation for similar accessibility / digital
| advocacy work.
|
| However would personally remove Adobe as the single black eye
| to the entire list -- I cannot think of a more morally bankrupt
| company short of FAANG, and possibly surpassing FAANG -- due to
| its habits of dark patterns, subscription shenaniganry, and
| jacking up prices way beyond what most hobbyists/students can
| afford let alone professionals who are not part of an
| enterprise platform.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Doesn't the rest of FAANG sell subscriptions to zero-
| marginal-cost digital goods as well? Is Adobe doing something
| different?
| tyleo wrote:
| I work for Rec Room. While we make a game, millions of kids are
| using it and "accidentally" learning engineering skills while
| they think they are making games :)
|
| We have a principal role open on the team right now but may be
| able to accommodate others. We essentially make a programming
| language and the gameplay elements on top. The principal role is
| on the language side but we could potentially make more roles on
| the gameplay side. Email me (tyler@recroom.com) if you are
| interested. I've attached a description of the role below.
|
| ---- ROLE DESCRIPTION ----
|
| Principal Software Engineer - Programming Language Architecture
|
| Rec Room is a fun and welcoming community where people from all
| walks of life come together to play, chat, hang out, learn,
| build, and explore millions of experiences. Circuits is our-in
| game programming language that brings these experiences to life:
| it is a game for building games. Children and adults alike use
| Circuits as a fun and educational programming tool or a pleasant
| and productive way to unwind after work hours. By using Circuits,
| many creators learn programming for the first time and gain
| lifelong skills used for hobbies, college decisions, or even work
| opportunities.
|
| As a principal software engineer focusing on programming language
| architecture, you will own key-components of Circuits and work
| with a team of world-class engineers to build gameplay,
| compilers, and interpreters. To move the needle on what's
| possible: you must work with designers to balance modern language
| capabilities with a focus on usability for all creators, novice
| or advanced. Join Rec Room and help improve the lives of millions
| in our community by picking up programming for the first time or
| building and sharing with friends.
|
| We are looking for:
|
| Proficient in multiple programming languages: Our client code is
| written in C#, but an understanding of type-safe, functional, and
| scripting languages is necessary to drive technical discussions.
| C, C++, Rust, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Lisp are great
| examples.
|
| Experienced with full-stack programming language development*:
| Circuits is a key differentiator for Rec Room. It includes a VM,
| type system, compiler, runtime environment, debugger, and IDE
| that work across PC, phones, VR and all major consoles. An
| understanding of language development is necessary to ensure that
| Circuits retains usability and high-performance while working
| across existing and future platforms.
|
| Experienced with video game development: 5+ years experience
| building games on any platform with complex behavior and live
| updates. Circuits is built, compiled and executed within the
| game. So an understanding of the performance requirements, design
| considerations, and execution model of games ensures that
| Circuits is a cohesive part of the overall game-play experience.
|
| Comfortable working in a fast-paced, autonomous, and ambiguous
| environment: At Rec Room we bias towards action.
|
| Rather than meticulous planning with an avalanche of meetings we
| build things when in doubt. As a top engineer you will execute
| with a high degree of trust and autonomy to cut through our most
| challenging technical puzzles.
|
| Lifelong learners: Our top engineers across the company keep up
| with cutting edge articles, papers, and books. As a member of
| this group you will be expected to learn, improve and help others
| improve.
|
| *You don't have to match all of the skills above to apply!*
|
| Bonus points:
|
| Experienced with writing unit tests: Circuits is the most heavily
| tested component of the Rec Room codebase. All major language
| features are covered with tests such that developers have
| immediate feedback when they introduce an error.
|
| Experienced with multiplayer networking: Rec Room is an online-
| only game with a peer-to-peer networking model. Significant
| architectural thought is allocated to keeping networking simple
| across the organization. Circuits itself must keep its data
| structures consistent across all clients in an experience while
| it is being actively edited to ensure creators run the same
| thing.
|
| Familiar with data-oriented design: Foundational components of
| the Rec Room codebase use a data-oriented design. This provides
| performance benefits out of the gate with future benefits
| anticipated by taking advantage of Unity's Data-Oriented
| Technology Stack.
|
| Familiar with type system implementations: Type systems make it
| easier to write error-free code but have an intrusive nature. An
| understanding of type systems is necessary to balance correctness
| with the impact on developer experience. A contributor to an open
| source language: Whether you have a toy language for personal use
| or you own the Rust language server, we love to see real world
| experience.
|
| Company info to know:
|
| Rec Room offers generous medical, dental, and vision plans that
| cover you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children. We also
| support your retirement benefits with a company match. Rec room
| values work-life balance and provides unlimited paid time off. We
| work hard to ensure Rec Room is a fun and friendly place for
| people from all walks of life.
|
| Rec Room provides equal employment opportunities to all employees
| and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and
| harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion,
| age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected
| veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or
| expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal,
| state or local laws.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Does your work make at least a small contribution to a better
| world? If so, where do you work?
|
| I sell used video games online. I make the world slightly better
| by giving thousands of people each year a bit of fun, nostalgic
| escape. I also create a good, well paying job for at least one
| employee so far.
|
| My dad worked in the rockwool/glasswool industry for 30 years as
| an engineer. He made the world better by helping people insulate
| their homes.
|
| I'd be very hesitant to say that the average for-profit company
| doesn't make the world better. I'd be even more hesitant to say
| that social enterprises, nonprofits and other well-meaning
| organisations that sell themselves on being ethical are typically
| effective. And based on the experience of people I know who've
| worked at the Red Cross and Headspace, to say that a single
| employee in one of these organisations can actually make a
| difference (or even achieve anything) is incredibly rare.
|
| Outside of companies that monetise addiction (this includes
| things like social media and mobile games) or spend huge amounts
| lobbying the government it's actually really hard to make money
| these days without providing something people value. It's very
| easy to burn grants and donations for no gain, though.
| Rm13OWne wrote:
| sciclaw wrote:
| Eyenuk (https://www.eyenuk.com) - we are healthcare and AI
| company, working to prevent the leading cause of blindness among
| working age adults (diabetic retinopathy). This not only saves
| people's vision, which is hugely important, but it also helps
| avoid the societal cost of taking care of those who have lost
| their vision.
| vesche wrote:
| Thorn - https://www.thorn.org/
| alexallain wrote:
| I'm the co-founder and CTO at U.S. Digital Response
| (https://usdigitalresponse.org/) - we're a non-partisan non-
| profit that started 2 years ago to help state and local
| governments and non-profits around the US address the challenges
| from COVID.
|
| We've expanded our work beyond COVID to support these
| organizations addressing the critical needs of the public and
| bring the best technology has to offer to these problems. We've
| partnered with more than 230 government and nonprofit partners on
| 300+ projects, impacting more than 42 million people across 36
| states and territories. As one example, we helped the city of
| Memphis and Shelby County distribute almost $14M in rental
| assistance (https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/case-
| studies/keeping-famil...) in a matter of weeks at very low cost.
|
| One of the things I like about this work is that we are tied
| directly in with local experts who understand the problems very
| well, and we can bring the lens of understanding how modern tech
| can be helpful, rather than trying to lead with solutions.
|
| In doing this work, we've discovered a number of common problems
| that have scalable solutions that we're working on in both access
| to benefits and election administration (e.g. our poll worker
| management tool -
| https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/projects/poll-worker-manag...)
| and are starting to scale our team to tackle these challenges.
|
| In addition to our full time roles (https://us-digital-
| response.breezy.hr/), we are always looking for more volunteers
| to join projects (https://usdigitalresponse.org/volunteer).
| papandada wrote:
| I have thought long about this myself in my life (I'm 43) and
| experienced quite a bit from friends and family who have
| specifically sought out work to help people and _it 's
| complicated_.
|
| My best resolution, personally, and advice, is to not worry too
| much about anything too "big", just about what's around me
| wherever I am, the people I work with and live with and help
| them, improve their day, as a start.
| scarpen wrote:
| I'm a co-founder at PicassoMD[0]. We're working to improve our
| healthcare system by connecting primary care providers with
| specialists to better collaborate on patient care. Through our
| mobile apps, we facilitate more appropriate triaging of patients,
| seamless transition of care, and ongoing coordination. The result
| is a reduction in unnecessary referrals and ER visits and better
| patient experience and outcomes.
|
| We work with providers in value based care arrangements[1] so
| helping providers and patients is the same thing that increases
| revenue for us. We're a small team so everyone definitely sees
| and feels the impact of their work.
|
| You can check out our jobs page[2] or reach out for more info
| (even if there's not an open position that's a great match at the
| moment).
|
| [0] https://picasso.md [1] https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-
| Initiatives-Patient-Ass... [2]
| https://apply.workable.com/picassomd/
| brundolf wrote:
| My company, Self Financial (https://www.self.inc), offers a
| credit-building product that helps people get out of the catch-22
| where your credit score is so low you can't get the financial
| products that people normally use to build it. We've gotten lots
| of testimonials from people who have used it to change their own
| lives.
|
| We are a VC-backed for-profit company, not a charity. But I
| wouldn't work here if I thought we were having a negative impact
| on society, and I genuinely believe we have a net positive
| impact. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say about our
| financials, but from my perspective they seem healthy. I believe
| it's a positive and sustainable business.
| bugmen0t wrote:
| Mozilla
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| Work in the healthcare / life sciences world.
|
| I choose to work mainly with oncology related life science
| companies and it is a great feeling know that I am helping
| patients live longer and help with the treatment of cancer.
| mistidoi wrote:
| Plus one for healthcare! I work at Relevant
| (https://relevant.healthcare), and we build tools to help
| community health centers use data to provide better care to
| their patients. There's more detail about what community health
| centers are here: https://relevant.healthcare/jobs/.
| yboris wrote:
| Regardless of where you end up working, consider donating some
| non-trivial part of your income to _cost-effective_ charities
| (ones that use research-proven methods to help as many
| individuals as possible "biggest bang for the buck").
|
| Finding such organizations is easier now than ever, since
| _GiveWell_ has been working on this problem for over a decade:
| https://www.givewell.org/
|
| And 10% seems like a good amount to give to charity - join the
| thousands of others already doing it:
| https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/
|
| The amount of good money can do is tremendous. _For example_ , $3
| donated to AMF (Against Malaria Foundation) results in a
| distribution of an anti-mosquito bednet protecting about 2 people
| from malaria for 3-4 years (evidence shows: prevents
| transmission, decreases malaria incidence in the area; kids don't
| miss school, parents avoid loss of income due to sickness;
| prevents death, and other good things).
| muffinman26 wrote:
| Do you know if there are any organizations or websites that do
| what _GiveWell_ does for more specific issues? Perhaps
| something like a money-to-impact-in-chosen-field rating?
|
| As best as I could tell when I last checked, GiveWell's one
| metric is life years added/dollar. That's a great goal, to the
| point where it feels selfish to care about anything else, but
| when I look at my local community I do also want to know: What
| charities are most cost-effective at solving the local housing
| crisis, or preventing the disproportionate number of deaths for
| <minority group X> in the community, or helping refugees get
| back on their feet, etc.?
| sdooman wrote:
| hey! I'm a software engineer at Down Dog, an app for at home yoga
| & fitness.
|
| We get users who write in thanking us for our work every day, so
| I feel very good about the positive impact we've had (made the
| apps free for 3mm+ people during the lockdowns in 2020, all apps
| free for students & teachers forever, etc).
|
| And we're hiring! https://www.downdogapp.com/jobs
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Anyone in the medical device, medical tech, or bio tech spaces.
| callahad wrote:
| I sincerely enjoyed my eight years at Mozilla. Like any large
| organization, they're far from perfect, but my colleagues' hearts
| were in the right place. https://www.mozilla.org/careers/
|
| Similarly, I just left Element, which is doing really compelling
| work around decentralized encrypted communication (Matrix chat
| protocol). Absolutely necessary for free society.
| https://element.io/careers
| ageitgey wrote:
| I'm a co-founder of Turquoise Health (https://turquoise.health/).
| We are working to improve US healthcare by exposing the prices
| that are negotiated at all levels of the insurance billing
| process and building tools where price negotiations happen in a
| competitive market instead of in secret.
|
| The goal is to drive down healthcare prices using the levers that
| are available. Right now, there are often 10x price differences
| between two providers for the same service (or even between two
| patients at the same hospital) because all pricing is negotiated
| in a vacuum separately by every insurance company. It leads to a
| very distorted system with little downward price pressure.
|
| We don't have a magic wand that we can wave to "fix healthcare",
| but we feel like we are driven by having a positive impact in the
| most pragmatic way possible. The premise will sound strange to
| people outside the US where heath care prices aren't defined by
| what insurance plan your job provides, but it is a huge market in
| the US where a ton of GDP is mis-spent on healthcare and ripe for
| disruption.
|
| (And yes, we are hiring!)
| linsomniac wrote:
| Do you have any ideas on jobs for an RN that would like to
| change the healthcare world. Particularly an RN that was worn
| down pre-pandemic from the cost optimization that leads to
| nurses having 2x+ the ideal patient load, and families treating
| them like waitresses? Asking for a friend.
| akuchling wrote:
| My employer, Aledade.com, runs ACOs and provides analytics
| and an app to help primary-care practices keep better track
| of their patient population. It's not necessarily
| revolutionary -- we're doing conventional things like
| reducing blood-pressure, just trying to do so conscientously.
| Our careers page is at <https://www.aledade.com/current-
| opportunities>.
| ageitgey wrote:
| I really wish I had some good advice, but I don't
| unfortunately.
| wnolens wrote:
| This is really interesting, but given the price discrepancy I
| almost find it hard to believe? lol
|
| A colonoscopy in NYC could cost me as low as $440 or up to $11k
| - cash price. Same providers with insurance are 1500 or 9000.
|
| For some folks it's almost worth it to say you have no
| insurance and get the cash price at the same provider. I
| understood it was the other way around (negotiated rates). What
| a world we live in.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Price transparency is definitely an important aspect to make
| the US system a little less insane.
|
| One thing is to expose the negotiated prices but I think
| another important aspect would be to collect actual bills and
| publish what got actually paid.
| The-Bus wrote:
| I once attended a presentation of a startup that was
| providing this service but focused on prescription drugs
| (with large companies as their client). Their first step in
| the process was to open and run a pharmacy so they could gain
| that perspective.
| [deleted]
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I doubt this will get much traction here on HN, but: LinkedIn.
| Their hiring and recruiting division has made huge efforts to
| make LI useful for small businesses, blue collar workers,
| artists, everyone. They get a bad rap for historical behavior but
| the modern LinkedIn helps thousands of people find jobs every
| day, and not just in tech or management. And a lot of the
| employees there are incredibly passionate about and proud of
| that.
| javert wrote:
| A typical company is having a positive impact on the world,
| because it's providing some good or service to people that they
| are willing to pay money for. The global economy is built on
| this. It's why we have material and ultimately scientific
| abundance as a species.
|
| I get that casinos, cigarette companies, Google, and Facebook
| (and others) appear to be in a different category. But my point
| is that those are the exceptions, not the rule.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yep, you're being downvoted but this is the truth.
| javert wrote:
| It would be interesting to build a model of specific HN users
| who downvote unpopular but true statements, and then use that
| to search for comments that may contain unpopular truths.
| Could be useful.
|
| I guess we'd need access to data about how individual users
| vote, but it could be anonymized.
| edent wrote:
| You said "company". Have you considered working for your local
| civil service?
|
| I've worked on things which have had a positive contribution to
| society. It can be something as "simple" as making a confusing
| form simpler, or it can be something as complex as advising on
| national technology policy.
|
| The salary may not be as high as a private company (although
| you'd be surprised) - but the pension is usually pretty good. You
| get to work on things which - nominally - a plurality of your
| fellow citizens have decided is a priority.
|
| If your national government isn't your thing, then your local
| government is probably crying out for decent technologists. That
| way you can make an impact on your community.
|
| Are you going to agree with everything your bosses say or do? No.
| But that's not much different to any other organisation.
| brundolf wrote:
| I wish there were a way to volunteer some of my spare time to
| civic stuff (as a technologist) instead of having to make it my
| primary employment. I'd do that in a heartbeat, and I bet lots
| of others would too
| jbothma wrote:
| Send me your cv and let's see if a suitable project or task
| comes up.
|
| jobs@openup.org.za
| Sodman wrote:
| If you're US based, there's Code for America which is exactly
| that - https://codeforamerica.org . There are many local,
| typically city-based chapters who meet up regularly and are
| formed almost entirely of part time volunteers contributing
| whenever they have time, to whichever project match their
| skills and interests.
| brundolf wrote:
| This looks awesome, I'll check it out
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Also TechCongress, Presidential Innovation Fellowship, and
| a few others that have popped up with similar
| missions/goals. OpenPhilanthropy may do a tech policy
| fellowship again, if you're in the UK I believe there's a
| No10 fellowship
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| For those looking for high impact career pathways, I highly
| recommend going through 80,000 hours guides, they have a job
| board they update every week or so as well. More longtermist
| focused but also plenty of global health, environmental, nuclear
| stuff too.
|
| https://80000hours.org/job-board/
| realslimjd wrote:
| Right now I work for Aledade [1] where we're focused on improving
| outcomes while lowering cost of care for Medicare patients. The
| amount of good we do in the world is directly aligned with how we
| make money, so there's never conflict between doing the right
| thing and doing the thing that will make us the most money. We
| have a Python backend and Vue frontend, a lot of unit tests, and
| a lot of really great people.
|
| Previously I worked at findhelp [2]. I loved the mission, helping
| people locate community resources, but leadership was really
| focused on chasing money rather than focusing on user experience.
| Occasionally customers asked us to do things that would actively
| hamper the ability of people in marginalized groups to find
| programs aimed at helping them, and we usually obliged. I know a
| few people that have moved over to their chief competitor Unite
| Us [3] and they seem happier there.
|
| [1] https://jobs.lever.co/aledade?lever-via=4Oe9-BZLKF
|
| [2] https://jobs.lever.co/findhelp
|
| [3] https://uniteus.com/our-careers/
| robhawkes wrote:
| TL;DR; Take a look at Octopus Energy [1] and the other companies
| within the Octopus Energy Group [2]. Be a part of tangible and
| real-world progress toward a clean and sustainable global energy
| system (not just renewables!) backed by smart software and
| technology.
|
| You can find a list of global openings at:
| https://jobs.lever.co/octoenergy
|
| ---
|
| I went through a similar journey after feeling incredibly guilty
| and unhappy working for a company that helped others extract even
| more oil and gas from the planet. It completely changed my
| outlook on what I wanted from a job, and made me determined to
| refocus my career toward things that have a tangible benefit on
| society and the planet. I could spend the rest of my life working
| on stuff, or I could spend it on things that actually matter.
|
| It turns out that there are surprisingly few companies around
| that not only do something "good", but also deliver on that with
| tangible results.
|
| Renewable energy is a fantastic area to be involved in right now,
| we're just at the start of a monumental shift toward not only
| more renewable generation (eg. wind farms), but also the
| surrounding technology, infrastructure and policy that's required
| to make it happen in a reliable and cost-effective way (eg.
| batteries, EVs, smart energy grids, change in consumer
| behaviours).
|
| I've been working at Octopus Energy since January doing
| visualisation (eg. 3D graphics, dataviz), who are involved in
| nearly every aspect of the transition to a modern and clean
| energy system around the world. They started in the UK but are
| now spread across many other countries (eg. Germany, Spain,
| Italy, Japan, US and others).
|
| What I love about the Octopus Energy Group is that there's
| something for everyone. Want to work with electric vehicles?
| Check out Octopus Electric Vehicles [3]. Want to work on the core
| software that is already in production, enabling the transition
| to smarter energy systems? Check out Kraken Technologies [4] and
| Kraken Flex [5]. Want to be involved with the physical assets of
| a smart and clean energy system? Check out Octopus Energy
| Generation [6]. And there's plenty more.
|
| It's the first time in 10 years (since working at Mozilla) that
| I've felt part of a shared mission for good. It's both fulfilling
| and highly addictive. And it also helps that the Octopus ethos is
| to treat people like adults, so the trust and work-life balance
| is fantastic. We're all here to work together towards the same
| goal, and it genuinely feels that way.
|
| Long story short, there's something for everyone and I've never
| been happier. Come join us!
|
| [1] https://octopus.energy [2] https://octopusenergy.group [3]
| https://octopusenergy.group/octopus-electric-vehicles [4]
| https://kraken.tech/ [5] https://octopusenergy.group/kraken-flex
| [6] https://octopusenergy.group/octopus-energy-generation
| Guidii wrote:
| As others have suggested, it's difficult to assess an
| organizations values against your own. That being said, it's well
| worth investing your time/energy/creativity into an effort that
| improves the world.
|
| In my career, I've been fortunate to work for a variety of
| companies that have obvious and direct positive social impact. I
| don't want to start a flame war here, but my last ten years have
| been in FANG, which I've found to dramatically magnify my ability
| to have a positive social impact.
| brey wrote:
| I work at Featurespace - we stop fraud, scams, money laundering
| and other financial crimes.
|
| We build software that runs real-time machine learning models at
| scale, deep in the financial 'rails' that move money around, and
| we license it to banks and other financial institutions.
|
| A surprisingly large number of my colleagues are here because of
| similar reasons - we like making a positive societal
| contribution.
|
| We're hiring!
| callmeed wrote:
| Lots of great answers here. I'll add my employer Indeed, the
| world's #1 job website/app. Our mission is simple: help people
| get jobs.
|
| For a large tech company I find it extremely impressive how much
| everyone at the company-from senior leadership to L1 engineers-
| sincerely believe in the mission and what we're doing.
|
| I've got several openings on my team. I'd encourage you to read
| more about our values. If it aligns with what you care about feel
| free to reach out.
|
| https://www.indeed.jobs/
| wolfadex wrote:
| There are a handful of people in the Elm Slack that work for
| companies that fit this description. I've seen everything from
| education to green energy and more. Might be a good place to ask.
| I know each of those companies needs back end devs, and likely
| had some non-Elm code as well.
| gamerDude wrote:
| I'm the cofounder of Math ANEX, we help schools better understand
| how their students are thinking about math so they can offer
| better instruction/support for their students.
|
| We are about to share a couple more positions in ~a month. A
| developer, a sales position, and a math question designer. Feel
| free to email me jeremy@mathanex.com
| shelbel wrote:
| A few resources I've found useful in finding impactful civic tech
| jobs:
|
| https://civictechjobs.codeforamerica.org/
|
| https://civictech.guide/
| junker37 wrote:
| I work at Rescale https://rescale.com/company/careers/. The
| impact we are providing is one of the main reasons I work there.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| I have moved from a well-paid, relaxed job that made rich people
| even richer to a much harder one that's about making people's
| life better. It was the best thing I've done with my career. We
| have people in the company who got burned out in the software
| industry and rejoined just for participating in the mission.
| (We're patientsknowbest.com, aiming to provide all the patients
| all their data without hidden agendas about monetizing it.)
| jacobr wrote:
| I work for Volvo Cars. It's not in any way a charity but I
| believe my work has a mostly positive impact.
|
| Among traditional auto makers were one of the most serious and
| committed to full electrification by 2030 and 50% electric cars
| by 2025. We have the same schedule for selling cars online only,
| so software is not just a cost center or marketing channel, it's
| the future of the company.
|
| Volvo Cars creates a significant number of well paying jobs in
| manufacturing with good working conditions, benefiting local
| communities. For example, all employees across the globe, across
| manufacturing and offices, were recently given 24 weeks of paid
| parental leave (https://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/family-
| bond/).
|
| We're hiring in multiple locations https://jobs.volvocars.com
| MafellUser wrote:
| Thanks for the link. Loads of software related positions in CA,
| but also in Denmark and of course Sweden.
|
| Do Volvo make cars out of Shanghai exclusively these days?
| jacobr wrote:
| No, manufacturing is across multiple locations globally.
| We're building a battery manufacturing plant in Sweden with
| Northvolt, expected to bring 3000 jobs.
| yanokwa wrote:
| I'm founder and CEO at ODK and we are hiring
| (https://getodk.org/jobs)!
|
| ODK is an open-source mobile data collection platform. The common
| use-case is a data collector in the field fills out a form while
| offline. Whenever a connection is found, the data gets sent to a
| server where it can be seen and acted on.
|
| ODK is basically the Land Cruiser of mobile data collection apps.
| It's designed to be very reliable in challenging settings and
| it's trusted for that reason. ODK is unique because the tool is
| generic, but it's primarily used by organizations working in
| humanitarian aid and global health. It's also unique because it's
| got a very friendly community of developers and users who hang
| out at https://forum.getodk.org.
|
| You asked about impact? The impact of ODK on global health alone
| is pretty wild.
|
| * ODK was a key tool in the eradication of wild polio in Africa
| (https://www.africakicksoutwildpolio.com/the-top-five-tech-so...)
|
| * ODK was used to collect the clinical trial data for the recent
| malaria vaccine (https://forum.getodk.org/t/odk-s-role-in-the-
| first-malaria-v...)
|
| * ODK is used to measure the global burden of disease through
| verbal autopsies
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/health/death-records-afri...)
|
| And that's just global health...
|
| * Jane Goodall Institute uses it to track the health of apes
| (https://www.google.com/nonprofits/success-stories/jane-gooda...)
|
| * Red Cross uses it in most crises they respond to
| (https://americanredcross.github.io/2019/01/08/odk-collect-im...)
|
| * Carter Center uses it for election monitoring
| (https://getnemo.org/)
|
| * Honduras uses it to track education progress of students
| (https://proceso.hn/imperdonable-invisibilizar-casi-2-millone...)
|
| * Sierra Leone is using it to monitor the planting of millions of
| trees
| (https://blogs.worldbank.org/sustainablecities/freetownthetre...)
|
| So yeah, if you want to work on something that is objectively
| having positive impact, ODK is a great option!
| clairity wrote:
| > "The common use-case is a data collector in the field fills
| out a form while offline. Whenever a connection is found, the
| data gets sent to server where it can be seen and acted on."
|
| is there any user control over this? otherwise, this is an
| totalitarian's dream come true. i'd suggest thinking about this
| capability a little more in relation to "positive impact".
| yanokwa wrote:
| The vast majority of users are staff who are hired to collect
| data for a non-profit. The vast majority of servers are self-
| hosted by those non-profits. It's very opt-in in that regard.
| Think of say a census worker counting households or farmer
| measuring plot yield. And even in those cases, yes, users
| have a lot of visibility in what is being collected and a
| fair bit of control.
|
| Sensitive data that is collected from participants that users
| interact with are typically governed by policies set by
| Institutional Review Boards or Ministries of Health.
| clairity wrote:
| appreciate the forthrightness, but frankly, that's an
| unconvincing answer. participants should have full control
| over their own data rather than offloading trust to
| government agencies or corporate organizations that are
| potentially themselves corrupt.
|
| note, for instance, that many gov agencies blindly and
| willingly send PII to google without participant
| permission.
| yanokwa wrote:
| I don't disagree and we work hard to provide guidance on
| best practices and software to support implementation.
| Ultimately, in the contexts in which we work, the
| organizations are the data controllers and there are
| complex legal issues at play. For example, in some
| locales, clinical trial participants don't have the right
| to be forgotten.
| Czarcasm wrote:
| Check out Joby Aviation! Currently hiring all types of engineers.
| Developing zero-emission aircraft.
|
| The company is very social/environmental-impact conscious, and
| has an incredible culture.
|
| https://www.jobyaviation.com/
| yboris wrote:
| For focusing on the world's most important problems in effective
| ways, please look into _80,000 Hours_ (an organization named
| after the approximate number of hours of work in a typical life-
| long career).
|
| https://80000hours.org/ & https://80000hours.org/job-board/
|
| They are aligned with _Effective Altruism_ which is focusing on
| effective ways to do the most good -
| https://www.effectivealtruism.org/
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I strongly second this; their guides and advice have helped me
| focus my career and delve into potentially high impact
| pathways. They do skew a bit longtermist (think AI safety), but
| they have guides and jobs for all sorts of high impact roles.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Companies by their nature are driven by profit motives and in
| almost no circumstances have a positive impact on the world. They
| exist to exploit people and resources to the benefit of their
| owners. Even the most well meaning startups I've worked with
| eventual devolve into doing "harm with a smile" to their
| customers. In my experience, as a rule of thumb, the more
| altruistic the mission the more horrific the actual behavior (be
| more skeptical of CEO/Founders pitching a desire to "help
| people", it will start that way but one day you'll be selling
| your user info to big pharma to exploit them for every penny).
|
| I've worked for the Federal Government, thinking it would provide
| some "good work", and I personally found that to be pretty off
| putting. Most of the people I interacted with were bureaucrats
| obsessed with defending and expanding the little bit of power
| they had, with very little interest in serving the public.
| However there were a high number of people who _were_ seriously
| committed to changing the world. So if you want to meet some of
| these people government work can open some other doors (just
| bewared it might leave you ultimately disenchanted).
|
| The best place I've found for doing "good" work is the odd, small
| team doing research at a university. I say this a someone who has
| a lot of frustrations with academia as well, but there are small
| pockets of people doing cool research to make the world better
| that need technical skill to help (academia is much better on the
| non-tenure faculty/staff side). This can be anything from
| biologists working to cure cancer to academic libraries building
| tools for students/the world. This is the most likely chance you
| have to be in a room filled with smart people all seriously
| interested in doing work for the benefit of the world. I have
| long hoped to find the right team to one day land on, but that
| will have to wait until later in my career because...
|
| One major, major catch: expected to severely cut your comp.
| Salary information is public for both publicly funded
| universities and the federal government. Go look up what software
| engineers make at these places and you'll see sub-100k salaries
| are far more common than not. 15 years ago the gap wasn't as big
| (and the recession might send us back to that world), but today
| you have to really, really not care about comp.
|
| I used to do meaningful work for universities, I had a lot of fun
| interacting with students and brainstorming with clever people
| not driven by any profit motive. Unfortunately the gap in pay
| became too much. I make more than 5 times what I used to back
| then, but do miss waking up in the morning as asking "what's the
| best thing I can do for the world with my time today?"
| notriddle wrote:
| There is no such thing as ethical production under capitalism.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| NPOs can always use help. They are the sharp point of social
| impact.
|
| But they don't pay well (when they pay). Not a popular option for
| the HN crowd.
|
| That's why they will often take just about anyone. Good place to
| upskill.
|
| I work for free, for NPOs (I won't go into detail in public, but
| it's no secret), but I'm pretty much "retired" (Quotes, because I
| actually get more done, than I ever did, when making a paycheck).
| I have learned a _tremendous_ amount, working for free (still am
| learning -every day).
| 50 wrote:
| To name a few: https://puri.sm/jobs/,
| https://archive.org/about/jobs.php, https://freedom.press/jobs/
| giaour wrote:
| You could try looking at civic technology organizations. I felt
| that the work I did at USDS had a huge positive impact, and you
| can find private firms like Nava or Truss that work on the same /
| similar projects if you don't want to work directly for the
| government. There are similar agencies and organizations in
| Canada, the UK, EU countries, and some Latin American countries,
| too.
|
| There are also some orgs at tech giants that work on socially
| impactful products (e.g., sustainable hardware teams at AWS or
| Azure, like the folks who work on
| https://natick.research.microsoft.com/), so I wouldn't rule those
| out entirely.
| shelbel wrote:
| Adding a link for Nava since the name can refer to multiple
| companies
|
| https://www.navapbc.com/
| tristanpemble wrote:
| Quartzy (YC S11) makes software for researchers that helps them
| save time and money, and we're hiring: https://quartzy.com
| zkirill wrote:
| I feel like Quartzy doesn't get nearly enough recognition for
| the amazing work that they do.
| tristanpemble wrote:
| thank you. I've been here for around 8 years. it is a huge
| motivator to hear positive feedback from scientists/lab
| managers about how we help them find more time to focus on
| their research. that alone is a major factor in what keeps me
| going.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Honestly, most companies have a _net_ positive impact in the
| world, and if you live in a first world country and are
| interested in improving the world, one of the most effective ways
| to do that is make a lot of money and give a lot of it to well-
| run charities.
|
| But if you want to specifically also work with a company with a
| "good cause", I'd strongly recommend that you go with a company
| whose entire mission is focused on a particular cause, as opposed
| to a more traditional company that says part of its mission is to
| "do good" or whatever. So, for example, Solar Cookers
| International could (maybe?) be an example of the former, while
| General Electric is the latter.
|
| That's not to say GE is in any way bad, but if you want a do-good
| company and it's not a do-good company first and foremost, then
| at some point you will likely feel let down by it (or by yourself
| for working there). Also, it seems that a lot of normal for-
| profit companies that want to be seen as do-good companies can't
| help but get mired in politics (usually due to grossly
| oversimplifying complex social issues).
| kornish wrote:
| We're hiring at Gravity, a carbon accounting firm. Shoot me an
| email if you're interested in helping us fight climate change and
| grow revenue fast: ted@gravityclimate.com.
| madprgmr wrote:
| I attempted to visit y'all's website, but I get a DNS error?
| WHOIS shows it as registered though?
| kornish wrote:
| Marketing site is launching this summer, though emails are
| functional. The lack of site hasn't halted shipping or
| generating revenue :)
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