Ask HN: Finding ethical work | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Finding ethical work

9 pointsanon5898765655312 comments

I'm looking for advice on finding work as an experienced web developer in small or mid-sized companies or non-profits focused in ethical areas such as education, healthcare, or clean energy. I'll refer to such an organization here as a "QO", for Qualified Organization. I don't mean to offend anyone working for non-QOs.

I have credible education, work experience and open source participation. I'm not working now, and my situation is stable so I can take some time to look. I don't need much money, just enough to afford a small apartment, basic necessities, some savings, and small luxuries. I'm willing to relocate to certain U.S. cities or work remotely.

I've gotten some positive response but no offers or paid work. I've applied to over fifty places in the past six months, not all of them QOs, which is more than nothing but I feel like that number should be in the hundreds. I don't want to stay where I am now so local networking would not be very helpful. My main job sites are http://www.idealist.org, https://whoishiring.io (WIH), and the monthly HN hiring posts. I know that WIH aggregates from HN but I like going through the HN posts anyway. Idealist is focused on QOs but not technical work. WIH and HN are focused on technical work but not QOs. The signal-to-noise ratio on Indeed is low and I rarely look there, and I assume it's the same for other big job sites like Dice.

I'm open to freelancing. I would be fine with making sites for truly charitable QOs for free or token payment. Is there a site that connects developers to QOs to do this sort of work? I also eventually need work that will pay enough to live on.

Any advice appreciated. I've left out specific information so the discussion is generally useful and less blatantly about hiring me personally, but I can add an email address to my profile if anyone wants to talk about specific work or just wants to chat privately.

If you look really closely, a lot of what we do today (even things that seem ethical) is highly unethical.

After pondering this for months, the only thing I'm coming up with is dropping out and going full-Amish.

I agree that most things are both good and bad, especially in the modern interconnected world.

There are three ways that a person can live: live and work normally, live and work dedicated to some purpose, or withdraw from society. In religious terms these groups correspond to the laity, the clergy, and hermits, but secular society can divide this way too. These groups depend on each other, and each of them can do good, and I think it's a mistake to say one is absolutely better or worse than the others.

Nevertheless some people are better suited to one group over the others. If you think one group is better for you, then you should move into it. That doesn't mean the people in the other groups are doing things wrong though, they're just doing things differently from you.

Suppose you're a person with the skills to work at Google for a lot of money. Google is ethically complicated, but they do some good things for sure. You could work for them, make a lot of money, live moderately, pay your taxes, take care of a family, and donate to charity.

You could also work for much less money for some organization that only does good. You're definitely making things better at work, but you have less of your own resources to put toward taxes, family, and charity, and you're consuming the taxes and charity that the first person paid.

Or, you could withdraw almost entirely from society, live some place extremely cheap, do some freelance technical work for a few hours a week or maybe become a short-order cook at a truck stop. You're not really making things better on any large scale, but you're not making things worse either, and at least you aren't consuming resources. You're also free to write or make art that inspires and leads the first person to donate and the second person to work under their market value.

All of these are good options, you just need to find the one that is the best fit for you.

For the hypothetical Google route, the thing about most (successful) businesses is that if you're making a dollar, they're at least making two. If Google is "ethically complicated," it is unlikely that your personal charity will offset their "complication".

With do-goodering, changes in perspective and nth-order effects can turn that into a brimming cup of regret overnight.

If you just want to live small and and have a positive impact, how about working in a library? They've got those everywhere.

I don't think it's true that if a company is successful then you will make them two dollars for every dollar you get. I think many large companies are profitable due to rent-seeking or externalizing costs, and the marginal gain from the N-thousandth employee is negative, but they can't lay off employees or even stop hiring because of legal or political reasons. If you get a job with one of these companies, then you are wasting their money, which is a good thing to do against an evil company.

Noam Chomsky has been repeatedly asked whether capitalism is a good thing after all because the average quality of life has improved under it. His reply is that average quality of life improved under slavery too, but that's not a justification for slavery. You can see him discuss this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QAqU2KpaY.

You and I are having the reverse conversation, which is whether it's better to participate in a harmful system for the sake of making any progress, or better to opt out entirely. Actually, because humanity is currently headed off a cliff due to climate change and the worldwide rise of authoritarian governments, the choice is between participating in the harmful system or allowing large-scale catastrophe.

I agree that libraries fit the criteria I laid out, but I guess that like other do-good organizations, they are poorly funded and have a glut of trained specialists and willing volunteers. It's a sign of our dysfunctional times that the more directly helpful an organization or job is, the less well funded it will be.

Even lame old IBM is making $244,447 in profit per employee according to this BI article: http://www.businessinsider.com/top-tech-companies-revenue-pe...

If we safely assume that IBM has a lot of unproductive admin staff who are collecting paychecks to surf Facebook all day, a competent and motivated developer is actually bringing a lot more than $244,447 in additional profits to the table.

That, and most "QOs" I've encountered are fronts/whitewash/greenwash/etc for larger and more malevolent concerns.

Without a major streak of luck, I think living small and setting a good example is the best any of us can reliably do.

The article you linked is about revenue, not profits, but that doesn't really matter for the argument.

I don't think you can divide $X revenue by N employees and say that therefore there must be some employee pulling in at least $X/N revenue, or at least say that in a way that matters. Imagine a hypothetical tech startup with $1 billion revenue and 10 employees. Is one developer there necessarily bringing in at least $100 million? Would you hire that developer for $50 million and consider it a deal? What if most of that $1 billion came from a single government contract with a serious conflict of interest?

Anyway I think that working for a large organization at a big salary and coming out morally ahead is theoretically possible but very difficult. I don't think I'm cut out for it, myself.

I will suggest you figure out what you think makes a net positive contribution to the world and go do that. Go create that thing.

> and going full-Amish.

Eh, they're on no high horse.

There are sites that focus on both, for instance... https://www.nten.org/jobs/

Nten is great.

One thing to understand about nonprofits is that although most now recognize that they now need tech, they (rightly) do not generally consider it part of their core mission.

Thus instead of keeping someone on staff, they outsource technical work to agencies. (Just as they outsource other important but non-core functions, such as developing, printing, and sending all that snail mail spam they send every winter.) There are even a few agencies that specialize in tech work for nonprofits. Other organizations use services that offer a hosted CMS and fundraising database and other tools in a single package along with high-touch customer service. Small nonprofits may hire freelancers to manage their website for a few hours per month, and try to run their own email campaigns.

Larger organizations will often have someone in house whose job is to plan and manage their digital presence and campaigns. That person is generally a tech-savvy layperson. Their job is mostly to communicate between internal stakeholders and the external providers.

Other organizations may be data-heavy. They may have a DBA/analyst on staff to handle data management and reporting.

A very small subset of nonprofits see technology as core to their mission. These are probably the ones you're looking for. Just keep in mind that many of these are relatively new kids on the block, so to speak. Few of them have the resources to hire more than one or two technologists, thus those people are of necessity very broad generalists.

A subset of well-funded major institutions have decided that data or technology is part of their core mission or need internal tooling beyond classic IT desktop and network provisioning. Institutions of higher education come to mind. So does the NYPL, which has all sorts of fun digital initiatives.

Another possibility you might consider would be government sector work. There are hundreds of federal agencies that need everything from websites to data management to payroll systems, and a few doing fun things with open data. There are also state and local agencies - from transit to child welfare agencies - that need similar things on a smaller scale; some of which are doing very good things, and whose efficiency you might help improve.

Your analysis of small non-profits matches my experience both searching and applying. I'll add that even the tech agencies that serve these non-profits want people with a specific set of relatively old skills, as HN would think of them, that are still really well-known. Wordpress and Drupal are popular. I guess this is doubly true for the non-profits themselves, which have more specific needs and less flexibility.

Some government work is fine. I'm avoiding any federal work under the incoming political leadership, but that's a complex situation and reasonable people can disagree. Most state or city government work is fine with me, but I want to relocate and I assume these places aren't interested in hiring remotely. Moving to a large state capital might be a good idea if I decide to move without something lined up.

My technical background is a little scattered, so while I'm a good developer in a general way, I'm unlikely to be the first choice if an organization needs a specialist in any specific thing. I suppose anyone hiring me remotely needs to either be confident in their ability to assess general technical aptitude, or large enough that they can afford to be wrong, neither of which correspond well to the places where I'm applying.

Being a generalist will likely serve you well applying to small agencies and organizations. You may have more trouble with larger agencies/orgs and government due to the way their hiring processes work. Unless there are one or two things you'd be willing to focus on for a couple years and can tailor your resume to.

Good on you for pursuing this, and good luck!

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