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Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

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Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#131

Post by lowkey_ »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #114
lowkey_ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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)

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#132

Post by neves »

brundolf wrote: post #72
wayne-li2 wrote: post #39

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 i…

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#133

Post by quigebo »

At Súper (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 Súper 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!

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#134

Post by zweiasakura »

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/

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#136

Post by a-dub »

zweiasakura wrote: post #134

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…

> 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?

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#137

Post by alexallain »

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).

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#138

Post by muffinman26 »

yboris wrote: post #20

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…

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 in the community, or helping refugees get back on their feet, etc.?

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#139

Post by Sodman »

brundolf wrote: post #108
edent wrote: post #49

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. Y…

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

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#140

Post by jbothma »

wayne-li2 wrote: post #39

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 i…

> 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.

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