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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

#51

Post by snapplebobapple »

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#53

Post by systemvoltage »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#55

Post by zkirill »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#57

Post by linsomniac »

ageitgey wrote: post #21

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 differe…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#58

Post by The-Bus »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #30
ageitgey wrote: post #21

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 differe…

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.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#59

Post by cheriot »

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…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Recommend employers with positive social impact

#60

Post by monroewalker »

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…

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/

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