Jobs in Software/Technology Activism?

Not sure where you are based, but I've considered (and interviewed with) the US Digital Service. This is going to be nonpartisan work to help the US Federal government implement new technology.

When I talked to them, examples including building out web applications allowing veterans to apply for benefits more easily, and other things like that. Not exactly earth shaking, but really has the opportunity to improve the interactions between people and the government.

When I interviewed, they did have limits on salaries (due to laws about what the government can pay) and were only doing 2-4 year stints. It's been a while, so not sure where things stand now.

More here:

https://18f.gsa.gov/

https://www.usds.gov/

Since 6 months, I have my dream job as per my personal belief value system: making software for the public health industry in my state. I loved the idea (and still do) of being a public servant making best in class software that benefit society through better healthcare services but the reality of the job is vastly different to what I imagined. The reality is the way we build software is broken beyond repair. As an example, my current project which run in the tenth of millions of dollars out of tax money have 0 unit test because my boss and colleagues see automated test in general as a waste of time.

All in all, the culture in here makes it very hard to improve anything as most people I work with have spent their entire professional life in a bubble where every problem is solve through shoehorning various products and framework made by oracle. Ultimately as much as I would love to better use tax money to provide better healthcare services for my state, I'm not in a position to shift the culture.

That kind of job isn’t that different to get than other jobs but it is a smaller universe. It is like looking for a job in a smaller town or losing for a more senior job which is higher up the pyramid and less prevalent.

So you might need to learn more skills, get better at interviewing, accept worse pay and other conditions, expect to take longer, spend a few years developing industry connections, etc.

The side hustle approach is not ‘settling for less’ but it is the closest thing to a royal road. In the nonprofit sector people are often frustrated with the slow pace of building consensus, getting grants, etc. Today the metropolitan museum of art has a quarter of a million public domain images and an API limit of 80 requests/sec (!) but if you came around a few years ago asking for that they’d have told you there was nothing they could do without getting a grant.

(It seems they got a really big one!)

So your options are to do things on your own that don’t need the grant, spend years getting the grant, walk on the scene when the grant is in.

None of those are easy even if you don’t see other people who succeeded doing the work. If it is your mountain to climb it is your mountain to climb.

If you’re interested in getting into civic tech I can’t recommend this book enough: A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide by Cyd Harrell (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1040593).

I read it about 6 months into my first civic tech job and it was so useful I wish I read it before I started my job search!

https://idealist.org might be a good starting point (it’s a large job board for nonprofit jobs, and includes tech jobs)

I’ve seen tech jobs posted there that were at the EFF and ACLU, among many others.

Also, I just saw this go by (Senior fullstack engineer at MoveOn): https://front.moveon.org/careers/?gh_jid=3331988

Related thought: I'm a person that is really drawn to humanitarian and mission driven causes, but not interested in participating in any kind of activism. When looking for mission-driven software engineering jobs, I find it incredibly frustrating that almost all of the ones I see posted are activism related. Why is it so hard for software engineers to work for humanitarian causes without working for activists?

Try searching for jobs at the Open Document Foundation. They were looking for developers few months ago.

Or search for other FOSS jobs here: https://www.fossjobs.net

HTH

My last job was at a credit card company, which really wore on my over time. So much so that I had to take time off afterwards to re-center myself. I would encourage you to not rule out the possibility of working for a for-profit company. I applied to a handful of companies that I considered a benefit to everyone (the company, their customers, and society as a whole). These companies exist, but you have to be willing to wait for the openings. My current company is making a product that will side the transition to renewable energy, and we’re all really excited about that. We’re also hiring, but I’m sure there’s a lot of company that meet that criteria.

https://www.virtual-peaker.com/talent

Sounds like you might fit into civic tech: https://civictech.guide/

What do you think about strengthening labor unions & reducing wage theft of gig workers? Those are some of the results of the work we do at wrapbook, and something that I take pride in. But it's not maybe as "focused" as what you're after, as internally we're very warm and laid back.

But if it sounds interesting, we're hiring for Engineering(Rails) & Data; Email me at russell@wrapbook.com if you want to chat more.

Regardless, there are a plethora of nonprofits (FSF, EFF, AP, etc..) that need expertise, so you could try targeting orgs that do work you favor specifically.

Do a fellowship in Congress, learn the ropes and if you don’t want to stay on the Hill, you’ll still have had a unbeatable crash course on how politics works. https://www.techcongress.io/

Not a coder, but had similar feelings back in 2017. Didn't see a realistic path to full-time employment that checked all the boxes. What I did was started my own "group," aligned my group with the EFF'S Alliance, and started working on issues locally in my spare time.

4 years on, what seems possible to me now would be to have a non-profit that is capable of doing hard and soft work for community groups and non-profits at discount, while also offering market rate services to paying customers. Especially as a one-person shop, this seems achievable and sustainable in theory.

Have you applied at iFixit?

https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair

"Twitter and Teargas" by Zeynep Tufekc (available in pdf I believe) addresses the issues of how technology works with social movements. Although not directly addressing open source, the principles are applicable. I have two active projects and am looking for help. arthurgarbanzo@gmail.com

Consider Wikipeidia. Open and free service that is incredibly valuable to the world. Ethical revenue model that still makes lots of money. I've thought before that would be a cool place to work.

you can look for a job in the real estate sector. Prestige Group's newest project Prestige Great Acres is a good opportunity. https://www.prestigegreatacres.com/

Take whatever job pays the most, use some of the money to donate to people making a difference in the areas you care about.

Our industry is doing quite well (If you leave the ad-economy out - basically Google/Facebook)

Cloud computing, Open Source Software in commercially feasible way and so on. Tremendous growth and innovation is underway.

We do have a problem of wokeness, left in SF destroying the city, teacher unions hurting competitiveness of kids, police unions stopping all police reform in California.

Basically just like USSR, all the do-gooders - claiming to do good in the name of the “people” are the problem.

So, don’t be a protester - do real work, build something, be the solution. Create a small open source project of value. This is really really hard - that’s why do many people protest instead - that is easy.

I think you're coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of looking for a job in technology activism, I think you should just find a job in technology and then be an activist.