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This. There are many incredible organizations doing great work in the code for good space, and not solely in the non-profit or government sectors. I’ll second

by wchest 9y ago

This. There are many incredible organizations doing great work in the code for good space, and not solely in the non-profit or government sectors. I’ll second the reference to Code for America. I have a colleague who did their fellowship and learned a ton while working with some great local governmental agencies. They’ve also recently launched a job board to curate high impact mission-driven jobs and jobs with local government entities: https://jobs.codeforamerica.org/ https://jobs.codeforamerica.org/. I’d also encourage looking at B-Corps: https://www.bcorporation.net/ https://www.bcorporation.net/. These are for-profit companies that include positive social impact alongside profit as determinants of success. I work at TechChange, which is a B-Corp. If education and capacity development are your passions, we at TechChange are building a SaaS learning platform that empowers organizations around the world to make their training more effective. We are working hard to push the limits of traditional online learning and are looking for talented folks to help us achieve this goal: https://www.techchange.org/careers/ https://www.techchange.org/careers/.

daguar 9y ago
Hi! I lead engineering on Code for America's work building services improving the social safety net, so happy to answer any questions. I'd also mention that we're hiring directly for teams at CfA building large-scale services serving the most vulnerable Americans. My team works on radically improving access to the food stamp program, a massive anti-poverty program, but one with only about 65% of eligible Californians enrolled — we've found a lot of that gap is because the process is really difficult. If you apply in California, this is the online experience — 200+ questions, 50+ screens, a lot of confusion: http://citizenonboard.com/snap/ca/#2 http://citizenonboard.com/snap/ca/#2 So we operate a much easier online application which is mobile-first (~50% of search traffic for "food stamps") and which takes on average 8 minutes to complete — you can try it out at https://demo.getcalfresh.org/ https://demo.getcalfresh.org/ And we're hiring: - Senior Engineer (Ruby/Rails, TDD, pairing): https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=502640 https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=502640 - Product Manager: https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=652829 https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=652829 We also have a superb team working on safety and justice, namely with the goal of safely reducing incarceration. For example. They operate services that: - Make it much easier for people to clear their records when the law allows (invaluable for re-entry and getting jobs) - Allow case & probation workers to text with folks in the justice system and help them do the pre-trial diversion things that keep them out of jail/prison and help them with resources They're also hiring for a Senior Engineer role: https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=525208 https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=525208 Happy to answer any questions about these!
- tyrust 9y ago
  Are all of these jobs at the same location SF? The jobs page (https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs) lists locations "Headquarters", "San Francisco, CA, United States", and "San Francisco Headquarters" as if they might be different places.
  - daguar 9y ago
    Oh, odd! Yeah I'll get that fixed. Yes — San Francisco (SOMA) is the location for all of those.
- wand3r 9y ago
  Do you get any push back on this from the state/gov? Cynically; I can see this process being intentionally obscure and difficult to dissuade people from applying and receiving aid.
  - daguar 9y ago
    Great question! Overall I'd say our gov't partners are incredibly supportive. A lot of why these processes are hard are not by intentional design, but rather by _unintentional, non-design_. What do I mean? It's that these systems evolve over time, via massive waterfall IT procurement processes, and you often have someone (say, one county, or one unit) who proposes to add one more question because it makes it better for their unit or a subset of users. Iterated over years and years — and with no systemic actor responsible for pushing back and saying, "but this creates more burden for the majority of users" — you get overwhelming user experiences. Sometimes I've jokingly called this the "no feature left behind" approach. What we do is basically design & build a service that puts users at the center, and when someone wants us to add something ask ourselves, "will this help people quickly and easily get through the benefit enrollment process?" It's essentially applying "products are about saying no," just to a domain where there's currently no one there to say no.
    - simplicitea 9y ago
      Actually, to follow up -- you mention simplifying the process to be easier on the user. Are myriad of questions one must laboriously answer to enroll in EBT programs a matter of... legislation? taxes? I would imagine that the questions have to do with honing in on a complex placement within the law which determines benefit levels. How do you go about simplifying a process which requires a large number of distinct data points by law or by census design?

by wchest 9y ago

daguar 9y ago

Hi! I lead engineering on Code for America's work building services improving the social safety net, so happy to answer any questions. I'd also mention that we're hiring directly for teams at CfA building large-scale services serving the most vulnerable Americans. My team works on radically improving access to the food stamp program, a massive anti-poverty program, but one with only about 65% of eligible Californians enrolled — we've found a lot of that gap is because the process is really difficult. If you apply in California, this is the online experience — 200+ questions, 50+ screens, a lot of confusion: http://citizenonboard.com/snap/ca/#2 http://citizenonboard.com/snap/ca/#2 So we operate a much easier online application which is mobile-first (~50% of search traffic for "food stamps") and which takes on average 8 minutes to complete — you can try it out at https://demo.getcalfresh.org/ https://demo.getcalfresh.org/ And we're hiring: - Senior Engineer (Ruby/Rails, TDD, pairing): https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=502640 https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=502640 - Product Manager: https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=652829 https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=652829 We also have a superb team working on safety and justice, namely with the goal of safely reducing incarceration. For example. They operate services that: - Make it much easier for people to clear their records when the law allows (invaluable for re-entry and getting jobs) - Allow case & probation workers to text with folks in the justice system and help them do the pre-trial diversion things that keep them out of jail/prison and help them with resources They're also hiring for a Senior Engineer role: https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=525208 https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs?gh_jid=525208 Happy to answer any questions about these!

tyrust 9y ago
Are all of these jobs at the same location SF? The jobs page (https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs https://www.codeforamerica.org/jobs) lists locations "Headquarters", "San Francisco, CA, United States", and "San Francisco Headquarters" as if they might be different places.
- daguar 9y ago
  Oh, odd! Yeah I'll get that fixed. Yes — San Francisco (SOMA) is the location for all of those.
wand3r 9y ago
Do you get any push back on this from the state/gov? Cynically; I can see this process being intentionally obscure and difficult to dissuade people from applying and receiving aid.
- daguar 9y ago
  Great question! Overall I'd say our gov't partners are incredibly supportive. A lot of why these processes are hard are not by intentional design, but rather by _unintentional, non-design_. What do I mean? It's that these systems evolve over time, via massive waterfall IT procurement processes, and you often have someone (say, one county, or one unit) who proposes to add one more question because it makes it better for their unit or a subset of users. Iterated over years and years — and with no systemic actor responsible for pushing back and saying, "but this creates more burden for the majority of users" — you get overwhelming user experiences. Sometimes I've jokingly called this the "no feature left behind" approach. What we do is basically design & build a service that puts users at the center, and when someone wants us to add something ask ourselves, "will this help people quickly and easily get through the benefit enrollment process?" It's essentially applying "products are about saying no," just to a domain where there's currently no one there to say no.
  - simplicitea 9y ago
    Actually, to follow up -- you mention simplifying the process to be easier on the user. Are myriad of questions one must laboriously answer to enroll in EBT programs a matter of... legislation? taxes? I would imagine that the questions have to do with honing in on a complex placement within the law which determines benefit levels. How do you go about simplifying a process which requires a large number of distinct data points by law or by census design?