2 ms·

Can you give some examples of category (C)? I'm not quite sure of the type of organisation you're referring to there.

Shish2k 4y ago
I worked for a few startups like that - we had a great team, we had great technology, we were making the world a better place without harming anyone… and we ran out of money while negotiating sales contracts. In one case I continued working there without pay for 9 months, just because everything-except-the-money was amazing (and the CEO chose to sell all of her personal assets in order to keep the employees being paid as long as possible). But predictably, that wasn’t sustainable, and now I’m a generic FAANG engineer
lucky_cloud 4y ago
I work for an educational multimedia nonprofit. My job involves creating and maintaining educational websites. The organization is not 100% 'not evil' by any means. There are a lot of issues, e.g. we take donations from unquestionably evil sources and prominently mention them (and/or run ads for them). But the mission is to educate, and I know for a fact that my work helps teachers and students every day, so all things considered I feel good about working here. Many people who work here have taken salary/benefits cuts to do so. I'd say most of us are less motivated by money than we are by contributing to society. I was ludicrously underpaid for years, and only recently I got a raise that falls within the lower boundaries of what is average for my position and skills. I get recruiter emails almost daily offering tens of thousands of dollars more than I make now, but I'm not interested in contributing to spyware or optimizing landfill-junk production or any of the other evils that the vast majority of for-profit companies are rewarded for doing. If I think about what it would take for me to work for a company like Facebook, it ends up being "enough to donate whatever it would take to negate the harm they do" - i.e. everything they have, and complete control over the direction of the company. I would turn down millions of dollars if taking it meant working for Facebook.

I worked for a few startups like that - we had a great team, we had great technology, we were making the world a better place without harming anyone… and we ran out of money while negotiating sales contracts. In one case I continued working there without pay for 9 months, just because everything-except-the-money was amazing (and the CEO chose to sell all of her personal assets in order to keep the employees being paid as long as possible). But predictably, that wasn’t sustainable, and now I’m a generic FAANG engineer

lucky_cloud 4y ago

I work for an educational multimedia nonprofit. My job involves creating and maintaining educational websites. The organization is not 100% 'not evil' by any means. There are a lot of issues, e.g. we take donations from unquestionably evil sources and prominently mention them (and/or run ads for them). But the mission is to educate, and I know for a fact that my work helps teachers and students every day, so all things considered I feel good about working here. Many people who work here have taken salary/benefits cuts to do so. I'd say most of us are less motivated by money than we are by contributing to society. I was ludicrously underpaid for years, and only recently I got a raise that falls within the lower boundaries of what is average for my position and skills. I get recruiter emails almost daily offering tens of thousands of dollars more than I make now, but I'm not interested in contributing to spyware or optimizing landfill-junk production or any of the other evils that the vast majority of for-profit companies are rewarded for doing. If I think about what it would take for me to work for a company like Facebook, it ends up being "enough to donate whatever it would take to negate the harm they do" - i.e. everything they have, and complete control over the direction of the company. I would turn down millions of dollars if taking it meant working for Facebook.