4 ms·

Long-time non-profit guy here. Totally get where the author is coming from and I'm in a very similar position in terms of where my role relates to my organisati

Long-time non-profit guy here. Totally get where the author is coming from and I'm in a very similar position in terms of where my role relates to my organisation, but I still love my job despite having exactly the same issues. Why? Non-profits are a funny old space. In theory, they're not out there to make money, so people gravitate towards them seeking "purpose". Everything is fine once you realise that you're not going to get that, or at least in the way people come to it for. Non-profits have ridiculous, completely unachievable goals, particularly when you put their budgets in context. Some provide truly excellent services and products (e.g., reports), most don't. So what's so great about a non-profit tech job? I've got an interesting problem space, I love trying to work out how to measure things that are inherently difficult to measure. I have a hell of a lot of autonomy, freedom of tooling, people listen to me on tech issues -- even when they probably shouldn't. I bust my arse because I'm interested in what I'm doing, but I could easily coast if I wanted to. The pay is enough for me, and my colleagues are for the most part super nice and interesting. If I want to learn something, I can make an excuse to play with it at work and run with it. Seeking to have "impact" through a data job at an average non-profit is naive, but a lot of these jobs have stuff to recommend them beyond that. ---- Edit: slight addition to my list of joys of non-profit nerding

einpoklum 4y ago
> you're not going to get that If you believe what the organization does furthers your purpose, then you are going to get that, although I agree that the day-to-day feeling may not be that "purposeful". > Non-profits have ridiculous, completely unachievable goals There a gazillion kinds of non-profits; some do, some don't. If your non-profit is the town museum management foundation, you have a perfectly achievable goal (it's right there in the name). If your non-profit is "the coalition to end world hunger", then maybe not so much. Then again, even such a non-profit might have the actual, stated, legally-filed goal of delivering food aid to areas in the world hit with natural disasters like floods or drought - and that's not an achievable goal in the sense of being ever done with it, but it is achievable in the sense of being able to do just that continuously. > So what's so great about a non-profit tech job? That there is almost never the situation of a huge pile of closed-source code developed internally which you have to live with; and no custom expensive hardware. So typically you need to both rely on, and contribute to, free software that basically anybody can use. > Seeking to have "impact" through a data job at an average non-profit is naive On the contrary. There is great potential of technological impact outside the organization due to what I said above; and there is potential for impact on what the organization does, because it's often more fluid, and using data, you can make convincing arguments about steering activity in a different way - appealing to your colleagues desire to serve noble purposes.
- specproc 4y ago
  For what it's worth, I've mainly worked for "the coalition to end world hunger". I've got a particularly fun gig at the moment, but generally tuned out of the mission a while ago. I guess my point was that sure, as the original post suggested, this sort of work _can_ be meaningless when viewed as the author does, but there can still be lots to love in the sector.
mmlkrx 4y ago
> I have a hell of a lot of autonomy, freedom of tooling, people listen to me on tech issues -- even when they probably shouldn't As someone who's now the only tech person at a small non-profit, this really really resonated with me (as did the rest of your post). I feel it's often challenging to asses how robust/brittle something should be implemented because we don't sell (and maintain) software. A lot of "tech things" simply have a very short life span, often closely tied to project scope and duration. I hope you don't mind me asking here, but it would be great to connect with someone in a similar position. If you're up for it, please feel free to shoot me an email, you can find the address in my profile :)
ludicity 4y ago
Thank you for the insight on this. It's true, I know that some non-profits that are good. Over Christmas, I had the privilege of spending time with an incredibly smart person that that set up a successful non-profit helping out healthcare workers during the pandemic. It really struck me how this person still turned up at the office day-after-day to help out, doing manual labour if necessary, even though it clearly wasn't necessary - they could bask in their early fame and the opportunities it had brought if they wanted to. But that definitely did not seem to be the most common case, as you've said. I think maybe I might write some quick edits to make this clearer, both to myself and reader, but 'most data work' being clueless is the real issue, not 'all data work'. That is, I've moved around jobs quite aggressively, but if there's a 10% chance that any job will be okay for a while, that could take quite a few moves to find one, and you can't change over that often!
tootie 4y ago
I've been in non-profit now for a few years and this rings true. We are a non-profit "business" that competes directly with for-profit companies. We try to impress upon the public that we are non-commercial, when the reality is we are just marginally less commercial because we still need revenue to operate and do normal revenue operations to get it. We just won't gate or restrict our offering no matter what and mostly avoid any commercial interference in the sanctity of our mission. And yeah, we're trying to rebuild our data systems for like the third time in 5 years and can barely even eke out a plan as to what to measure let alone what to action on. On the plus side, no one is deluded and everyone wants to do better.

einpoklum 4y ago

> you're not going to get that If you believe what the organization does furthers your purpose, then you are going to get that, although I agree that the day-to-day feeling may not be that "purposeful". > Non-profits have ridiculous, completely unachievable goals There a gazillion kinds of non-profits; some do, some don't. If your non-profit is the town museum management foundation, you have a perfectly achievable goal (it's right there in the name). If your non-profit is "the coalition to end world hunger", then maybe not so much. Then again, even such a non-profit might have the actual, stated, legally-filed goal of delivering food aid to areas in the world hit with natural disasters like floods or drought - and that's not an achievable goal in the sense of being ever done with it, but it is achievable in the sense of being able to do just that continuously. > So what's so great about a non-profit tech job? That there is almost never the situation of a huge pile of closed-source code developed internally which you have to live with; and no custom expensive hardware. So typically you need to both rely on, and contribute to, free software that basically anybody can use. > Seeking to have "impact" through a data job at an average non-profit is naive On the contrary. There is great potential of technological impact outside the organization due to what I said above; and there is potential for impact on what the organization does, because it's often more fluid, and using data, you can make convincing arguments about steering activity in a different way - appealing to your colleagues desire to serve noble purposes.

specproc 4y ago
For what it's worth, I've mainly worked for "the coalition to end world hunger". I've got a particularly fun gig at the moment, but generally tuned out of the mission a while ago. I guess my point was that sure, as the original post suggested, this sort of work _can_ be meaningless when viewed as the author does, but there can still be lots to love in the sector.

mmlkrx 4y ago

> I have a hell of a lot of autonomy, freedom of tooling, people listen to me on tech issues -- even when they probably shouldn't As someone who's now the only tech person at a small non-profit, this really really resonated with me (as did the rest of your post). I feel it's often challenging to asses how robust/brittle something should be implemented because we don't sell (and maintain) software. A lot of "tech things" simply have a very short life span, often closely tied to project scope and duration. I hope you don't mind me asking here, but it would be great to connect with someone in a similar position. If you're up for it, please feel free to shoot me an email, you can find the address in my profile :)

ludicity 4y ago

Thank you for the insight on this. It's true, I know that some non-profits that are good. Over Christmas, I had the privilege of spending time with an incredibly smart person that that set up a successful non-profit helping out healthcare workers during the pandemic. It really struck me how this person still turned up at the office day-after-day to help out, doing manual labour if necessary, even though it clearly wasn't necessary - they could bask in their early fame and the opportunities it had brought if they wanted to. But that definitely did not seem to be the most common case, as you've said. I think maybe I might write some quick edits to make this clearer, both to myself and reader, but 'most data work' being clueless is the real issue, not 'all data work'. That is, I've moved around jobs quite aggressively, but if there's a 10% chance that any job will be okay for a while, that could take quite a few moves to find one, and you can't change over that often!

tootie 4y ago

I've been in non-profit now for a few years and this rings true. We are a non-profit "business" that competes directly with for-profit companies. We try to impress upon the public that we are non-commercial, when the reality is we are just marginally less commercial because we still need revenue to operate and do normal revenue operations to get it. We just won't gate or restrict our offering no matter what and mostly avoid any commercial interference in the sanctity of our mission. And yeah, we're trying to rebuild our data systems for like the third time in 5 years and can barely even eke out a plan as to what to measure let alone what to action on. On the plus side, no one is deluded and everyone wants to do better.