Frustrations of a socially conscious tech jobseeker

June 9, 2017 2:26 PM

I'm a tech professional in the US with a mix of programming and IT skills and several years experience. I'm not working now and have been out of work for a long time. I would strongly prefer to work in socially positive areas like health care, education, renewable energy, or poverty reduction, to give some examples. I've applied to many places but am still unemployed, and I'm discouraged and have taken a long break from looking. It's frustrating to have useful skills with not much interest from employers even before salary is discussed. I would appreciate any advice you can give for my job search, includes links to forums, newsgroups, subreddits, Slack groups or other online discussion areas geared toward tech professionals interested in working for the social good.

I also dislike where I live now, so I've been avoiding local places. My strong preference is for fully remote work.

I regularly contribute to a popular, important open source project. I don't regret or resent my contributions, but I have not found this volunteering particularly helpful in finding paid work. If you recommend participating in open source, please also discuss the type of open source work you have in mind and also tips on how to leverage it into paid work.

I'm also interested in anecdotes from the other side of the fence, that is, the hiring challenges faced by people at relevant organizations. My impression is that many small-to-medium non-tech-focused organizations have a weak understanding of their own tech requirements and how to hire tech professionals, and I'd appreciate hints on how I could meet you halfway in the hiring process.

Thank you.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (11 answers total)

I don't have a silver bullet answer for you, but my employer does a lot of work in renewable energy research and in spinning out companies around those technologies, and I think they're the types of companies that would match the sort of philosophical goals you have. That said, the "fully remote" thing is probably a dealbreaker for them, and potentially for other companies you're applying to - companies that you're likely to find philosophically aligned with you are also likely to be on the small side where the philosophical goals are built up within a culture of like-minded people who are physically around each other keeping each other goal-oriented. I've done remote work in the past myself and have been similarly frustrated when someone says no to that option, but being on the other side of the hiring equation now, I see how important it is in some situations to have people actually there every (or at least most) days and I've had to say no to remote applicants myself. I'm sad about it, because I want to be supportive of remote work (recognizing its importance to working parents, people who are not able-bodied, people who can't afford to relocate to our asininely expensive city, etc) but the reality of keeping a small company passionate about doing the right thing with our technology requires being pretty hands-on in keeping that mentality at the forefront of everything we do.

I know it's not useful to say "just move" so I won't, but I'd urge you to reconsider what your local options are, or see if there are other not-fully-remote ways for you to engage with this industry.
posted by olinerd at 2:35 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Hi,

I'm in Oakland, CA. I have worked as a tech recruiter, Tech Manager, Consultant, IT Director and other nerd things. I am 20+ years into my career in Tech.

Here is some free advice:

It helps to know people. If you don't know anybody, get on LinkedIn and start working it. I know it sucks, but it's the thing people are using.

Small and medium sized companies here in the Bay Area, including non-profits (who don't have a friend or some low paid sucker onsite) tend to use consultants who are connected to a larger group or company because of liability.

Being responsible for someone else's data is potentially expensive for an individual contractor.

If "remote only" is your preference, it's doable. However, it's waaaay easier to get gigs if you spend some time getting connected to a group or organization (in the markets you'd like to work in) that can vouch for you.

In most of the major metro markets worldwide, there are agencies that connect freelancers to employers. If you have credentials and are willing to spend a couple hours in a city near you interviewing and jumping through hoops taking tests and pretending to be normal... you could be an MVP at many organizations if you are any good. Examples: Aquent, Robert Half, Vitamin T, Creative Circle... and many many more. They all have clients that are in the market you seek.

If you only want to work for people who share your values and are doing the bigger greater thing... then you have to be in a circle adjacent to a progressive city. There are agencies in those cities that focus on the things you are seeking.
posted by bobdow at 4:13 PM on June 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

From a healthcare provider perspective, I think the IT job market is still pretty healthy, although not red hot like it was five years ago at the height of the Meaningful Use gold rush. However, I think there are a couple of things in your search working against you.

First, there are a ton of IT jobs in hospitals and health systems, but relatively few programmer jobs. Hospitals almost never develop their own software anymore; they buy a bunch of off-the-shelf systems, customize them to reflect their own workflows (which customization tends to more often happen through updating data tables and software configuration rather than writing customized code), and then integrate them together.

For this process they need a shit-ton of business analysts, interface analysts, and IT infrastructure analysts; a decent number of project managers, testing coordinators, and security analysts; but much fewer of the coder and DBA type developer roles where a hiring manager would be impressed by you contributing to an open source project. Those developer jobs do of course exist at vendors, but that's a much more consolidated market than providers themselves are, and even the vendors often employ more implementation analysts than programmers.

Provider IT organizations are a lot less likely to support remote work than some other industries, since their processes hinge so much on understanding their business logic and workflows, and healthcare business logic tends to be particularly complicated, festooned with stakeholders and obscure areas of domain knowledge, and prone to killing people if automated wrong. They're a lot more likely to let somebody move to remote after years of knowing them and trusting them than to hire somebody straight to a remote role. Even vendor employees often have to spend a lot of time onsite with their customers.

The other thing I'll say is that, from a "socially positive" POV, healthcare in the US system might not be all you hope for. Sure, you might be working for a non-profit. A non-profit with two billion dollars a year in revenue, executives who make millions, a consent decree from the Justice Department for predatory pricing practices, one day a week set aside in the local court for them to take out liens against patients' houses, and a collection agency as a wholly-owned subsidiary.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 5:14 PM on June 9, 2017

I'm in the middle of switching jobs right now, and after a 7 month search, I didn't hear back from a single company that was hiring for remote only. They just have a way bigger pool to fish from, and I think they can just pick and choose.

You might want to get something going locally just for a year or two so you're not out of the market anymore. It's a drag, but it might get you some leads in the longer term or at least expand your experience.
posted by getawaysticks at 6:07 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you don't like where you live, it would also make a lot of sense to move now and then look for a job in an area where you do want to live, or to look at jobs that offer relocation packages, rather than continuing to live where you do but requiring remote work. Being in a situation where you want remote work really limits your options, especially if you've been unemployed for a long time -- it's not a super attractive package to most employers.

You might also see if there's some way you can package your open source work as a job, without being dishonest (do you actually work on it a lot, like 20+ hours per week? If not, can you start?) Anything that keeps your resume from getting flagged as "long term unemployed" will help a lot.
posted by phoenixy at 6:09 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Have you considered looking for positions in {local, state, federal} government? It took me a long time to realize I don't like working in the private sector, even if company/job has a socially conscious vibe to it.
posted by Napoleonic Terrier at 7:09 PM on June 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you're interested in the non-profit world, you can definitely make lots of connections through NTEN, especially at the Nonprofit Technology Conference or one of their side events.
posted by Tiny Bungalow at 7:10 PM on June 9, 2017

Also take a look at Idealist if you haven't yet. They have remote job listings as well as remote volunteer opportunities. TechSoup has remote volunteering opportunities too, if you're into that.

Having worked in non-profit tech a lot, I can say that volunteering is sometimes the best way to get your foot in the door.
posted by Tiny Bungalow at 7:19 PM on June 9, 2017

Figure out a way to get docker and aws in your resume and you'll be beating off recruiters with a stick.
posted by empath at 7:25 PM on June 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

If you haven't checked it already, you might consider trying HigherEdJobs.com. Universities are everywhere, and they are all looking for IT talent.
posted by schooley at 7:38 PM on June 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Have you tried connecting with folks via Code for America's local offshoots and similar coding for civic innovation projects? For example, here in Honolulu there is a Code for Hawaii group and while not nearly as big as NYC's app contest, the city and the state have both sponsored civic hackathons.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:28 PM on June 12, 2017