Are there any good companies anymore?

Anything tools- or infrastructure-related. Networking. Operating systems. Compilers. EDA. Education. Public transit. Government work. GIS. Embedded systems. Medical technology. Journalism. Space stuff. Games. There's tons of stuff. What do you love?

But I'm wondering how much not taking a "significant pay cut" is entering into your decision-making, because your list of things in the known universe is pretty narrow. If you decide you can't give up the salary, that's fine, but that's also your answer right there about how highly you value those aspects of your career. Or as The Onion put it, "Facebook Employees Explain Daily Struggle Of Trying To Care About Company's Unethical Practices When Gig So Cushy".

Education is adtech. Thanks to pearson, blackboard, etc.

Full on user tracking and drm focused. It was easier coding gaming anticheaters and copy protection than work on 2018 pearson.

I'd agree with other commenters that it might be helpful to adopt a more flexible moral framework. That being said, I can identify with your struggle, as I've often felt the same way. I've pursued the route of working at many different non-profits. Currently working at a non-profit focused on climate change. The thing is, every place I've ever worked, within a few weeks, I see behind the curtain and find something to be unhappy about. No company or organization is perfectly good, and I don't think you should attach your sense of morality too closely to the company you work for. Focus on being a good, moral person in the direct interactions you have with others. Be a good coworker, good partner, good neighbor, etc. The world needs more people who are good to each other these days. If you can do that, it's more important than which company you might happen to work for in 99% of the cases.

As far as choosing a company goes, one strategy that I have is to keep lists of companies that do things I like. When I'm looking for work, I go through those lists to see who's hiring. I've got a list on Twitter of companies I like, a spreadsheet of companies that I like and links to their jobs pages, and when I come across a job posting that looks like a role I might like, I add the link to it as a todo item in a specific category of my todo app, and when I have some time I send off an application, just in case.

Just about every company is doing something at some part of their business, which someone can tear into and say is immoral, unfair, unethical, or questionable in some shape or form. And it’s easy to go from an objective discussion to subjectivity. It’s like politics or you can even say it IS politics.

Even the most innovative company that treats its workers fairly and compensates them “well” across the board is probably doing something somewhere that will put someone else out of work.

I’m sort of ranting here, but I feel it’s very easy to go down this rabbit hole of complaining about X or Y or spreading negativity, and even on HN, we seem to spend quite a bit of time painting things in large brush strokes and labeling just about anything anyone is doing as being nefarious or having some ulterior motive.

I can’t say this is really productive.

The logical conclusion of your comment is that all companies are equally harmful (or that any attempt at distinguishing between them is pointless), which is blatantly untrue.

There's is a huge difference in the harm created by someone working on, say, Jira vs. someone building interactive cigarette ads that subtly appeal to children.

There are also lots of companies much more evil than most: Facebook is the most obvious example.

There are companies that aren't particularly evil at all, like the ones working on carbon capture tech.

>There are companies that aren't particularly evil at all, like the ones working on carbon capture tech.

Does a company's product or service determine whether they're evil or not evil? What if the carbon capture tech company builds something great for the environment, but has dependencies on a supplier that uses exploited labor in the developing world? What if that same carbon capture company has a "significant" wage gap between the average employee and the executive level?

It's interesting you pointed out that Facebook is evil, but by default, a carbon capture company couldn't possibly be evil "at all".

And that speaks to my point – your definition of evil is based on your set of beliefs, which I'll simply refer to as your politics. It's not necessarily "objective", no matter how hard you believe it is.

>The logical conclusion of your comment is that all companies are equally harmful (or that any attempt at distinguishing between them is pointless), which is blatantly untrue.

No, that's actually not what I'm saying at all.

> It's interesting you pointed out that Facebook is evil, but by default, a carbon capture company couldn't possibly be evil "at all".

The key word I used was "particularly" -- meaning that it doesn't stand out among any evil things a company might do. Nothing in particular about its product is evil. It's essentially an air-cleaning company.

> Does a company's product or service determine whether they're evil or not evil?

Yes, of course. It isn't the only factor, but it is obviously a factor.

> What if the carbon capture tech company builds something great for the environment, but has dependencies on a supplier that uses exploited labor in the developing world? What if that same carbon capture company has a "significant" wage gap between the average employee and the executive level?

I think you're getting really stuck on the trivial, hypothetical example I gave. Any company in any industry can be evil.

You are absolutely washing away all these shades of gray by saying this discussion isn't productive. All companies are a little bit evil, but there are distinctions that matter.

And no one is trying to tell you or anyone else what morals to apply to companies. I'm only taking issue with you wasting the time to tell everyone else here that they're wasting their time. If you're so bogged down by the subjective issues here, fine! Lots of people are. Just move on and don't try to shut other people down.

> I think you're getting really stuck on the trivial, hypothetical example I gave. Any company in any industry can be evil.

You’re now whitewashing your previous comment instead of standing by it. :)

The original topic is, “Are there any good companies anymore?”

My response was that any company can be considered good or bad depending on what lens you use, and that applies equally to some of the most prestigious (or formerly prestigious) companies in the world just as it might to companies who aren’t household names.

That is a valid response.

>Lots of people are. Just move on and don't try to shut other people down.

The irony is that you don’t like what I have to say, so you’re actively trying to shut me down.

Censoring dissenting opinions because they don’t feed into the narrative you want. :)

It's *il*logical to conclude that because nowhere was it said that they are *equally* harmful.

What you *can* conclude is that all companies are harmful in some aspect.

> I can’t say this is really productive.

This is equivalent to saying, "All companies are evil; everything is subjective; let's just give up."

It may not be what the commenter intended, but that's what comes across.

> This is equivalent to saying, "All companies are evil; everything is subjective; let's just give up."

That’s my comment you quoted, and I already flat out wrote that this isn’t what I’m saying.

You might re-read what the original poster of this thread wrote, listing all the problems they see across a range of different industries and services.

Since it’s not clear to you, and since you made a comment about actively trying to stop me from sharing my opinion because it “wastes peoples time”, I’ll try to explain again. Hopefully if you still disagree, you’ll just downvote me instead of continuing with your personal attacks at me.

My point is that everyone has some set of values important to them. From a certain lens, you can find some fault or egregious (but perhaps legal) behavior in just about any large company. Corporations are complex. Even the best intentions result in some screw ups, or the leadership is well aware of an issue but does nothing because the bottom line is more important. Or maybe a certain issue coming to light may result in massive layoffs, etc etc.

To say are there any good companies isn’t productive of a topic in itself. What are your values? Maybe you believe FB is evil because it’s leadership knew about the impact of its services on teens and their mental health. Or maybe you believe that FB simply offers a product, and as long as no immediate law is broken, parents and families should moderate their child’s access to social media.

Some ideas:

* What would you be proud to be remembered by after you die? I worked in adtech for a long time. No one is proud of me for that.

* There is a lot of unrealized potential in edtech. I work in education now. If you want to add millions--or even billions--of dollars to future GDP, education is the place to be. Look for an effective company.

* Pay is only worth so much. The last two jobs I took involved significant paycuts, and it was worth every penny to do something I felt was worthwhile for hours that didn't destroy the rest of my life. Never been happier. YMMV, of course.

IMO, at any company, you will be directly or indirectly providing capital support to AdTech/E-Commerce/Fossil-fuel industries at some level. Its highly unlikely you'll find a company or a trade that doesn't have to advertise its products/services, and/or doesn't need shipping/material/transport/etc. I don't find your claims to be ridiculous, its just that the world is a shitty place - for an idealist. IMO, Its best to frame things as leaving the world a better place, rather than finding that one job that grants you immunity from the evil stuff.

> I don't find your claims to be ridiculous, its just that the world is a shitty place.

If there were ever a misanthropic worldview, this is it.

To be alive in the year 2021 and think that all is bad or worse than some halcyon prior age is, if not ridiculous, horrifying.

If you and OP are not familiar with anything you feel is worthwhile to work on as a company, then I pity anyone who has to be around you. My advice to OP is to figure out why he/she is unable to see enough good in the world and has to ask HN for where that value is.

I don't really get what the point of your comment was?

>To be alive in the year 2021 and think that all is bad or worse than some halcyon prior age is, if not ridiculous, horrifying.

and think that [..] -> is your own assumption. I don't think this. Now that you know, maybe we can have a more positive conversation.

>My advice to OP is to figure out why he/she is unable to see enough good in the world and has to ask HN for where that value is.

'Figure it out' is not good advice in any situation. Its along the lines of "If you can't see why you're wrong then its your fault".

The point of my comment is that if a person finds the world a "shitty place" and doesn't think that it's ridiculous that they can't find a positive industry to work in, they have a problem.

And I believe that problem will not be solved with whatever industry they go into, because it's a fundamental problem of psychology and outlook.

That's my constructive advice. Thousands of years of humans have managed to find meaning without hating everything, and the era we live in isn't uniformly worse enough to think those humans had it easier than we did.

> that if a person finds the world a "shitty place"

Again, can you please stop with the assumptions? I don't believe this. I clearly said if you're an idealist you will find the world shitty place. I don't know what about my phrasing was confusing (though admittedly, English is not my native language). Are you honestly wanting to have a good faith conversation?

Just because I don't find things ridiculous doesn't mean I align with someones beliefs. I can disagree with someone without disparaging them. And I'm quite certain you can too.

> I clearly said if you're an idealist you will find the world shitty place.

No you didn't. You edited it after the fact. My quote was as-is, with the period.

Whether or not you have that view, the OP clearly does, because he/she can't seem to find value in anything and has to ask people. So the advice would be (in your modified post): "don't be an idealist." If your "ideals" cause you to be so oblivious to potential good things in the world, you're a misanthrope and I look down on your morals.

Or - You replied while I was still editing.

>because he/she can't seem to find value in anything and has to ask people.

That's the point - I think your interpretation is incorrect.

> at any company, you will be directly or indirectly providing capital support to AdTech/E-Commerce/Fossil-fuel industries at some level.

At many industries you won't. But it can be quite an effort to find such jobs - and of course succeeding at the interview unless salary/location are suboptimal.

Honest question - Can you provide some examples?

Late answer but still... Companies providing products for other tech companies, popular examples are places like Redhat, Canonical or many Telcos. Recently I've also seen a number of companies in the recycling/upcycling space. Also there are tons of small companies that are not startups, it's possible to find them on websites of local technology hubs.

I do infrastructure and there are plenty of companies at that layer that don't seem particularly evil: Cloudflare, Tailscale, and Oxide come to mind. In general B2B companies should avoid most of your objectionable business models.

A significant amount of B2B powers the bad things the OP mentioned.

At some level every productive job enables bad things to happen. Farmers grow food that allows people to eat and code up ransomware. So at some point you have to decide that you are satisfied with your job being far enough away from the people directly doing bad things, and also satisfied that your job helps people do some good things as well.

To further illustrate your point - a dentist who thoroughly background checks all her customers to ensure they are good needs to thoroughly background check all her customers customers and so on.

The only solution is living on a farm and completely isolating yourself from everyone. You also can't use any products or services produced by anyone because the chain of profits goes the other way too.

Short of obviously bad companies (like those selling cigarettes perhaps), most companies are mostly doing good things for mostly good customers who are mostly trying to do good things and so on. I know a good number of people and while some might be a little greedier than others, and some others are disorganized and get themselves into situations where they are desperate and do something not great, none of them are genuinely bad people. Some of the very best people I know work in ads, and some of them at Facebook.

There’s a difference between for example killing animals for sport, for food, or by not taking enough precaution to avoid it (e.g. sweeping the road for bugs before walking). The agency matters - if your salary is explicitly tied to bad outcomes, or if it happens to benefit from them, by proxy.

In my opinion, the implied framework of morality is bit too simplistic to arrive at a meaningful answer. Good and Bad are not objective outcomes that can be 'caused' by OKRs. Why not try to recognize the inherent balance of good / bad in all things and then focus on being a better person?

Advertising: Bad to advertise lies, good to advertise truth E-commerce: Bad to sell consumption, good to sell solution Crypto: Bad for the environment, good for personal empowerment Finance: Bad for irresponsible spenders, good for people with low assets relative to cashflow Drugs, gambling, etc: Bad for the long run, good for the short run.

Even God, a construction meant to represent pure goodness, is bad to half of yall

I work in edtech. We don’t do anything sketchy, and the pay is good. I’m not SV though, so different pay expectations. Anyone that thinks they deserve SV developer tier pay for writing code without doing anything sketchy is almost certainly deluded anyway.

There are many tech companies that aren’t ad tech, crypto or encouraging unnecessary consumption. Look at the list of YC companies and you’ll find plenty (https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/). That’s not to say that non-YC companies aren’t worth working at. There are a lot of ways to make the world a better place through technology, like electrifying existing industries. Sorry you feel like tech has no answers for you. I’ve been there.

I can sympathize. I worked in AdTech, once, and exited that role as quickly as possible.

I now work for a book publisher (one of the "big five" in USA) that's part of an organization that includes major scientific publishers. Promoting literacy and science are key values of the overall org. It's also privately owned, which assists focus on values and reputation.

In 2021, working for a team that's still advancing the values of the Enlightenment feels... remarkably meaningful.

There are many small companies. After 14 years at a major telecom and two FAANGs, I now work for a small startup building software for freight rail operations. That doesn't seem to be on your list.

How does Freight rail fit that list? Does Your “AI”directly contribute to the present Suppy chain shot show or anyways offsetting carbon emissions? Railroad is still railroad.

During my last job search, one of my criteria was the company has to basically do no harm, that meant:

- no adtech/data collection

- no social media

- no gig economy

- no defense/surveillance

I ended up choosing between a few enterprise software companies (think Jira, Figma, Asana…) because the harm they cause is very minor while still being successful businesses. It’s definitely a compromise, as I’m coming from a job that actually did real good for 1/3 the salary.

Depending on what your current salary is, it's plausible you could find a job at a non profit or NGO that would not entail a significant pay cut. That idea aside, some companies off the top of my head that don't fit your bad company ideas: GitHub, NVIDIA, gaming without in-app purchasing, alternative energy companies... Honestly it seems like there's a whole lot left.

GitHub is owned by Microsoft who does stuff that falls into the parents list of objectionable stuff.

Rather than listing all the things you dislike. How about listing the things you like, and going from there.

Absolutely there are companies doing great things to solve some of the very issues you mention.

I feel the same way about all of the industries you mentioned, and I've never worked for a company in any of those industries for that very reason.

(I'm still in school but) I realized one way to ease these things is to adopt a very strict consequentialist frame of reasoning morally because having radical politics was draining my energy when faced with how conservative the world is. That makes it very easy to do the harder tech side of things like infra or writing firmware. So Microsoft and Salesforce make sense in software and on the hardware side you can look at writing software for hard tech corps like chipmakers? Those companies outside wild vertical integration like Apple or AWS probably don't have the stellar margins of other FAANG but money really won't be that much of an object if you are looking to do this for like 5-10 more years than other people

It's hard to do good and make money. Humans are too conditioned to desire and therefore pay for the expedient and futile. Every single company is expected to explore that, they are amoral entities with the single goal of generating profit. It's somehow become common for companies to advertise themselves as good, but that is just a business model of spending money to make them look good.

There are, however, good people. They may make money working for companies or even owning a share. They might even do good things because they actually want to rather than showing it off. You can definitely be one of those people, even if you need to choose a lesser evil company to help you get there.

Go to defense sector. They are darn honest about what they are doing. They are doing no nonsense, guaranteed to be some interesting stuff. And killing people is the best thing you can do for environment. Space can also be an option.

"What’s left?" Maybe you should adopt a morality that is Beyond Good And Evil?

I try to look for work that causes the least possible harm rather than try to find something that causes no harm, because that's almost impossible. And also, if you find that job, the competition for it is so fierce can you really claim that by you having it you've put any more good into the world than if the next person had it?

Don't be disheartened. Like anything else in life you have to sort of slowly pivot in the right direction. If you've only just started thinking about this sort of thing and you're serious about it, it's going to get real uncomfortable. But it's totally worth it.

Have a look at the Career Guide from 80k hours https://80000hours.org/career-planning/

“You have 80,000 hours in your career. This makes it your best opportunity to have a positive impact on the world.

If you’re fortunate enough to be able to use your career for good, but aren’t sure how, our in-depth guide can help you:

Get new ideas for high-impact careers Compare your options in terms of impact Make a plan you feel confident in”

Any big and valuable it business these days eventually comes down to marketing and aggressively competing for lowest acquisition cost.

And yet any of your mentioned areas has more positive effects than negative ones which you emphasize for some reason.

I guess you’re burned out or depressed or something. And trying to find the enemy outside to blame for it.

It’s a bit infantile position, but i hope my guess is totally wrong.

In such case - what exactly your “good” company should be doing to be considered good?

Hi! Hack Club is trying to build a positive and very meaningful space for the teenagers who take part. We are a nonprofit, and nearly everything done is open source. Doing the work, I’m very often doing the sort of things that got me first excited about computers when I was younger.

If you or anyone else is open to considering a career shift, we have a couple open roles. Run the following in the terminal to see them:

    $ ssh jobs.hackclub.com

I work in Insuretech in a company in Europe. We do a lot of work in better predicting your risk to give you a fairer price, and a lot of work in sorting out your claims faster so that you can return to your daily life quicker. We do not do this out of kindness, but because the sector is hyper competitive and only the "good" companies will survive.

Look for smaller niches, I guess. One of the best places I worked was the Italian division (which was formerly an independent company) of this: https://www.icare-world.com/

They make good products that, at the margin, help people.

I had a good time there, did good work, and liked and respected my coworkers.

I'm biased but you can check out TheFactual.com. We make it easy for people to get unbiased news on pressing topics. No ads. Affordable for the masses.

I don't know your background or what kind of work you like to do but if this sounds interesting drop me a line.

It is possible to find places. I work at a company were we're trying to match up charities with people wanting to donate through various means. It's a nice change of pace from the usual financial related places I worked at before.

Have you explored LowerCarbon Capital?

Robust list of companies aiming to help the planet here > https://lowercarboncapital.com/companies/

I work for a SPC (Social Purpose Corporation) that aligns with my values, which is a huge QoL improvement compared to some of the earlier things I have worked on.

"Are there any good companies anymore?"

Practically - no. If they do exist, they are impossibly difficult to find.

Work for the government. Work for hospitals. Work for the education industry.

Patagonia are pretty good.

At leading people to believe they're good.

you may want to look into Wave Senegal, i have heard very good things

I wonder if there's a jobs dir for non-profits etc.

Consider finding a B Corp to work for.

Tesla? X, the moonshot company?

define 'good company'

OP’s entire post is defining ‘not a good company’ and asking what’s left…

still not a definition of a 'good company'

If I would have to guess, OP may want to go into a non profit or a creator based company like Kickstarter or companies that have joined to be a B Corp [0]

[0] https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/

At least one MLM-based pyramid scheme is a "B Corp". That tells you everything you need to know about "B Corps".

at least one x is a "y" for pretty much any y you choose. that doesn't tell you much about "ys" at all.

When the entire point of the scheme is to distinguish companies that have a positive impact on society, there should not be room for "at least one" company that scams financially-illiterate people & encourages them to swindle their friends.

B Corps are bullshit and should not be seen as a sign of quality.

then don't go to that company?

No my point is that the whole concept of "B Corp" is bullshit if a scam company that exploits financially-illiterate people at scale can be classified as a "B Corp".

OK, then one would just tell B Corp to remove them the list no? I don't see how this invalidates all companies on that list.

What company is this anyway?

Arbonne (https://www.arbonne.com) is one example and they proudly claim to be a B-Corp on their website right under the offer to join the pyramid scheme as an "independent consultant".

> then one would just tell B Corp to remove them the list no

This is not something that flew under the radar and can trivially be removed - the aforementioned company's business model is well known for example and despite that they became and are still a B-Corp.

My point is that B-Corp is happy to accept companies whose business model preys on and profits off vulnerable, financially-illiterate people, directly contradicting their claim of certifying companies which have a "positive impact on society, workers, the community and the environment" (from Wikipedia, emphasis mine).

There is a procedure for this:

https://bimpactassessment.net/complaints-procedure

It seems you can get them removed and it does look like you are complaining about a company that shouldn't be a B Corp, so you could take your complaint there.

Not sure if that means that all B Corps or B Corps are bad in general.

> OP’s entire post is defining ‘not a good company’ and asking what’s left…

Then maybe OP needs to pack up and leave the Earth, because there are no good companies and everyone is terrible and evil.

I jest, but seriously, he/she should get a grip. If OP thinks everything is terrible, maybe the problem isn't the companies...