
Find engineering teams that share your values - gkop
https://www.keyvalues.io
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schoen
One thing that I've noticed about ethical or socially responsible investment
firms is that they have a very specific list of ethical concerns that they
offer to help investors use to make investment decisions (maybe the most
commonly-expressed ones, maybe ones that are most similar to the founders'
concerns, and maybe the ones that are easiest to measure). But of course there
are lots of things that people feel passionate about, and some of them are
more obscure and not the subject of major current divestment campaigns, and
some of them are opposite of each other!

For example, some people find it very important not to invest in nuclear
energy (often because of the risks of radioactive waste, among others), while
other people find it very important to invest in nuclear energy (often because
of the lack of greenhouse gas emissions) -- especially given the alternative
of, say, hydroelectric power. Some people find it very important to divest
from Israel, and other people find it very important to invest in Israel. Some
people want to invest in developing countries, and other people want to
promote employment in their home country. People might strongly disagree about
which of {porn, alcohol, tobacco, marijuana} they don't want to invest in.

So, this hiring-oriented service has a similar set of challenges -- although
it's easy to argue in both cases that the default is having would-be investors
or employees be totally in the dark about _every_ dimension, so it's better to
light a candle than curse the darkness.

To give a "niche" example, two of my own traditional concerns are animal
rights and free software, both of which could be relevant to investment and
employment but both of which can be seen as obscure or marginal concerns in
particular settings. But it's easy for me to notice that "promotes software
freedom" isn't on the values list here, even though it's perhaps pretty
relevant to technology jobs (maybe too few prospective employees or too few
prospective employers have mentioned it?).

I was actually talking to someone a few years ago about the question of
whether one could make a hyper-specific ethical investing firm that really
gave people lots of fine-grained choices, and not just, say "environmental-
friendly" (according to one single organization's criteria) or "good labor
conditions" (again according to one single organization's criteria) or "not
invested in vices" (is there a pattern here?). It might be courting far
greater controversy to do that for employment and workplace culture, but it's
easy to see that there are lots more details and more attitudes than are yet
represented here. And also there's the straightforward question of who has
assessed these things and whether different current and prospective employees
employees would all agree.

Anyway, I don't mean to be super-negative here. It's a very interesting
attempt at a very thorny, complex problem.

~~~
lynnetye
Hi Schoen,

My name is Lynne and I built Key Values. I wasn't the one who posted my
website to HN but I do love discussing it! :D

I don't think you're being overly negative at all. Here are my thoughts:

1\. Missing values? The values list will certainly evolve over time. I started
working on Key Values in May and this is the curated list of value tags that I
put together after interviewing dozens of engineers and drawing from my own
personal values. "Promotes Software Freedom" is an incredibly interesting one
and who knows, you might see it on there some day ;) I am sure that I've
missed several important values (and that I'll need to remove some of the ones
I currently have on there).

2\. Who assessed these things? I worked with CEOs, CTOs, engineering managers,
engineers, and in some cases, technical recruiters to put together their
engineering team's profile. They have 100% control over the content of their
profile. The issue of accuracy was one that troubled me a lot in the
beginning, but at the end of the day, who can trust anything on the internet?
And really, when I'm in an interview and ask my interviewer these exact
questions (ie. "how do you practice inclusion here?"), who's to say that s/he
is telling the truth?

I can't force teams to write anything in their profile but my hope is that
limiting teams to 8 values forces them to (a) be thoughtful in describing
their culture and (b) implicitly say what they _are not_. After choosing and
ranking their 8 values, teams then have to prove it. If they can't talk at
length about why they chose a particular value, they end up re-evaluating and
choosing another. Finally, I care about the quality of their profiles (they're
on my website!) so I work really hard to get thoughtful, detailed explanations
from teams before publishing their profile. If you read some of them, I hope
you'll agree that I've done a pretty good job (they list examples, link to
individual team members, and provide details about their paid family leave
policies, deployment processes, and/or regularly scheduled meetings).

3\. Complex problem? Yeah, but so is dating. There are hundreds of dating apps
out there (maybe more?!) and finding a job really just like dating, yet there
is nothing similar for job-seekers and employers. Just like dating, you don't
have time to meet every available employer out there. Just like dating, you
can learn a lot about a team based on how they rank their top 8 values from a
list of ~40. Just like dating, reading explanations to somewhat tricky
questions can illuminate things that resonate (or repel) you.

Anyway, sorry this was a novel! Thanks for your thoughts on the matter and let
me know if you have other questions/comments/feedback!

