
Show HN: Enviro.Work – Find and fill jobs that benefit the environment - ericvanular
https://enviro.work#
======
ericvanular
Hi HN!

Most of us want to do more in the battle against climate change - it’s tough
when your work life is unrelated. Right now, if you want to find a job that
helps the planet, there’s no clear way to go about that. You could look for
environmentally focused companies individually and keep checking their site to
see if they are hiring. But that’s tedious and it’s easy to miss new postings.
Conventional job boards don’t have a good way of filtering for this. A couple
of environmental jobs boards exist, but they have low post volume and are
dispersed geographically.

[https://enviro.work](https://enviro.work) is the place to come find green
jobs in one spot. Think of it like a search engine for all Earth-friendly jobs
out there. We aggregate eco-positive jobs from different sources and link you
back to the source.

We wanted to help empower purposeful individuals to maximize their potential
for the planet. Enviro.Work is linked with the community at
[https://collective.energy](https://collective.energy), where you can find
inspiration, feedback, and an audience for your eco projects. Turn climate
ideas into plans into reality - then build your team with Enviro.Work.

I'd love to know what you think and hear your helpful feedback.

Thanks for caring! Eric (Enviro.Work maker)

~~~
carapace
There's no way to know who you are from the page, it's completely anonymous.
For me that's always a big _big_ warning sign for any site.

~~~
ericvanular
Good call, I'll add some kind of About component

~~~
carapace
;-)

Awesome! FWIW I dug in and found a comment from you on the community forums
and found collective.energy and your site, so it's not as bad as I thought at
first.

I also want to add that you and your work and community seem really great.
Cheers!

~~~
ericvanular
Really appreciate the support. Feel free to join us at collective.energy and
share with anyone else who you think would benefit from the community

------
codeulike
A bunch of accounts created in the last hour or so have left inane comments
here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955624)
created 20 mins ago 1 comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955469)
created 48 mins ago 1 comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955575)
created 20 mins ago 1 comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955523)
created 44 mins ago 1 comment

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955323)
created 10 hours ago 1 comment

~~~
ericvanular
Not intentional or requested on my part. Please feel free to delete those
comments mods

~~~
dang
I believe you that you didn't request them explicitly, but it's clear from the
data that those were posts by friends or fans who thought it would be a good
way to help you out.

In reality, booster comments are the worst thing that people can do to help
their friends on HN, because the community here sniffs them out at truffle-pig
levels and regards them as spamming.

~~~
ericvanular
Thank you for the feedback! I'll try to prevent newcomers commenting next time

------
jordigh
I actually have a job writing greenhouse gas accounting software. The pay
isn't great, but compared to the local booming software industries in
Montreal, (ads, video games, porn, or "AI" which usually means ads again), it
seems to be much more socially useful.

I'm never quite sure if my work is actually helping or not. For example, some
of our clients are unethical companies such as tobacco companies. I reason
that they can't use our greenhouse gas analysis for evil and that refusing to
do business with them would only result in them not knowing what their
environmental impact is.

I don't know if I'm doing good, but I think it's more likely that I am than if
I were doing ads, video games, or porn.

~~~
ericvanular
Being aware is the first step in changing. I'm certain that your impact is a
net positive. Thanks for caring!

~~~
jordigh
Thanks. I browsed through the job ads with keen interest, hoping to find
something that could possibly pay more. Sadly for me, most of the list seems
to be in the US. Ah well, hopefully the ecological software job market will
expand so that competition for developers will also raise our salaries.

A somewhat sad thing is that ecological analysts (who are the principal users
of my software) get paid a lot less than I do because our employers don't have
to compete as much in order to hire them. For software developers, employers
have to get their pick from the general pool of software developers who can
generally get relatively high-paying jobs elsewhere, so that prevents my
salary from going down too much. My salary, however, is about 60% more than a
greenhouse gas analyst. This somehow seems unfair, but I don't know how to fix
it.

~~~
ericvanular
We're rapidly adding more sources. I'm based in Canada myself so I'll work on
getting some more options for you. We'd love to have your company post their
openings on the site as well

------
mdasen
Just as an FYI:
[https://enviro.work/search/?page=2](https://enviro.work/search/?page=2)

I clicked on the search with nothing in the search box and then hit the link
for page two. You probably want to switch Django debug off and fix the error
page.

That said, it looks really cool. It's a great minimalist design that gets
right to the point. It loads instantly since you haven't loaded it with crap.
It's really a pleasure to click around a site that just loads content without
an amount of JS that makes everything slow.

~~~
ericvanular
Thanks for the feedback! Fixed the Django debug issue. Really appreciate your
support, it's a work in progress but if we can even help a few people find
meaningful work - it will be worth it

------
atakiel
I think this is a marvellous idea. Environment and climate change is
definitely something many of us would want to be able to affect in our daily
jobs.

On a more universal level, a service like this, not just for climate work, but
in more general terms helping people find a position matching their passion
would do a great service to the world [1].

Frankly, a lot of us have just wound up in our current positions. If that
position happens to be our vocation, it's probably just a happy accident, or
then that specific field was very precise, and finding a position matching the
passion was easy. In general case, it's not that easy to match these two, due
to the work and timing required.

The problem is, a lot of people are doing jobs they are not the best match
from the point of view of the larger community. They might be good and
efficient at their jobs, but if they don't know the full power of their
positions, and don't have the passion to push for the change, in the limits of
their positions, they might not be the best people for that job.

To make the case even more problematic, a lot of positions, ones that people
would consider as meaningless, especially in public sector, but also related
to environment, actually could offer a lot of power in the right hands, with
proper passion.

World is filled with wasted opportunities, but a service like this could help
remedy some of the pain points.

That being said, like mentioned in a comment by mlthoughts2018 [2], this is
not an easy problem to solve, given for one that positions might not match
their descriptions.

But things have to start somewhere, and I think this is a great start.

[1] As a side note, IMHO, I'd like to think this mismatch between a passion
and a position being the missing puzzle piece for making things such as public
sector competitive over private sector.

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955566)

~~~
atakiel
In addition to the service itself looking good, the single act of making
environment the central point of the service, works as agenda setting [1].
Because it's the central point of the service, the jobs are viewed through the
lens of their impact on environment.

There's a bigger influence, from doing this kind of smaller things en masse
that affects the wider discussion in great proportions.

Just a FYI, that all talk about important things, like environment, is more
than needed.

[1] Wikipedia describes agenda setting as something only the big media does,
but it is something that happens naturally when we discuss about things.
Things that are brought up in discussion are implicitly considered important,
as they are worth discussing in the first place. Basically agenda setting
theory says that by mentioning important things in discussion, and by
reminding the participants of the existence of those things, can help change
the world. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-
setting_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory)

~~~
ericvanular
Thanks for your support. Feel free to share the site around!

------
mlthoughts2018
While it’s a good idea, what determines if a job “benefits the environment”?

A lot of jobs in the list - particularly any startup jobs - are at best
unproven in their effect on anything and at worst are a drain on funding
resources and have worse negative externalities to the world than being
productive in a job that’s not nominally “about” the environment, as well as
the risk you’ll invest years of labor under the assumption the company has a
mission to improve the environment only to see it pivot when the business
realities crash the party.

~~~
dpau
websites like this can only do their best to collect links to resources, it's
beyond scope for them to perform a detailed environmental analysis of each
listing. obviously you'll still need to make your own decisions based on what
you believe is worth pursuing.

~~~
ericvanular
We do our best based on a few criteria and provide as much information as
possible but ultimately this ^

------
toomuchtodo
You might consider scraping and including US national park service and forest
service jobs. While tangentially related to climate change, I would consider
them roles that benefit the environment in a meaningful way. You might
consider tagging jobs differently: environmental, climate change, etc.

~~~
ericvanular
Tagging is definitely on the product road map! Great suggestions, we'll see if
we can get park and forest service jobs

------
mettamage
I like the idea/theme, as a developer I always wonder "what good can I do for
the world?"

But there more I see these type of job boards, the more I'm thinking. There
are so many different job boards created. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad
thing?

I don't know what to think of it.

~~~
ericvanular
Totally understand your feeling. I think the crucial part of doing this right
is building a purposeful community, which is what we're doing at
[https://collective.energy](https://collective.energy)

------
_curious_
Thanks for making a thing and sharing it here! I get a 500 when clicking on
pagination at the bottom (randomly page 4, 11, etc). Also it would be cool to
sort by geography, maybe alphabetically, so that a visitor could city/state
faster?

~~~
ericvanular
Thanks for your feedback! Will start working on those fixes and features

------
VieEnCode
Thanks for this, I'll be keeping an eye on it.

I'm sure you're looking at the idea, but it would be nice to be able to add
drop downs to quickly filter by role/location/sector/seniority.

~~~
ericvanular
Yes, that is on the product road map for sure. Thanks for your feedback and
for caring!

------
St_Alfonzo
Great Idea. Bug Report: if I search for "Software" and then go to page two,
the url does not include the search-term, which leads to a "ValueError at
/search/"

That debug/error page shows a traceback and many server settings, which you
might not want to share in a production environment.

~~~
ericvanular
Fixed the debug traceback issue. Will work now on passing search params to
other pages. Thank you!

------
mr_sign
Awesome idea. Just wondering since I don't see an about-- how are these jobs
found / curated?

~~~
ericvanular
We did a lot of manual work to vet and curate the sources here. Using our own
framework to assess in addition to common sense for what doesn't pass the
smell test. Feel free to suggest new sources or provide feedback for any you
don't think are a fit!

------
KaySquay
Now more than ever is the time do something about climate change, this is an
awesome contribution. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the
second best time is now.

~~~
njsubedi
Spam alert!

------
LaEc
Can't go to next page and the search function doesn't work. Great mission!

~~~
njsubedi
Spam alert!

~~~
ericvanular
Theres a valid bug report here

------
gwbas1c
Looks cool!

One very minor suggestion: Make it much easier to filter / search by location.

~~~
ericvanular
Thank you! Would you prefer a dedicated location search bar or radio-button
style filters?

------
FitzsimmonsK
Reaching in a timely way to connect workers and work,easy to use.

~~~
njsubedi
Spam alert!

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X6S1x6Okd1st
First job I clicked on was no longer available

~~~
ericvanular
We do our best to remove expired jobs but if you let us know which one it is,
we can address it quickly! Thank you for your support.

------
briparkss
Great idea! And it couldn’t come at a better time with everyone who is looking
for work right now.

~~~
njsubedi
Spam alert!

------
Habpower
This is a great resource for anyone who is interested in an environment based
career path

~~~
njsubedi
Spam alert!

