How to find a company that doesn’t feel like I’m complicit in some sort of exploitative system
Aug 17, 2021
67 Comments
I feel so stuck in tech. Every company I’ve worked for has a dark underbelly that profits from either worker exploitation, screwing over poor people, or just plain making society worse.
How do you find a company that pays decently but doesn’t actively cause harm to the world? Has anyone found any success?
In design specifically, I always feel like I m pushing back against some horrible feature a PM wants to create.
#design #ethics #culture
comments
You can’t make things better by abstaining from participation in the market. If Zillow adopted your position of “landlords are parasites” you think Craigslist, Facebook, or Apartments.com would make things better?
Criticize housing policy, stupid local zoning/regulations, and bad actors in the market. Stop shitting on a company trying to do good. It’s misguided and unproductive.
Other countries, including most of Western Europe and Japan, vet tenants using proof of income and in some cases bank statements.
Other factors that try to predict whether a tenant will pay or continue to pay are inaccurate and tend emphasize existing historical inequalities and distract from the bottom line, which is “can this person afford pay the amount of the rent each month?”
My concern is that very often companies learn that they are doing something that is not good and very often ignore it or suppress it internally because of that internal belief and knowledge of the problem. The public isn’t trying to paint black bad white issues, they’re simply dealing with the fallout of the issues.
One important distinction I’d recommend you think about—are you looking for a company that is actively contributing to the world in a positive way? Or would you be satisfied feeling that the company’s product/impact is morally neutral, that is, neither good nor bad?
If the former, then your options are likely more limited although not nonexistent. Look into UX roles in government, startups in GovTech, EdTech, Health Tech, Alternative Energy/Renewables, etc. If you’re at Zillow, are you in Seattle? If so there are tons of options although they’ll all likely pay quite a bit less than Z.
If the latter, then you have even more options. Good examples of this would be Salesforce, Tableau, HBO, Hulu, LinkedIn, etc. Actually, I’d put Zillow in this list although you clearly feel otherwise. I think though you’re perhaps being a bit too liberal with your criticism—there’s simply no way Zillow’s negative impact on the world comes anywhere near that of Amazon or FB.
Anyway, just some things to think about.
1. The buy low sell high part is just false (baring abnormal rapid price appreciation), and ignores customer experience and liquidity benefits to all parties.
2. The “racist tools” bit ignores that landlords already use credit scores. Zillow is using its influence to push other forms like income verification to reduce credit as a screening tool.
3. WTF are you talking about “helping” to ask discriminatory questions? The opposite. We literally have models looking for and actively screening that shit out.
4. We “want” prices high because we charge a flat fee to list? What are you smoking. What about all the work on affordable housing to bypass fees or social impact product work?
Take it from someone who works in the business - this person is a political hack pretending to know Zillow. What aren’t just pure lies are distortions to align with their pre existing world view.