Open positions on our progressive data team:
Machine Learning engineer – https://grnh.se/6713732b4us
Software Engineer – https://grnh.se/15ee5a2e4us
Devops – https://grnh.se/aa2bef714us
We are a diverse team of engineers, data scientists, statisticians, and political insiders who are closely connected to some of the most important decision makers in the progressive ecosystem. We worked with central players to develop strategy and direct hundreds of millions of dollars of resources.
Our problems are not well suited to plug and play machine learning solutions – we’re looking for folks to help us think creatively and critically about how best to construct models on tricky datasets, carefully diagnose when they fail, and design and implement new features in our custom Bayesian library.
“Progressive data team”? “The progressive ecosystem”? Since when does political ideology have anything to do with technical merit?
If you don’t understand why this is disturbing, just replace “progressive” with, say, “Trumpist”.
(I’m a libertarian myself, neither “progressive” nor “conservative.”)
Possibly they are looking for ideological people because they would be willing to take a below market salary. That is common in the nonprofit sector. Another possibility, maybe they just want to be crystal clear about the purpose of the role, and they don’t actually care about applicant’s politics. Of course, can’t rule out your interpretation.
…do you think the Trump team doesn’t have engineers? Cambridge Analytica were pretty dang successful in 2016. And their website is still online despite probably being one of the highest traffic sites on the internet.
There’s an incredibly wide variety of jobs in the political sphere and bizarre to think otherwise. It’s even stranger to think that tech jobs outside of politics are apolitical, as obviously evidenced by Parler and Gab and sorta the entire field of data ethics.
In case it isn’t clear from the job posting – our mission is to help “progressive organizations” (lawyer-speak for Democratic campaigns, labor unions, pro-choice groups, anti-poverty organizations, etc) make better strategic decisions using Data Science.
For better or for worse, there’s near-total segregation between Democratic and Republican leaning firms in campaign tech, for a variety of political, technical, and legal reasons. Deep Root, Optimus, and Echelon Insights are the closest to the Republican versions of what we do, and I’m super happy to chat with anyone (my dms are open at @DavidShor on Twitter) who’s looking for advice/introductions into that space.
We don’t have any kind of ideological test in our hiring, though obviously as a group we’re more left-wing than average (though it ranges the gamut from conservative Democrat to far-left), but we wanted to be upfront about the nature of the role and mission.
Is there a link to the organisation? Couldn’t find it in the job post.
Labor unions are an interesting example. If you look at the function that played in the initial years it’s definitely progressive.
But didn’t that get sidelined somewhere along the way?
what? a “libertarian”? If you don’t understand why this message is disturbing, imagine reading this post written by a “progressive” or a “conservative”.
LO-VE IT!
Distressed that a private company has its own hiring criteria? They don’t make libertarians like they used to, lol.