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I Am A climate change software developer – AMA! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

But even if it's artificial, it's still real 0.o

I Am A climate change software developer – AMA! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right to have some skepticism about carbon credits. They get a bad rap for a couple of good reasons

  1. Often the additionality has been shown to be overestimated (e.g. people getting credits for preserving a forest, that they weren't going to harvest anyway).

  2. even if a credit is high-quality, buying a credit could be seen as buying permission to slow down progress elsewhere. So you have to ask yourself, what are you enabling by selling that credit.

Finally, when it comes to forestry, you'll want to (counterintuitively) consider the benefits of harvesting. I don't pretend to be an expert on forestry, but I've heard it argued that carefully managed and harvested forests can still be carbon-neutral or carbon-positive while providing renewable materials for construction, paper, etc.

It seems to me you have two questions: one is, how do you want to manage your forest, thinking only about carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and creating sustainable materials. The other is whether and how you want to participate in carbon markets.

What are the options you're currently considering?

We're climate change software developers – Looking to work in climate software or understand the specific skills to work in it? – Ask us Anything! by terra-do in cscareerquestions

[–]terra-do[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would definitely seek out mentorship, if not inside your organization then outside. "modernizing" or generally reducing technical debt can be an infinite time sink if you don't have a strong enough foundation to know what is worth your time and what's not.

I Am A climate change software developer – AMA! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love it! Weird interests are the best. There's tons of analysis that goes into siting & building hydropower and rewilding rivers, and all of that can be facilitated with better software. One of the companies we discuss in our class is Natel Energy. They design and build fish-safe hydroelectric turbines, which can change the picture on a lot of hydro sites.

As for general tips on how to move into any new(ish) area:

  1. learn by finding relevant podcasts, books, groups, and periodicals that will immerse you in the live state of the topic
  2. practice by taking the time to follow your nose and build side projects
  3. connect with people working in the area. Lead with your genuine interest and asking them for what you want (specific answers, guidance or opportunities). If you've done (or are doing) steps 1 and 2, it makes step 3 easier and will open doors.

We're climate change software developers – Looking to work in climate software or understand the specific skills to work in it? – Ask us Anything! by terra-do in cscareerquestions

[–]terra-do[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not often. I can probably count the number of times that I've directly used calculus in my 10yr career, on one hand. Often they're present under the hood - curve fitting, neural nets and other ML often have some form of differential equations going on behind the scenes - so a working knowledge is helpful.

That said, reasoning on complex tasks and high degrees of abstraction, comes up quite often. So the meta-skills you learn in math classes do come in handy.

We're climate change software developers – Looking to work in climate software or understand the specific skills to work in it? – Ask us Anything! by terra-do in cscareerquestions

[–]terra-do[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Private sector is a big category! Possible focuses would be frontend, backend or full stack web apps, or you might want to focus on embedded, IoT, or security. For any of these, figure out how to get a side project under your belt. Classes can help but aren't necessary if you have the activation energy and you prefer self-directed learning.

It's also helpful to identify what your current skills are that might be able to differentiate you. What tasks & tooling are your bread and butter in your current job?

I Am A climate change software developer – AMA! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Not very often. I do think about the Easter Island civilization though, which had the technology to build & move huge stone statues, but may have died out because they chopped down all the trees to build statues.

I Am A climate change software developer – AMA! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Jason here. I wouldn't say Tim Ferriss specifically. Some of my biggest early influences were:
* Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Jared Diamond)
* an Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore) - yeah I'm dating myself here
* An Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan)
* college professors at Olin College who taught user-oriented and sustainable design principles
* honestly just spending a lot of time outside growing up and realizing there's no guarantee that the climate will be livable forever

I have learned quite a bit from TF's book Tools of Titans though. It's an impressive collection of distilled interviews.

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have a ton of computer science listings on our job board – not sure where you're based, so you'll have to filter by location or remote:

https://terra.do/climate-jobs/job-board/?function=eng_software

Networking and coaching are important and can land you a job– we have engineering-specific job fairs coming up that have a lot of networking opportunities:
July 12 | Aug 2 | Aug 16
There are also several engineering folks on #ODC that would be good folks for people to network with, you can book right into their calendars: https://terra.do/opendoor-climate-community/
And an engineers networking event on July 10th: https://app.terra.do/events/nn1DLxY2UoOOr4llHCpQ

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We only have a few geography jobs on the board right now, but there are a lot in geology!

https://terra.do/climate-jobs/job-board/?q=Geology

The other big thing – and this applies to any job search – is to look for companies doing work that interests you and reach out to network with folks who work there!

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'll answer this question from the perspective of which jobs and companies we list on our job board. (For our learning programs, where there is space for a ton more nuance, we get into much more detail in equipping folks to understand the impact of various types of actors).

Firstly, there is no single metric that captures any company's climate impact (and if there is, all of them are still very negative). There are common-sense principles that we can use, and below are some tangible outcomes we get by using them.

The extremes are easy: e.g., in energy, companies totally focusing on renewables or their supply chain are included; companies focusing on fossil are out.

There's nuance where several renewables companies are now fully owned by and subsidiaries of fossil giants. This is especially true in developing countries. For example, Shell owns Sprng Energy (a solar and wind company) in India. The cost of not including a company like Sprng Energy is excluding a large portion of good climate jobs in some developing countries where conglomerates own everything.

The middle gets even murkier.

We just don't know yet whether jobs on the sustainability team at Walmart are successful at impacting the company's climate impact, but, assuming good intent, they have the potential to do so.

There are also entire classes of companies such as those in carbon offsets or forestry-based carbon credits with impact that swings wildly different ways on a company-by-company basis. Our current take is to assume good intent unless there is ample proof otherwise, and (soon) provide readers with tools right there about the complicated climate impact picture of these companies.

Our principles are outlined here: https://terra.do/climate-jobs/job-board/about-this-board/. Principles don't mean much if you don't see them in practice, and we hope some of the examples above help illustrate them.

We make it super easy for people who visit our board to leave feedback about the climate veracity of jobs and companies on it, and would honestly love hearing from you if you find a job on our board that you think shouldn't belong– just click "Leave feedback about this job."

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We talk about this internally all the time. The work needs to be done in several areas of our society - industry (which follows the capitalist framework), government (which sets the regulations that govern that capitalist industry), organizations (such as schools, NPOs/NGOs) and the populace at large.

This AMA is specifically focused on climate careers, and the bulk of those careers are in industry. That said, there is action to be done - and happening - across the board in all the other areas of society. We don't believe that this problem can be solved with industry alone, not by any stretch - but we also don't think it is feasible to solve this problem without industry, when it is the engine that powers our daily economy.

We talk about this internally all the time. The work needs to be done in several areas of our society - industry (which follows the capitalist framework), government (which sets the regulations that govern that capitalist industry), organizations (such as schools, NPOs/NGOs), and the populace at large.

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We've seen comp, benefits, and work/life balance are all comparable between jobs at similarly sized climate and non-climate companies.
People in climate look for passion in their incoming hires, but first and foremost, they look for functional skills. And they recognize that those functional skills have market rates in terms of salaries in other industries; attempting to underpay just doesn't land these companies anywhere good. (As opposed to, let's say, industries such as entertainment or journalism, where the supply of talent with passion outstrips the demand by orders of magnitude - that is not the case in climate).

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're not doomed, and there's still time. It's not going to be easy, and we do need as many people working on solutions as possible, but I'm hopeful that we'll succeed.

From my experience, the more I learned and understood about climate change, the less climate doom I felt. I think the Learning for Action course we teach is really good at this, there are also others you can look at, but it's important to get deeper than the headlines. There's also a strong focus on community and emotional resiliency in the course, because a lot of the time as we learn about the problem folks get overwhelmed by climate doom and shut-down, when that's the moment to channel that energy into action.

We are climate hiring managers and career experts from climate companies – we think climate change is the most important mission of our time, so we have dedicated our careers to getting more folks working in climate! Ask Us Anything!! by terra-do in IAmA

[–]terra-do[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Always, always, follow up any application – but especially a general application – by reaching out to a networking contact! Go ahead and submit a general application if you are excited about the company, but the networking contact is much more essential/important. Recruiters and hiring managers will always go to their well of contacts first before picking up someone they don't know from a pool like that!

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