该计划向非营利组织工作的新毕业生付出了重大的技术薪水

当大通·托马斯（Chase Thomas）从康奈尔（Cornell）毕业，专注于数据科学时，他本可以在一家大型科技公司找到工作。但是他开始与非营利组织合作，建立可以帮助解决更大问题的技术。

“I had done a few internships at Big Tech in the past, at Microsoft, and that was technically interesting,” he says. “And it was fun. But it’s not really sustainable—you don’t wake up every day thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to increase shareholder value.'”

Thomas is one of 11 recent grads in a unique associate product manager (or APM) program run by Schmidt Futures, the philanthropic organization started by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt. Google pioneered an APM program in 2002 to train new project leaders; other tech companies followed. Five years ago, Schmidt Futures decided to launch a similar program focused on training new leaders to use tech for public good—and to offer a salary that can compete with what someone might earn if they were starting a career at Google.

该计划持续两年，每个APM在非营利组织，政府部门或社会影响的企业中旋转了六个月或一年的任务，与自己的利益保持一致。在施密特期货领导人才计划的卡西·克罗基特（Cassie Crockett）表示，该计划有两个主要目标：使用技术来帮助扩展从事社会有益工作的组织的影响，并创建一系列技术人员，他们很高兴使用他们的技术专家公共利益的技能。托马斯（Thomas）的一个项目之一，在一个名为Uptrust的非营利组织中，涉及建立新技术，以帮助人们驾驶刑事司法系统。以前，当有人不得不上法庭时，他们会在邮件中收到一封信。

“If you couldn’t [make that court date] because you have a job or you have kids, it’s hard to reschedule these things,” Thomas says. “You have to send a literal letter in the mail, snail mail, to your lawyers saying, ‘Can we request a separate date?'” By building a text-messaging system—so someone could easily respond by text—the nonprofit was able to reduce technical violations and warrants for rearrest by more than 50%. The texting tool is now in place in 44 counties in 22 states.

他说：“这是我们大多数项目的目标是找到在正确的时间进行一些技术人才，正确的位置可能会产生巨大影响的领域。”在他的下一次轮换中，他在非营利性广泛研究所的工作中，帮助建立了工具，以帮助生物学家使用机器学习和云计算来发现用于癌症和传染病的新药物。另一个APM Adedoyin Olateru-Olagbegi最近在一个开源平台上工作了，该平台可以由世界各地的Criss-Crisis Hotline使用，并让孩子们通过WhatsApp，SMS或其他各种平台来寻求帮助。她说：“通常，他们目前拥有的技术非常过时，并妨碍了热爱的顾问能够做好工作。”

One participant is working with a startup to build tech tools for farmers in Kenya to avoid food insecurity. Another built a tool that helped Connecticut enroll thousands of new people in a program to help low-income new mothers and their children. (The work will help unlock $3 million in additional food benefits over a year.) Someone else worked with the startup Recidiviz to build tools to reduce prison population, helping reduce the number of prisoners in North Dakota by 25%. Early in the pandemic, another APM helped build an app in Colorado to generate notifications when someone was exposed to COVID-19. After finishing the program, some APMs have become entrepreneurs or taken jobs at social impact businesses.

许多计算机科学毕业生可能对社会影响感兴趣，但是现在很少有这条道路。托马斯说：“我认为人们只是不了解所有这些非营利的机会。”“如果他们这样做，也许他们很害怕，因为这是他们的第一份工作。这些优惠并不具有竞争力 - Big Tech确实可以为他们想要的人才付出代价，而非营利组织无力做到这一点。”纽约市Google的新软件工程师可能make around $138,000, plus a $41,000 stock grant and $22,000 bonus; nonprofit salaries vary widely, but are substantially less. His own classmates, he says, mostly ended up either at big tech companies or in consulting.

Nonprofits and governments generally need more funding in order to modernize their systems, as well as to compete with large companies for other types of talent. Nonprofits also need to evolve, says Josh Hendler, managing director of technology at Schmidt Futures. “Another piece is nonprofits being able to be a place where technologists want to work, and having a technology culture,” he says. In the Schmidt Futures program, the 150-plus organizations that participate already have tech leaders in place that can guide and train the APMs as they learn both technical skills and user-centered design, and soft skills in project management and how to build political support for projects within an organization. (Schmidt Futures also provides ongoing support to participants itself.) But many nonprofits may not have staff in place to guide new employees, or may not have a career path that new grads can follow after taking an entry-level role.

Olateru-Olagbegi说，如果可以说服更多的新毕业生放弃对社会影响的大型科技工作，那么影响可能会很大。她说：“我和这么多出色的人一起上大学，他们在计算机科学和其他技术领域都有很多技能。”“如果我只能将所有这些才华横溢，并将其引导到当今主要问题的所有这些问题，那么我只需要认为世界看起来会如此不同。”