Hard Problems.

About

Hard Problems is a non-profit that helps tech people to make the shift to working full-time on the world’s hard problems — problems like climate change and public health.

Many of the world’s smartest and most dedicated teams tackling hard problems struggle to get help from (or hire) experienced technologists who are integral to designing and implementing important solutions. The technical part of problem solving, which we refer to simply as tech, is seen as an “add-on” to be hired out at the end of research and planning when it’s much more effective to integrate tech into problem-solving from the start.

At the same time, most tech people don’t think it’s a viable career move to work full-time on hard problems and decide to focus on “prestigious” Silicon Valley career paths instead. Even if they do want to transition to working on something meaningful, they can’t see where they might have an impact.

We aim to solve this divide by bridging the gap and championing the importance of practical tech for good.

We plan to

• Foster a community and build bridges. Tie into existing communities and create a bridge between the experts who are working on the world’s hard problems and tech people who can help them.
  Email newsletterJob boardPodcastSlack community
• Help teams to set themselves up for success. Once teams are formed, there are many challenges to successfully getting off the ground. We will show, from our experience, how to form functional teams, move quickly to validate ideas, and how to deploy software in new and challenging environments.
  Job boardCohort-based workshopsOrg development consultingMentorship program
• Encourage long-term solutions. The tech world is notorious for focusing on short-term thinking around shiny new technologies. Hard problems are, pretty much by definition, multi-decade problems without ‘silver bullet’ tech solutions. Also, none of the truly hard challenges are going to be solved by technology — tech will be one part of a broader effort. These are cultural values in tech that needs to be shifted.
  PodcastCohort-based workshopsTBD...

What success looks like

Thinking of this in terms of KPIs, we’d first think of measuring: the number of people we help make the leap from the traditional tech world to organizations that work on the world’s hard problems. In the broader sense, our goals are to change the culture of tech to value people who work on hard problems.