A Student Guide to PIT

What do you say to a student or early career practitioner who is interested in public interest technology (PIT), but may not understand the nuances of the practice? Our team is putting together a guide that will give you the answers to answer their most pressing questions. This information will be gathered into a formal student guide that you can use for years to come as it will evolve and change as the world of PIT changes and grows, too. This month, we take on two common misconceptions: the PIT requires deep tech knowledge and that there aren’t any PIT jobs available. Check back next month as we talk with stakeholders at TechShift to hear more about its toolkit and how students can advance PIT on their own campuses.

What do you say when a student says, “I don’t have the necessary skills and I’m too inexperienced to get involved in PIT?”

The tech space might feel daunting, especially for students pursuing degrees outside of STEM, especially if they don’t have a background in computer science, engineering, or development. The goal of PIT is to improve technology for the public good and that requires many skills -- not just coding or artificial intelligence. The world of PIT needs people who study public policy, communications, sociology, psychology, and design. In fact, PIT requires input and collaboration from humanities and social sciences-oriented students. All they need is an interested in tech to contribute.

It can also be intimidating to be relatively inexperienced or chronologically young, but research tells us age can make someone all the more valuable in the PIT field. A NextGov survey from 2017 explains that there are four times as many government IT specialists over the age of sixty as there are specialists under the age of thirty. Simply put, the government technology space is severely lacking representation of younger voices. And diversity in public interest technology is not just an issue when it comes to age. Racial and gender diversity are severely lacking in the tech space generally, and though public interest technology might fare a bit better than Silicon Valley when it comes to measures of diversity, it is still a major issue for the field. Younger generations have a lot more room to take up in this space, and opportunity to shape PIT into an equitable and intentionally inclusive field.

It seems like there aren’t that many PIT jobs out there. Why should I get involved?

While it’s true there isn’t an established PIT job pipeline, it’s coming. Right now, those who want to work in technology accept summer internships at Silicon Valley companies and, after college, head straight to full-time positions at these same companies. Those who want to work in government, who are few and far between, tend not to market themselves as technologists. Though PIT’s pipeline is not as established as it is in the private sector tech space, there are many organizations that are focused on creating and promoting PIT jobs. We hope that we can point you to some helpful preliminary resources, both in terms of creating PIT opportunities on campus but also in terms of career opportunities post-grad. These include:

• Public Interest Tech Job Board by Code for America
• Find your next job in data science in the Federal Government