Hi everybody.
Recruiting Lead Developer and UX Designer (www.equalcare.coop)
Have been busy, starting to properly resource our team to launch the Equal Care Co-op platform in social care. It’s amazing (busy, very busy) and very exciting that we’re finally in a position to make good on the aspiration to develop a platform-based, democratically-owned piece of technology that has very strong potential to do excellent things in the world of care and support. And, just possibly, maybe, do our bit to turn uk platform co-ops from something more than just a curiosity into a thriving, diverse, sector that can attract and grow the kind of collective power we need to get big social change to happen.
And now we need tech people (we always needed tech people, but now we have capacity to actually pay them). We really, really, really want to get designers and developers from the world of co-operation rather than straight-up ‘health-tech’ or - tbh - many of the other zones of tech development. But, with tech recruitment being tech recruitment, we can’t afford to be picky. Hence this post to CoTech folk before we do the whole big recruitment push to the tens of dozens of websites dedicated to this sort of thing. And because it feels like the right human beings for us are just within reach and so much closer than we think.
The reason for wanting a co-operative technologist is not just because there’s just sooooo much to explain to someone who has had no experience of co-ops but it’s also because we need the co-operation to be part of how the platform is created as well. Can’t just do the whole ‘silicon valley, fail fast, break things’ piece (I have feelings about that, best expressed in the pub). We’re building a piece of technology that moves power into different places, that structures roles differently, that makes information usually only available to higher echelons of management visible to all members in order to make collective decisions about data sharing, money, strategy and responsibility. No one understands that aim more than people who know about the purpose of co-ops and why on earth they exist. Co-operation has to be in the digital DNA of the Equal Care platform - you just live it, breathe it and learn it simply by participating in it.
SO, if you know developers, UX designers, or if you are one of those things, take a look at our website for the role descriptions (we do quite detailed ones, they’re super-flexible). Please apply, even if you do that thing that most people do with job descriptions and go, ‘oh I don’t have that one thing, so I won’t bother’. You can email the jobs@equalcare.coop email address or get me direct at emma@equalcare.coop to arrange a chat.
It would fill us all with joy to get people on our platform team with direct co-op experience and understanding (it really does save the whole “seismic point of view shift” process, which can take time). Please treat this post as a massive big wavy welcome hello flag to all you developery designery co-opy people.
In short, hi!
would you have any interest in working with an agency, or are you set on hiring someone in house? If you’d be open to it then we’d love to chat more, it sounds like the kind of project we’d be really happy to be working on - just send me a message if you’d like to talk. Otherwise, I’ll send it around to anyone I can think of who might be interested, what a great opportunity.