Tim Barrus, while I think that your general message is well intentioned, I’m not sure it pertains to the article at hand.

Mitchell Harper speaks of identifying people who are more likely to have a net positive effect on an organization and go above and beyond in their contributions.

At no point did he even mention profit or revenue as benchmarks for success, or as criteria for evaluating candidates.

There is something preemptively defensive about your response, following a narrative I have heard elsewhere outside of industry — some sort of odd envious and entitled insecurity, that implies that commercial endeavors are somehow morally inferior to public service.

I really don’t think it is worthwhile to put forward divisive ideas such as these, and instead focus on the potential of utilizing lessons learned from each sector for mutually beneficial gains. For instance, a lot of non-profits are now employing tools and processes developed in tech companies with regards to data driven decision making etc.

It is especially critical to screen for the right type of employees or volunteers in a non-profit, seeing as they are generally smaller than companies and each individual carries a lot more responsibility and weight on their shoulders.

Regarding the terminology by the way, I liked the suggestion of the “common good” title made by Stephan Jaeckel, even though I believe that the greater good should always guide us in our decisions, commercial or otherwise.

Finally, I agree that people cannot be categorized in rubrics or classified by letters. Maybe doing so could even be considered an egregious reductionist simplification, however, for the sake of brevity in a Medium article, inherently lacking in the nuance that a full length book or a research paper would allow, I think it conveys the idea quite clearly.