Community Spotlight: Arindam Bose
Tech workers from across the Bay Area have joined TechEquity’s network and are giving their time, skills, and financial support to make their communities more equitable. We’re proud of our growing community full of smart, passionate, engaged citizens and we want to show them off!
Meet Arindam
Arindam works as a Software Engineer at Mapbox, working on an open source map renderer called mapbox-gl-js. Prior to this, he helped build 3D modelling software for solar installers at Aurora Solar. In his spare time he likes to ride his bicycle or motorcycle, rock climb, paraglide, and generally put himself in way too much danger for the mere moments of adrenaline. He’s also an avid gamer and enjoys both playing and creating video games with friends. He was born and raised in Mumbai, India, which is unequivocally the BEST city on the planet.
What is your professional passion these days?
My professional passion has always centered around building highly visual and interactive experiences, which was largely sparked by spending a lot of time modding video games in middle school. This led me towards learning about computer graphics, and now I largely use that knowledge to build more “serious” software for work. In my spare time, I still enjoy participating in Game Jams and hacking on a videogame project over a weekend with friends.
What does it mean to you to be a responsible citizen while working in tech?
Tech companies often have a culture of creating bubbles around their employees, and especially for an immigrant like me, that means that I could very easily fall into the trap of being completely unaware of the culture and social issues of the neighborhood I live in.
So for me, being a responsible citizen means educating oneself about the culture, history, and current issues within the community you work in, actively participating to help maintain the culture, and practicing giving back so the local residents can thrive instead of being excluded.
How has TechEquity impacted civic participation?
TechEquity has been an amazing resource in providing a lot of information around the various social justice and policy issues that cause a lot of inequality in the bay, which lets tech workers feel more comfortable getting out of their bubbles and into the work.
Why is it important for the tech community to become more civically engaged?
The tech community shares a lot of Marxian ideals around building out a more equal society, especially the notion of “common ownership”, which states that the means of production is owned equally and is free to access by everyone.
In the tech industry, this has manifested with the rise of open source, wherein engineers share the means of production of the software; the source code, freely with the world, and invite contribution by everyone on platforms like GitHub. I believe that if us nerds got away from our computers and applied these philosophies in the real world through more civic engagement, we could make a real difference!
Join members like Arindam
We are organizing the tech community to advocate for a tech-driven economy in the Bay Area that works for everyone. We believe the tech industry can and should generate widespread opportunity instead of inequality and displacement. Join our growing community today!
