Justis Mills - Career

Summary

I currently work full time as a software engineer. However, on occasion, I am a freelancer working for organizations in the effective altruism and existential risk reduction communities. The things I most often do in this capacity are:

  • Proofread and copyedit
  • Draft copy for things like video descriptions and social media posts
  • Light programming (like getting a page to look better or a Wordpress plugin to work)

Recent Accomplishments and Technologies

I work with a modern stack in my current role, using a wide variety of technologies at a high level. Here are some highlights:

  • I help manage a large team of up to 11 developers, performing peer reviews of code, training developers in best practices, and pair programming remotely to help other developers overcome challenges.
  • The project I work on uses a microservice architecture including React/Redux, Immutable, C# with Entity Framework, Google Protobufs, MySQL, and an Oracle database for legacy data.
  • I use many AWS services at a high level, including CloudWatch, CodeCommit, IAM, and Simple Email Service.
  • I built a highly complex service autonomously, which was well received by internal peer review and the client, and enabled them to make changes directly that had previously required extensive technical support.

Freelance Accomplishments

From about October 2017 to April 2019, I focused on paid contract work for effective altruist and existential risk mitigation organizations. For my work history more generally, you can view my resume (up to date as of December 2020) here.

Here are some accomplishments from that period of which I am particularly proud:

  1. Copyedited or proofread (unpaid) two great posts by Elizabeth Van Nostrand, including one that helped move tens of thousands of dollars to the charity Tostan, and one that appeared as a guest post on Slate Star Codex.
  2. Edited the page on AI Impacts about ESPAI 2016, made an interactive timeline to visualize some of the results, and compiled a list with summaries of news outlets that covered the survey.
  3. Edited and helped standardize a lengthy report for the Center for Human Compatible AI in late 2017, as a contractor for the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative.
  4. Managed the Centre for Effective Altruism's YouTube channels, from July 2018 to April 2020. The channel's view time has increased substantially, and new video releases have been standardized in many helpful ways.
  5. Drafted the Centre for Effective Altruism's social media posts, from August 2018 to April 2020. This has generally consisted of sharing about seven things per week, on seven channels each, with different copy between channels.
  6. Wrote this book review of The Righteous Mind, (with substantial style guidance from Max Dalton, for which I'm grateful).