Cempres (short for Covid Employer Response) is an aggregation of the responses that several employers made to the COVID-19 pandemic starting in March of 2020. Though other sites like Did They Help existed to showcase similar information, the idea was to build an open-source aggregation of this information (like Wikipedia), so people could audit the paper trail and contribute their own experiences and sources via GitHub.

The site was among my early attempts at using React in larger projects, and was built in about a week back in late March of 2020. Over time, more data was added to the project and it ended up with over 160 employers' reactions to the pandemic, weighing layoffs and executive bonuses versus employee retention and healthcare insurance.

The idea of the home page was to land people on a page that quickly described what they should expect from the site and exactly how it would be presented to them.

From there, they would be able to see a full list of employees in "card" or "list" format, using search and filters to find locations, specific employers, and companies of given sizes.

There is also the notion of a "best & worst" list, which is designed as a way to show the companies on both extremes.

All of these cards and rows lead to a larger page showing company name, size, location, and detailed sources about that company's reputation.

Finally, as part of the "open source" aspect of the site, users could open either a Google Form or GitHub itself to submit changes to the information. This is presented both on the homepage and on a dedicated page for visibility, as well as being in the FAQ.

The project source code lives on GitHub. The site was previously live on cempres.org, though it was taken down sometime in 2023.