It’s an interesting perspective, but I strongly disagree with it for a number of reasons.
Firstly, for most projects, you only need a few senior managers and you can fill the rest of the roles with talented junior folk. The advantage of this approach is that more junior folk are much easier to recruit. So I think we need additional recruitment pipelines to bring in more senior people with specific skills that we need, but I’m in favour of going hard on college recruiting because I’m not expecting pipelines targeting more senior people to bring in anywhere near the numbers.
Secondly, I don’t actually think it’s a bad thing for EA to be seen as a youth movement and if it was, certainly not enough to want to bring less young and talented people into the movement. For a start, “capture the youth market and grow your influence as they climb the career ladder” is an old classic strategy for movements to become massively influential. And it’s a even better strategy for EA than most movements because EA has access to a massive pool of money that allows us to accelerate people’s career and personal growth
If you’re in the middle of successfully pulling it off the last thing you want to do is nix it due to vague concerns about perceptions. And even if you tried, you probably wouldn’t have much impact on EA being seen as a youth movement anyway, since uni students are so much easier to bring in, yet alone really bring in that many older more senior people.
Thirdly, the problem of “being a youth movement” will solve itself over time as people age. Sure the average age might have decreased in EA recently due to a massive focus on college recruiting, but you haven’t provided any reason to doubt that it’ll be anything more than a short-term phenomenon.
Fourthly, if we want to draw in more experienced people, it’d be much easier to just spin up another brand, rather than try to rebrand something that already has particular connotations. And then maybe you actually manage to capture both markets. To be clear, by brand I don’t just mean a different splash of paint, but something more substantial, really constructing a new program that satisifies the needs and desires of this older crowd. And sure, you could try to shift EA activities so that they sort of satisfy the younger crowd and sort of satisfy the older crowd, but quoting JJ Hepburn “An event for everyone is an event for no-one”.
Or I could also finish with another old classic, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”.
“If we want to draw in more experienced people, it’d be much easier to just spin up another brand, rather than try to rebrand something that already has particular connotations.”
This strikes me as probably incorrect. Creating a new brand is really hard, and minor shifts in branding to de-emphasise students would be fairly simple. In my experience, the EA brand and EA ideas are sufficiently appealing to a fairly broad range of older people. The problem is that loads of older people are really interested in EA ideas- think Sam Harris’ audience or the median owner of a Peter Singer book- but they find that: a) It’s socially weird being around uni students; b) Few of the materials, from 80k to Intro fellowships, seem targeted to them; c) It’s way harder to commit to a social movement.
I’ve facilitated for EA intro programs with diverse ages, and the ‘next steps’ stage at the end of an intro fellowship is way different for 20 year olds to 40 year olds- for a 20 year old, basically “Just go to your uni EA group and get more involved” is a good level of commitment, whereas a 40 year old has to make far more difficult choices. But I also feel that if this 40 year-old is willing to commit time to EA, this is a more costly signal than a student doing so, so I often feel bullish about their career impact.
My preferred solutions are fairly marginal, just making it a bit easier and more comfortable for older people to get involved: 1) Groups like 80k put a bit more effort into advice for later career people; 2) Events targeting older high-impact professionals (and more ‘normal’ older people; EA for parents is a good idea); 3) Highlight a few ‘role models’ (on the EA intro course, for example, or an 80k podcast guest)- people who’ve become high-impact EAs in later life.
Sure, sometimes I’ve felt strange hanging around people much younger than me, but the proposed solution is to recruit less students, then the cure is worse than the disease.
In my experience, the EA brand and EA ideas are sufficiently appealing to a fairly broad range of older people
And some older people will end up joining the EA movement, but if we have other “brands”, such as High Impact Professionals [1], we may be able to ensure that a decent number of people who “bounce off” end up joining another brand instead via referal.
It’s way harder to commit to a social movement
Sounds suspiciously like they want a different kind of program more targeted at them =P. And if a program is going to be run, it should aim to develop its own brand.
Personally, I would suggest that they de-emphasise the association with EA. I think a note of the bottom of the page “Part of the EA network” would be enough.
It’s an interesting perspective, but I strongly disagree with it for a number of reasons.
Firstly, for most projects, you only need a few senior managers and you can fill the rest of the roles with talented junior folk. The advantage of this approach is that more junior folk are much easier to recruit. So I think we need additional recruitment pipelines to bring in more senior people with specific skills that we need, but I’m in favour of going hard on college recruiting because I’m not expecting pipelines targeting more senior people to bring in anywhere near the numbers.
Secondly, I don’t actually think it’s a bad thing for EA to be seen as a youth movement and if it was, certainly not enough to want to bring less young and talented people into the movement. For a start, “capture the youth market and grow your influence as they climb the career ladder” is an old classic strategy for movements to become massively influential. And it’s a even better strategy for EA than most movements because EA has access to a massive pool of money that allows us to accelerate people’s career and personal growth
If you’re in the middle of successfully pulling it off the last thing you want to do is nix it due to vague concerns about perceptions. And even if you tried, you probably wouldn’t have much impact on EA being seen as a youth movement anyway, since uni students are so much easier to bring in, yet alone really bring in that many older more senior people.
Thirdly, the problem of “being a youth movement” will solve itself over time as people age. Sure the average age might have decreased in EA recently due to a massive focus on college recruiting, but you haven’t provided any reason to doubt that it’ll be anything more than a short-term phenomenon.
Fourthly, if we want to draw in more experienced people, it’d be much easier to just spin up another brand, rather than try to rebrand something that already has particular connotations. And then maybe you actually manage to capture both markets. To be clear, by brand I don’t just mean a different splash of paint, but something more substantial, really constructing a new program that satisifies the needs and desires of this older crowd. And sure, you could try to shift EA activities so that they sort of satisfy the younger crowd and sort of satisfy the older crowd, but quoting JJ Hepburn “An event for everyone is an event for no-one”.
Or I could also finish with another old classic, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”.
“If we want to draw in more experienced people, it’d be much easier to just spin up another brand, rather than try to rebrand something that already has particular connotations.”
This strikes me as probably incorrect. Creating a new brand is really hard, and minor shifts in branding to de-emphasise students would be fairly simple. In my experience, the EA brand and EA ideas are sufficiently appealing to a fairly broad range of older people. The problem is that loads of older people are really interested in EA ideas- think Sam Harris’ audience or the median owner of a Peter Singer book- but they find that: a) It’s socially weird being around uni students; b) Few of the materials, from 80k to Intro fellowships, seem targeted to them; c) It’s way harder to commit to a social movement.
I’ve facilitated for EA intro programs with diverse ages, and the ‘next steps’ stage at the end of an intro fellowship is way different for 20 year olds to 40 year olds- for a 20 year old, basically “Just go to your uni EA group and get more involved” is a good level of commitment, whereas a 40 year old has to make far more difficult choices. But I also feel that if this 40 year-old is willing to commit time to EA, this is a more costly signal than a student doing so, so I often feel bullish about their career impact.
My preferred solutions are fairly marginal, just making it a bit easier and more comfortable for older people to get involved: 1) Groups like 80k put a bit more effort into advice for later career people; 2) Events targeting older high-impact professionals (and more ‘normal’ older people; EA for parents is a good idea); 3) Highlight a few ‘role models’ (on the EA intro course, for example, or an 80k podcast guest)- people who’ve become high-impact EAs in later life.
Sure, sometimes I’ve felt strange hanging around people much younger than me, but the proposed solution is to recruit less students, then the cure is worse than the disease.
And some older people will end up joining the EA movement, but if we have other “brands”, such as High Impact Professionals [1], we may be able to ensure that a decent number of people who “bounce off” end up joining another brand instead via referal.
Sounds suspiciously like they want a different kind of program more targeted at them =P. And if a program is going to be run, it should aim to develop its own brand.
Personally, I would suggest that they de-emphasise the association with EA. I think a note of the bottom of the page “Part of the EA network” would be enough.