I worked closely with Kat for a year or so (2018-2019) when I was working at (and later leading) Charity Science Health. She’s now a good friend.
I considered Kat a good and ethical leader. I personally learned a lot from working with her. In her spending and life choices, she has shown a considerable moral courage: paying herself only $12K/year, dropping out of college because she didn’t think it passed an impact cost-benefit test. Obviously that doesn’t preclude the possibility that she has willfully done harmful things, but I think willfully bad behavior by Kat Woods is quite unlikely, a priori.
I would also like to share my experience negotiating my salary with Kat when I first joined Charity Science Health, i.e., before we were friends. It was extremely positive. She was very committed to frugality, and she initially offered me the position of Associate Director at a salary of $25K/year, the bottom end of the advertised salary range. We exchanged several long emails discussing the tradeoffs in a higher or lower salary (team morale, risk of value drift, resources available for the core work, counterfactual use of funds, etc.). The correspondence felt like a genuine, collaborative search for the truth. I had concluded that I needed to make at least $45K/year to feel confident I was saving the minimum I would need in retirement, and in the end we agreed on $45K. Subsequently Kat sent me a contract for $50K, which I perceived as a goodwill gesture. My positive experience seems very different from what is reported here.
I’m unclear on how this comment speaks to the content of the post, which is compatible with Kat being a courageous, frugal, and dedicated friend and leader.
I suppose it’s relevant if you want to get a sense of the chances of ending up in a situation reminiscent of the one depicted in this post if you work for Nonlinear.
Being a close friend of Kat for quite some time, do you believe that your point of view could shed some valuable light on this discussion, or is there a chance folks might see it as an effort to spruce up Kat’s or Nonlinear’s image?
In the interest of keeping things on the level, can you confirm whether you were clued in about this situation before making this post? If so, did you take it upon yourself to dig into the allegations independently? Lastly, have you received any requests or nudges from Kat or other members of the Nonlinear team to drop a favorable comment in this thread?
On an earlier discussion of Nonlinear’s practices, I wrote:
I would also like to share my experience negotiating my salary with Kat when I first joined Charity Science Health, i.e., before we were friends. It was extremely positive. She was very committed to frugality, and she initially offered me the position of Associate Director at a salary of $25K/year, the bottom end of the advertised salary range. We exchanged several long emails discussing the tradeoffs in a higher or lower salary (team morale, risk of value drift, resources available for the core work, counterfactual use of funds, etc.). The correspondence felt like a genuine, collaborative search for the truth. I had concluded that I needed to make at least $45K/year to feel confident I was saving the minimum I would need in retirement, and in the end we agreed on $45K. Subsequently Kat sent me a contract for $50K, which I perceived as a goodwill gesture. My positive experience seems very different from what is reported here.
I’m unclear on how this comment speaks to the content of the post, which is compatible with Kat being a courageous, frugal, and dedicated friend and leader.
I suppose it’s relevant if you want to get a sense of the chances of ending up in a situation reminiscent of the one depicted in this post if you work for Nonlinear.
Are you implying that you don’t believe what’s reported here, because it’s very different, or something else?
Being a close friend of Kat for quite some time, do you believe that your point of view could shed some valuable light on this discussion, or is there a chance folks might see it as an effort to spruce up Kat’s or Nonlinear’s image?
In the interest of keeping things on the level, can you confirm whether you were clued in about this situation before making this post? If so, did you take it upon yourself to dig into the allegations independently? Lastly, have you received any requests or nudges from Kat or other members of the Nonlinear team to drop a favorable comment in this thread?