Thoughts on being overqualified for EA positions
I sometimes hear of people not wanting to work for EA organizations out of a fear that they are âoverqualifiedâ. I believe the reasoning is something like:
In the for-profit sector, projects with some characteristics (e.g. building a website with less than 100k pageviews/âday) are usually done by more junior people.
This is presumably because itâs not cost-effective to hire more senior staff (i.e. the value senior staff add to the project is less than the extra cost of hiring them).
Projects in EA organizations have these characteristics.
Therefore, there is not enough benefit for it to be worth having senior people do these tasks in EA organizations over having junior people do them.
I think (3) is not justified for a few reasons.
The most important is that it equivocates between âan analogous profit maximizing entity might not hire a senior personâ and âsenior people donât provide much benefitâ. Itâs basically always possible to do things faster/âcheaper/âwith fewer errors/âwith a better user experience/âetc. I donât think itâs possible for any mortal to be âoverqualifiedâ in the sense of âcould not perform the task better than someone who was less skilled,â for all but the most trivial of tasks.
Often, the reason itâs not profitable to hire more senior people is more about leverage than about their ability to perform better. E.g. maybe a senior software engineer makes any website they work on 10% better than a junior engineer would â they can make a small website 10% better just as easily as they can make a large website 10% better. But they will still only get hired to work on the large website because a 10% increase in a large website is a greater absolute return than a 10% increase in a small website.
Startups often have their early success boosted by âoverqualifiedâ founders doing all the work â customers are impressed that they get to speak to the brilliant founders instead of normal salespeople so they are more likely to purchase the product, bugs get fixed more quickly because there are extremely talented engineers working on fixing them, etc. Itâs common for startups to hit problems once they grow and have âcorrectly qualifiedâ people in their positions, because they no longer benefit from those advantages.
Smaller EA organizations are somewhat like these startups whose success can be boosted by âoverqualifiedâ employees.
A secondary reason is that the intuition that EA organizations are âsmallâ seems to often be based on comparing inputs rather than outputs. Itâs true that this forum is read by many fewer people than, say, view the home and garden section on Amazon.com, but I suspect that global welfare is more easily increased by improving this site than Amazon (both because there is lower hanging fruit, and because the value generated per viewer is higher).
Finally, something I underestimated before working at an EA organization is the extent to which the novelty of EA work meant that similar tasks are more challenging. Iâve created a software product used by most hospitals in the US, started a successful company, and am now managing one of the smallest teams Iâve ever managed, but am not at all finding it easy. Things like impact analysis have received ~0% as much focus from experts as for-profit analogs like fiscal accounting have, making it much more challenging to answer basic questions like âwas our project successful?â
A better argument for believing that one is overqualified
Often when employers speak of someone as being âoverqualifiedâ, what they mean is âthis person might get bored with the work or dissatisfied with the low pay and quit to work somewhere else.â Expecting to be bored with a job is a very good reason to not take it, but I would encourage people to ask prospective employers about this issue directly, instead of not applying or being worried about being âoverqualifiedâ.
80,000 Hours has written about how passions are more malleable than most people expect, but briefly I will say that working at EA organizations has provided me with a lot of value I did not get in the for-profit sector: e.g. my social network is well integrated with EA, so at social gatherings I regularly hear how projects I worked on help someone get a job or pass a law or something else thatâs cool, which basically never happened when I was at a for-profit.
In CEAâs most recent hiring round, we offered candidates a âtour of dutyâ format, where they would join us for one or two years, after which we would support them transitioning to other employers. Iâm not sure if we will do this in the future (it might have been more confusing than helpful), but I would encourage anyone whoâs worried about being overqualified for some EA position to consider a âtour of dutyâ approach and join the EA organization for a year or two.
Charity work is valued at ~0 in many career paths, meaning that there is an opportunity cost from pursuing it but itâs not actively harmful. Exploring alternative career paths is valuable for your own planning, even ignoring the good you would do, and I expect that for many people the benefit of exploring additional paths outweighs the opportunity cost.
Iâd like to thank Aaron Gertler, Julia Wise, and Michelle Hutchinson for reading a draft of this, and Michelle for suggesting I write about it.
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Thanks for this, I feel like Iâve seen this too.
Iâm 30 now, and I feel like several of my altruistic-minded friends in my age group in big companies are reluctant to work in nonprofits for stated reasons that feel off to me.
My impression is that the EA space is quite small now, but has the potential to get quite a big bigger later on. People who are particularly promising and humble enough to work in such a setting (this is a big restriction) sometimes rise up quickly.
I think a lot of people look at initial EA positions and see them as pretty low status compared to industry jobs. I have a few responses here:
1) They can be great starting positions for people who want to do ambitious EA work. Itâs really hard to deeply understand how EA organizations work without working in one, even in (many, but not all) junior positions.
2) One incredibly valuable attribute of many effective people is a willingness to âdo whatever it takesâ (not meaning ethically or legally). This sometimes means actual sacrifice, it sometimes means working positions that would broadly be considered low status. Honestly I regard this attribute as equally important to many aspects of skills and intelligence. Some respected managers and executives are known for cleaning the floors or providing personal help to employees or colleagues, often because those things were highly effective at that moment, even if they might be low status. (Honestly, much of setting up or managing an organization is often highly glorified grunt work).
Personally, I try to give extra appreciation to people in normally low-status positions, I think these are very commonly overlooked.
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Separately, Iâm really not sure how much to trust the reasons people give for their decisions. Iâm sure many people who use the âoverqualifiedâ argument would be happy to be setting up early infrastructure with very few users for an Elon Musk venture, or building internal tooling for few users at many well run, high paying, and prestigious companies.
It seems like one solution would be to pay people more. I feel like some in EA are against this because they worry high pay will attract people who are just in it for the moneyâthis is an argument for perhaps paying people ~20% less than theyâd get in the private sector, not ~80% less (which seems to be what some EA positions pay relative to the skills theyâd want for the hire).
Agreed. Also, there are a lot of ways we could pay for prestige; like with branding and marketing, that could make things nicer for new employees.
Another point Iâve heard made a few times (and at-least-a-little agree with):
Letâs say Bob transitions from COO at a mid-sized org to finance manager at a small org. Bob has done finances before, and within a few months has set up some excellent systems. He now only needs to spend 10 hours a week on finances, and tells his manager (Alice) that heâs interested in taking on other projects.
Alice doesnât currently have projects for Bob, but Alice and Bob saw this coming and set clear expectations that Bob would sometimes run out of things to do. Bob was fine with this, heâs happy to spend his extra time at home with the kids.
But also⊠Bob notices that their HR systems could use an upgrade. He writes up a plan and shares it at the next team meeting. Some people think this is a good idea, but the HR manager doesnât want to implement the plan and Alice doesnât want to put Bob in charge of HR systems.
Bob is a little confused but shrugs and goes back to building a chicken coop.
This happens a few more times, and itâs taking up more and more of Aliceâs time to review Bobâs proposals. She likes Bobâs ideas and wants to find ways to implement them, but doesnât like Bobâs leadership style so doesnât want to put him in a leadership position. A couple other people in the org do like Bobâs style, and are confused about why he isnât put in charge of more projects.
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So the takeaway is something like: even if you are hiring an experienced person to a junior role, you are essentially hiring them to a senior role because they think like a senior hire. If their work and ideas are not given the space to thrive (which means basically treating them as senior staff), then itâll likely be a source of tension.
Itâs harder to carve out a senior-shaped-hole at an organization and higher stakes to hire someone with more seniority (which in my mind means autonomy over a budget and maybe a report or two). Organizations do this successfully all the time but itâs a much more significant effort than hiring a junior role.
Or put another way: the more agent-y the person you hire, the more youâll need to be careful about principal-agent problems.
There is a bunch of nuance in here and various solutions, but I think it contributes to some hesitance around senior>junior transitions.
Thanks! I agree with the concern, but I think I disagree about the root cause:
In general, Iâm skeptical about âputtingâ people in leadership positions, especially when their colleagues donât want to be led by them.
If people arenât listening to Bob because they donât like his leadership style, then I would say that Bob is a bad culture fit (or, to be blunt, not a good leader). I wouldnât describe this as the organization ânot letting him thrive.â
I do agree that itâs harder to hire senior people though:
Thereâs a related thing you might be pointing to like âin a big organization, Bob can just come up with ideas and someone else will implement them, diminishing the costs of his abrasive leadership style. But in a smaller organization he has to both come up with ideas and execute, and maybe heâs not enough of a generalist for that.â I definitely agree with this concern.
I could also imagine it being that the org has a bad culture (e.g. they systematically donât listen to the ideas of people in more junior roles)
Sure, but thatâs also a reason against appropriately qualified people working there also, right?
What Iâm pushing against is the assumption that employees love outsiders coming in and telling them all the things they are doing wrong, and if they donât like you pointing out their mistakes it must mean you are âoverqualifiedâ.
I actually hear the opposite more frequently: having a more junior title makes it easier for people to listen to your suggestions, because itâs less threatening for you to point out mistakes.
Apparently my comment won a comment prize, which nudges me to carry on this conversation.
What if Bob has an ambitious project heâs excited to run, and 4 out of 7 of his colleagues are excited by this project and want to be led by Bob on this, and Alice thinks it couldnât hurt to try, but Aliceâs cofounder Carol really doesnât like the idea and 2 of the 3 board members also donât like it? Carol et al. surface objections like âitâs not in the spirit of our missionâ and âIâm worried about the effects Bobâs leadership would have on our cultureâ.
Maybe if the org had good culture and good leaders they could figure out how to thread the needle, give Bobâs project a shot while addressing the concerns that Carol et al surfaced.
But I guess the point is⊠all of that takes time. A lot of effort needs to be put into the work of coordinating around a contentious project. In a world where Bob was vetted as a senior hire (which again, takes more time) he wouldnât have made the cut because of these concerns. But since he was vetted as a junior hire, people didnât think to consider âthe effects of Bobâs leadership on our cultureâ.
To be clear, I think a good hiring processes would sufficiently address these problems at the beginning, either vetting Bob as a senior hire and/âor ensuring he understood the scope of the role. A good hiring process would probably notice that Bob has the skills to fulfill the finance role, but does not have the skills to lead in the organization.
But⊠itâs hard to make good hiring processes, itâs hard to anticipate how this kind of thing will play out. In the face of this, I think itâs somewhat reasonable for hiring managers to lean towards junior hires in some cases. Like if I âjust want someone to get this one set of things done reliably for the next two yearsâ I might have less headache with a junior hire that shows up, does the thing, and goes home.
If I hire an office manager and they start trying to reform my HR policies, this can be more of a headache than a help. I didnât think to vet them for their HR policy skills, but now they are feeling bored and upset that Iâm not giving more detailed feedback on their proposals. But I donât have time right now. And then they leave the org because they feel unfulfilled, and we need to recruit for another office manager. Aagh! Letâs just hire a junior person!
Even if I was a bad manager above, I think itâs a pretty realistic situation and have the sense that a lot of orgs/âmanagers have been burned like this, and so are more cautious about making senior hires.
To be clear, my all-things-considered view is pretty uncertain, and leans towards being willing to hire overqualified people (I also tend to be pretty bullish about hiring outside the standard EA demographic). Especially if you have decent management expertise, which would ensure e.g. good hiring processes.
Looking back at my comment, Iâm still a fan of this model:
Something that feels maybe cruxy: Do overqualified hires have higher turnover? Higher management overhead?
Congrats on the comment prize!
Would you agree that, if Bob was more politically skilled, he would be a better fit for this position? (E.g. he would be better able to convince Carol to do this ambitious project.)
If so, then maybe you want to say that he is âoverqualified in technical knowledge and underqualified in political abilityâ or something, but chalking the problem up to being âoverqualifiedâ across-the-board seems misleading.
If you are a junior employee then sure, itâs your managers responsibility to listen to your ideas. But as you become more senior, it becomes more of your responsibility to get buy-in. E.g.:
Yes⊠and no?
Yes: it would be better re. âoverhead requiredâ. If Bob foresees Carolâs objections and takes her out to lunch and convinces her, this could save a bunch of management/âboard time.
⊠and no: maybe Carolâs concerns were legitimate and Bob was just very convincing, but not actually right. Fade to: Bob becomes CEO and the org is thriving but itâs not really following the original mission anymore.
Iâm guessing Steve Jobs wanted people to convince him if (and only if) they were right. âRightâ meaning not just factually correct but probably also whatever Steve thought was good (whatever that was).
So maybe if Bob was more politically skilled and also aligned with the mission of the organization? But aw geez now weâre back to how itâs hard to hire people aligned with the org. Hmm, that would probably cruxy too. Not sure how to measure it.
Sure, those other things are also ways in which I would say that Bob is underqualified, not overqualified.
Ahâmaybe your post is making the point âif they would make a good senior hire, it seems fine to hire them in a junior positionâ. Maybe I was getting confused by the term, Iâve seen people labelled âoverqualifiedâ when they are above average on a few dimensions but not all of them.
Iâd have a harder time steel-manning a counterpoint to that. Maybe something about it not being stimulating enough so risking turnover⊠but that doesnât hold much water in my mind.
This really matches my experience. As a high skill worker (software engineer at a FAANG), I strongly view top down proposals without team buy-in as a leadership failure.
If your idea is good, you should be able to convince the team that it is good and ought to be implemented (contributing to the implementation yourself is going to win you big favor points). Going over the teamâs head to force the solution by forcing the HR team to accept the proposal in the example is going to burn bridges. Maybe itâs necessary if the proposal is incredibly important, but mandating a solution on a team after pushback should generally be viewed as an organizational failure to mourn.
Found this a really clear explanation (and I liked the scenario, made it more concrete).
Similar to Ozzie, I would guess the âover-qualifiedâ hesitation often has less to do with, âI fear I would be under-utilised and become disinterested if I took a more junior role, and thus do less than the most good I couldâ, but a more straightforward, âRoles which are junior, have unclear progression and donât look amazing on my CV if I move on arenât as good for my career as other opportunities available to me.â
This opportunity cost (as the OP notes) is not always huge, and it can be outweighed by other considerations. But my guess is it is often a substantial disincentive:
In terms of traditional/âtypical kudos/âcred/âwhatever, getting in early on something which is going up like a rocket offers a great return on invested reputational or human capital. It is a riskier return, though: by analogy Iâd guess being âemployee #10â for some start-ups is much better than working at google, but Iâd guess for the median start-up it is worse.
Many EA orgs have been around for a few years now, and their track-record so far might incline one against rocketing success by conventional and legible metrics. (Not least, many of them are targeting a very different sort of success than a tech enterprise, consulting firm, hedge fund, etc. etc.)
Junior positions at conventionally shiny high-status things have good career capital. Iâd guess my stint as a junior doctor âlooks goodâ on my CV even when applying to roles with ~nothing to do with clinical practice. Ditto stuff like ex-googler, ex-management consultant, ?ex-military officer, etc. âEx-junior-staffer-at-smallish-nonprofitâ usually wonât carry the same cachet.
As careers have a lot of cumulative/âprogressive characteristics, âsidewaysâ moves earlier on may have disproportionate impact on ones trajectory. E.g. âlongtermist careeristsâ might want very outsized compensation for such a âtourâ to make up for compounded loss of earnings (in expectation) for pausing their climb up various ladders.
None of this means âEA jobsâ are only for suckers. There are a lot of upsides even from a âpure careerismâ perspective (especially for particular career plans), and obvious pluses for folks who value the mission/âimpact too. But insofar as folks arenât perfectly noble, and care somewhat about the former as well as the latter (ditto other things like lifestyle, pay, etc. etc.) these disincentives are likely to be stronger pushes for more âoverqualifiedâ folks.
And insofar as EA orgs would like to recruit more âoverqualifiedâ folks for their positions (despite, as I understand it, their job openings being broadly oversubscribed with willing and ableâbut perhaps not âoverqualifiedâ - applicants), Iâd guess itâs fairly heavy-going as these disincentives are hard to âfixâ.
The disincentives listed here make sense to me. I would just add that peopleâs motivations are highly individual, and so people will differ in how much weight they put on any of these points or on how well their CV looks.
Personally, Iâve moved from Google to AMF and have never looked back. The summary: Iâm much more motivated now; the work is actually more varied and technically challenging than before, even though the tech stack is not as close to the state of the art. People are (as far as I can tell) super qualified in both organizations. Iâm happy to chat personally about my individual motivations if anyone who reads this feels that it would benefit them.
One reason I donât see here: if you take a big decrease in level of responsibility, it can be hard to reverse.
For example, imagine you manage a team of 10 people and a budget of $10 million at a private corporation. Youâre on track to eventually take on a C-suite position, which will either allow you to earn to give significantly or bring really great skills to an EA charity at that point.
If you leave the team youâre managing and take two years to write Forum posts on behalf of an EA charity, you may lose the opportunity to become a CEO. Maybe thatâs fineâmaybe you know ever cared about that because of the social status you could get from itâbut maybe EA needs people with experience as successful CEOs and bringing in private sector rising stars for entry level positions is a bad idea.
I just wanted to flag one possible failure mode.
Iâve come across a few people who said that âgetting management experienceâ, for the purpose of eventually helping with direct work, was a big part in not wanting to do direct work directly. So far I havenât seen these people ever get into direct work. I think it can be great for earning to give, but am personally skeptical of its applicability to direct work.
From what Iâve seen, the skills one needs to lead EA organizations are fairly distinct, and doing so often requires a lot of domain specific knowledge that takes time to develop. Related, much of the experience I see people getting who are in management seem to be domain specific skills not relevant for direct work, or experience managing large teams of skills very different from what is seems to be needed in direct work.
For example, in bio safety orgs, the #1 requirement of a manager is a lot of experience in the field, and the same is true (maybe more so) in much of AI safety.
I think non-direct-work management tracks can be great for earning to give, as long as thatâs whatâs intended.
Strongly agree with this, as someone who had approximately the level of responsibility Khorton described until recently.
In my industry (quant trading) the extra value of further experience to outside goals past the level Iâve already reached is limited except potentially as a status signal.
Thanks! I agree that the amount of career capital a position will generate is an important factor in any career decision, âoverqualifiedâ or not.
Iâm curious about your âit can be hard to reverseâ statement though: how frequently do you think this happens? At least in US tech, itâs pretty common for people to take a year off to organize against Trump or whatever, and a year of charity work is definitely not irreversible. When Iâve talked to recruiters they basically just ignore charity work, at worst.
Anecdotally it always feels like now is the wrong time to leave your job because (good thing) is right around the corner, but itâs usually perfectly fine to leave in actuality. Received wisdom (supported by some evidence) is that regularly switching jobs actually makes you more successful.
Iâm not sure about tech! I was thinking the more business/âmanagement career track.
I definitely agree that regularly switching jobs is a good thingâthis isnât an argument against switching jobs, just against taking a much more junior role
Noting that the link you shared also shows that people who are externally hired seem to perform worse than those who are promoted. So if you care about performance more than pay, it may not be that good to switch jobs often?
Interesting point â my interpretation of that statistic is that external people are hired into more senior roles than internal people. I guess itâs also consistent with the hypothesis that external people get less mentorship though.
I really liked CEAâs âtour of dutyâ framing for the recent hiring rounds! I thought that was a great signal to potential candidates of what they could expect in the job. I think employers should be more explicit with candidates about what theyâre expecting from new hires in terms of tenure.
Conversely, I would encourage job applicants to be candid with employers about their tenure expectations for a role. For some roles, only staying in the role for 1-2 years is perfectly fine. For other roles, especially ones that require a lot of role-specific knowledge and training, that would be harmful to the organization. I also would ask candidates to introspect honestlyâdo they feel that a certain role is in any way âbeneath them?â Itâs can be damaging to morale to have a colleague who feels like the job is just a stepping stone to something else.