I’m fairly surprised that organizations had trouble filling operations roles in 2018 or so, as in recent hiring rounds, we’ve had large numbers of non-EA but otherwise very qualified candidates.
I’m a little uncertain of how important it is for operations staff to be highly value-aligned, but I think my view is that it is not that important, especially in lower-level roles. This makes me think the pool of quality candidates is quite a bit larger than it might otherwise seem—there are lots of people with for-profit or non-profit operations experience that is directly relevant to 90% of what I do day-to-day.
I think ultimately it is better to have a value-aligned staff member than not, but we had a lot of really great candidates for recent ops roles, and that’s probably partially due to us offering competitive compensation and advertising widely, and not just in EA.
Thanks! I wonder if some sort of two-tiered system would work, where there’s a value-aligned staff member who is part of the core team and has lots of money and flexibility and so forth, and then they have a blank check to hire contractors who aren’t value-aligned to do various things. That might help the value-aligned staff member from becoming overworked. Idk though, I have no idea what I’m talking about. What do you think?
There is probably a version of this that works. I know that some orgs have tried something sort of like this. One problem with “hire contractors who aren’t value-aligned to do various things” is that you then have to manage those people (whether they’re value-aligned or not). This is getting outside the scope of your original question, but I think people underestimate how much it can drag on an organization to hire new people without thinking hard about their onboarding. If you have a very well-defined task, with a clear deliverable, then it can make sense to contract it out. But if you just have a problem and need help, often bringing on a new person to solve that will make things worse in the long run.
All else equal, higher salaries almost always would lead to more candidates, but once you close to a level that is relatively competitive (eg compared to similar roles in other non-profits) and seems generally relatively fair compared to the rest of the organisation, I think other aspects of the role might become more important to candidates (eg the general work environment, how much freedom people get in the role, how much involved they can get in other aspects of the organisation if they want to, etc).
There are a few ways which allow me to get involved in other areas of our organization:
All of our Lead staff have weekly meetings, so in those meetings I can reflect on questions other Leads bring to the group, contribute ideas, etc.
Our whole team tries to allow pretty good visibility of what we’re working on by keeping project- or task-related information in the appropriate place in Asana and by posting brief weekly project updates in Slack.
We have a “reciprocity” Slack channel where we can post if we’d like someone’s help on something, and that can often be someone from a different competency area than the poster’s.
We encourage staff to join projects as Scrum Master, even if the project is outside their competency area
Do you think, on the margin, that EA orgs could get more and better ops work/people by paying substantially larger salaries?
I think yes up to a certain point.
I’m fairly surprised that organizations had trouble filling operations roles in 2018 or so, as in recent hiring rounds, we’ve had large numbers of non-EA but otherwise very qualified candidates.
I’m a little uncertain of how important it is for operations staff to be highly value-aligned, but I think my view is that it is not that important, especially in lower-level roles. This makes me think the pool of quality candidates is quite a bit larger than it might otherwise seem—there are lots of people with for-profit or non-profit operations experience that is directly relevant to 90% of what I do day-to-day.
I think ultimately it is better to have a value-aligned staff member than not, but we had a lot of really great candidates for recent ops roles, and that’s probably partially due to us offering competitive compensation and advertising widely, and not just in EA.
Thanks! I wonder if some sort of two-tiered system would work, where there’s a value-aligned staff member who is part of the core team and has lots of money and flexibility and so forth, and then they have a blank check to hire contractors who aren’t value-aligned to do various things. That might help the value-aligned staff member from becoming overworked. Idk though, I have no idea what I’m talking about. What do you think?
There is probably a version of this that works. I know that some orgs have tried something sort of like this. One problem with “hire contractors who aren’t value-aligned to do various things” is that you then have to manage those people (whether they’re value-aligned or not). This is getting outside the scope of your original question, but I think people underestimate how much it can drag on an organization to hire new people without thinking hard about their onboarding. If you have a very well-defined task, with a clear deliverable, then it can make sense to contract it out. But if you just have a problem and need help, often bringing on a new person to solve that will make things worse in the long run.
All else equal, higher salaries almost always would lead to more candidates, but once you close to a level that is relatively competitive (eg compared to similar roles in other non-profits) and seems generally relatively fair compared to the rest of the organisation, I think other aspects of the role might become more important to candidates (eg the general work environment, how much freedom people get in the role, how much involved they can get in other aspects of the organisation if they want to, etc).
Thanks! How can an org give ops staff more freedom and involvement-if-they-want-it? What are some classic mistakes to avoid?
There are a few ways which allow me to get involved in other areas of our organization:
All of our Lead staff have weekly meetings, so in those meetings I can reflect on questions other Leads bring to the group, contribute ideas, etc.
Our whole team tries to allow pretty good visibility of what we’re working on by keeping project- or task-related information in the appropriate place in Asana and by posting brief weekly project updates in Slack.
We have a “reciprocity” Slack channel where we can post if we’d like someone’s help on something, and that can often be someone from a different competency area than the poster’s.
We encourage staff to join projects as Scrum Master, even if the project is outside their competency area