People who have the requisite talent level to be a ātopā or āsenior-levelā hire seem to be rare in general, given that thereās a huge market for recruiting organizations whose only job is to refer promising senior-level hires to companies who will pay a five-or-six-figure bounty if they actually manage to hire someone at that level.
How many people connected to effective altruism are at this level, AND are not involved with some other key EA project, AND do not already have a job that generates enough money that theyād be very unlikely to take a low-salary job at a small EA organization? (Even if you care a lot about impact, itās probably tempting to make $150,000 and donate $50,000 for āsomeone elseā to make that impact, rather than to take the $50,000 job yourself.)
It seems like weāre talking around one aspect of the problem: What, exactly, defines a ātop hireā? What are the differences between that person and the average enthusiastic recent college graduate? How many of those differences can be remedied with an internship and some skills training, and how many are inherent features of the way someone āturned outā after their first twentysomething years of being alive? What fraction of the EA populationāamong people who are willing to go in for unpaid training and donāt already have great jobs/āpositionsāmight actually be able to become ātop hiresā with a reasonable amount of training?
Iād be interested to hear your thoughts on that, Joey. Having run a few small organizations myself, Iāve worked with people who were reliable vs. unreliable, or who had good vs. bad instincts, and I know what my own criteria look like, but I donāt have a good sense for how many people actually fit those criteria, since Iāve done very little direct āhiringā (these were student orgs, so anyone who wanted to join was welcome).
People who have the requisite talent level to be a ātopā or āsenior-levelā hire seem to be rare in general, given that thereās a huge market for recruiting organizations whose only job is to refer promising senior-level hires to companies who will pay a five-or-six-figure bounty if they actually manage to hire someone at that level.
How many people connected to effective altruism are at this level, AND are not involved with some other key EA project, AND do not already have a job that generates enough money that theyād be very unlikely to take a low-salary job at a small EA organization? (Even if you care a lot about impact, itās probably tempting to make $150,000 and donate $50,000 for āsomeone elseā to make that impact, rather than to take the $50,000 job yourself.)
It seems like weāre talking around one aspect of the problem: What, exactly, defines a ātop hireā? What are the differences between that person and the average enthusiastic recent college graduate? How many of those differences can be remedied with an internship and some skills training, and how many are inherent features of the way someone āturned outā after their first twentysomething years of being alive? What fraction of the EA populationāamong people who are willing to go in for unpaid training and donāt already have great jobs/āpositionsāmight actually be able to become ātop hiresā with a reasonable amount of training?
Iād be interested to hear your thoughts on that, Joey. Having run a few small organizations myself, Iāve worked with people who were reliable vs. unreliable, or who had good vs. bad instincts, and I know what my own criteria look like, but I donāt have a good sense for how many people actually fit those criteria, since Iāve done very little direct āhiringā (these were student orgs, so anyone who wanted to join was welcome).