The EA Hotel would only be a top charity if it’s producing higher quality work than other top charities.
Because the guests are always changing, and because the Hotel is new, we can’t evaluate the work yet. We have to guess whether the work would be higher or lower quality than top charities.
A key factor for producing a large volume of quality work is feedback. Regular (eg daily or weekly) feedback helps you to focus on the right things, speed up or slow down, find better ways of doing things, and improve the quality of your work over time.
I don’t expect the EA Hotel guests to be getting much high quality feedback. Many of them are working on very different projects from each other, and their peers are incentivized to be nice—it’s not the kind of relationship a student has with a teacher or an employee has with a manager. In general, I think most EA Hotel guests are receiving significantly less quality feedback and mentorship than they would if they were working or studying in a formal program.
I would be less concerned about this if the average EA Hotel guest had several years of experience being mentored in their chosen field, but currently I would prefer for the majority of them to develop their skills in a way that gives them direct feedback before striking out on their own.
I agree that feedback is extremely important. I even imagine that feedback is almost universally the bottleneck to growth. Feedback in the general sense. Not just from people, but from experience as well.
We’re giving guests 15 minutes of feedback per week, through personal check-ins with the manager (which is currently me). I can imagine that this is a bit less than what one would usually get from one’s superior, and that this feedback is less good because management is unlikely to be an expert on the subject at hand.
Coming from a different perspective: EA seems to be more generally constrained by mentorship. If all the mentors are already mentoring at full capacity, the next best thing is to let people try and figure things out by themselves (or read books about it). I’d guess that that is better than letting people sit at home and wait for their turn, so to speak, which seems to be the real counterfactual.
I would also add that there seems to be a good amount of peer feedback and group discussion. People requesting and giving feedback on ideas and drafts, giving talks with Q&As, brainstorming together, that kind of thing.
There is a high level of shared knowledge of EA amongst hotel guests. Also the average level of education and work experience is pretty high (from a recent survey: 4.6 years university level education, 4.8 years work experience).
I’m glad you’ve thought about feedback and that you have a system. I agree that 15 minutes a week from someone not intimately familiar with your project and subject area is probably much less useful than you’d get at work, although better than some PhD programs.
I think the counterfactual to running your own unsupervised project with 15 minutes a week of feedback is studying or working outside the EA community, and I think that’s more useful for developing skills and high quality work in almost every case.
That’s a good point. You made me aware of a certain population of potential hotel residents that would be better off building career capital elsewhere. But I think “almost every case” is an overstatement. Here’s some idealized examples, for the sake of argument:
The person with the high-profile career that decides to do independent research instead of taking a job at a multinational NGO that eventually leads them to a lot more influence
The EA-adjacent software developer that would have drifted outside of the community, if not for a place at the EA Hotel where they’re doing useful knowledge work
The entrepreneurial person that starts an EA organisation at the hotel, instead of doing a second-grade Master’s degree in relative obscurity because they were never good at caring about grades
Would you agree that the first would be a net loss, while the second and the third would be a net gain? I’m curious what you think our pool of residents is like, and how this influences your opinion.
I guess I find these scenarios hard to relate to because I can think of a lot of better solutions for 2 and 3 then the EA Hotel. Like 2 could work on their impactful project part time until it’s good enough that someone would fund it (at which point the EA Hotel becomes really useful!), or they could become more involved in their local EA community or another community of donors. 3 could get a job at a startup so they better understand entrepreneurship, or take part in Charity Entrepreneurship. But yes, independent projects at the EA Hotel are better than the alternatives listed.
I live in a place with no established EA community and I don’t see myself working on a project part-time with no oversight because I’ve been there, done that, and largely failed, because in the long term, isolation was hard for me. Charity Entrepreneurship? This is the first I’ve heard of it. For me, moving to a place like EA hotel would be a great way to “break into” the EA community; paying my way at an EA hotel (£10/day) is more attractive to me than attempting to get a job in an expensive EA hub like SF or NY, since I already tried to do that and failed. [That said I’m not going to this EA hotel since I’m not British.]
Remember that we’re not all Ivy league here. I graduated merely with honors from a local university.
Many of them are working on very different projects from each other, and their peers are incentivized to be nice—it’s not the kind of relationship a student has with a teacher or an employee has with a manager.
This is a good point. Maybe the hotel should have events where people anonymously write down the strongest criticisms they can think of for a particular person’s project, then someone reads the criticisms aloud and they get discussed.
While I liked seeing the reasons for your belief in your subsequent comment, I also really appreciate the meta-level point this comment evoked in me (though I don’t know whether this is what you meant):
“In general, most causes are unlikely to be competitive with the very best causes. Thus, a simple explanation for an organization’s not getting funding is that potential funders didn’t think it was among the very best opportunities after carefully thinking about it. This may be a much more important factor than arguments like ‘too risky’ or ‘not tax-deductible’.”
(Of course, risk may be factored into calculations about “the best opportunity”, but I can also imagine some funders just looking at the portfolio of projects, estimating a reasonable “helpfulness” coefficient for how much value the Hotel adds, and deciding that the number didn’t add up, even without consideration of risk.)
Similarly, if AMF had trouble fundraising one year, and someone asked why, the explanation I’d think of immediately wouldn’t be “risk of mosquito-net fishing” or “concerns about their deal with Country X”. It would be “their program’s EV slipped below the EV of several other global-health charities, and many donors chose other charities on the margin instead of AMF, even if AMF is still a great charity”.
Because it’s not as good a funding opportunity as the top charities currently out there.
I think you should expand on why you believe this is the case. It would be useful for me to know your thinking, since I’m considering giving to them.
The EA Hotel would only be a top charity if it’s producing higher quality work than other top charities.
Because the guests are always changing, and because the Hotel is new, we can’t evaluate the work yet. We have to guess whether the work would be higher or lower quality than top charities.
A key factor for producing a large volume of quality work is feedback. Regular (eg daily or weekly) feedback helps you to focus on the right things, speed up or slow down, find better ways of doing things, and improve the quality of your work over time.
I don’t expect the EA Hotel guests to be getting much high quality feedback. Many of them are working on very different projects from each other, and their peers are incentivized to be nice—it’s not the kind of relationship a student has with a teacher or an employee has with a manager. In general, I think most EA Hotel guests are receiving significantly less quality feedback and mentorship than they would if they were working or studying in a formal program.
I would be less concerned about this if the average EA Hotel guest had several years of experience being mentored in their chosen field, but currently I would prefer for the majority of them to develop their skills in a way that gives them direct feedback before striking out on their own.
I agree that feedback is extremely important. I even imagine that feedback is almost universally the bottleneck to growth. Feedback in the general sense. Not just from people, but from experience as well.
We’re giving guests 15 minutes of feedback per week, through personal check-ins with the manager (which is currently me). I can imagine that this is a bit less than what one would usually get from one’s superior, and that this feedback is less good because management is unlikely to be an expert on the subject at hand.
Coming from a different perspective: EA seems to be more generally constrained by mentorship. If all the mentors are already mentoring at full capacity, the next best thing is to let people try and figure things out by themselves (or read books about it). I’d guess that that is better than letting people sit at home and wait for their turn, so to speak, which seems to be the real counterfactual.
I would also add that there seems to be a good amount of peer feedback and group discussion. People requesting and giving feedback on ideas and drafts, giving talks with Q&As, brainstorming together, that kind of thing.
There is a high level of shared knowledge of EA amongst hotel guests. Also the average level of education and work experience is pretty high (from a recent survey: 4.6 years university level education, 4.8 years work experience).
I’m glad you’ve thought about feedback and that you have a system. I agree that 15 minutes a week from someone not intimately familiar with your project and subject area is probably much less useful than you’d get at work, although better than some PhD programs.
I think the counterfactual to running your own unsupervised project with 15 minutes a week of feedback is studying or working outside the EA community, and I think that’s more useful for developing skills and high quality work in almost every case.
That’s a good point. You made me aware of a certain population of potential hotel residents that would be better off building career capital elsewhere. But I think “almost every case” is an overstatement. Here’s some idealized examples, for the sake of argument:
The person with the high-profile career that decides to do independent research instead of taking a job at a multinational NGO that eventually leads them to a lot more influence
The EA-adjacent software developer that would have drifted outside of the community, if not for a place at the EA Hotel where they’re doing useful knowledge work
The entrepreneurial person that starts an EA organisation at the hotel, instead of doing a second-grade Master’s degree in relative obscurity because they were never good at caring about grades
Would you agree that the first would be a net loss, while the second and the third would be a net gain? I’m curious what you think our pool of residents is like, and how this influences your opinion.
I guess I find these scenarios hard to relate to because I can think of a lot of better solutions for 2 and 3 then the EA Hotel. Like 2 could work on their impactful project part time until it’s good enough that someone would fund it (at which point the EA Hotel becomes really useful!), or they could become more involved in their local EA community or another community of donors. 3 could get a job at a startup so they better understand entrepreneurship, or take part in Charity Entrepreneurship. But yes, independent projects at the EA Hotel are better than the alternatives listed.
I live in a place with no established EA community and I don’t see myself working on a project part-time with no oversight because I’ve been there, done that, and largely failed, because in the long term, isolation was hard for me. Charity Entrepreneurship? This is the first I’ve heard of it. For me, moving to a place like EA hotel would be a great way to “break into” the EA community; paying my way at an EA hotel (£10/day) is more attractive to me than attempting to get a job in an expensive EA hub like SF or NY, since I already tried to do that and failed. [That said I’m not going to this EA hotel since I’m not British.]
Remember that we’re not all Ivy league here. I graduated merely with honors from a local university.
This is a good point. Maybe the hotel should have events where people anonymously write down the strongest criticisms they can think of for a particular person’s project, then someone reads the criticisms aloud and they get discussed.
While I liked seeing the reasons for your belief in your subsequent comment, I also really appreciate the meta-level point this comment evoked in me (though I don’t know whether this is what you meant):
“In general, most causes are unlikely to be competitive with the very best causes. Thus, a simple explanation for an organization’s not getting funding is that potential funders didn’t think it was among the very best opportunities after carefully thinking about it. This may be a much more important factor than arguments like ‘too risky’ or ‘not tax-deductible’.”
(Of course, risk may be factored into calculations about “the best opportunity”, but I can also imagine some funders just looking at the portfolio of projects, estimating a reasonable “helpfulness” coefficient for how much value the Hotel adds, and deciding that the number didn’t add up, even without consideration of risk.)
Similarly, if AMF had trouble fundraising one year, and someone asked why, the explanation I’d think of immediately wouldn’t be “risk of mosquito-net fishing” or “concerns about their deal with Country X”. It would be “their program’s EV slipped below the EV of several other global-health charities, and many donors chose other charities on the margin instead of AMF, even if AMF is still a great charity”.
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I work for CEA, but these views are my own.
Yep, that’s what I meant.
What are the counterfactual top charities you have in mind?