Two things I should have mentioned in my first post the would have provided some clarity. While many employees certainly were privileged, the HQ was in a lower cost of living city—it was easier to live on a more modest salary. But I completely agree: although there was usually an excess of applicants, the low salary must have filtered out a lot of people.
I’m curious what the cultures are like at different organizations recognized as Effective? I’m sure some individuals participating in this forum could speak to that. I’ve read the observation that EA skews somewhere in the neighborhood of 70:30 male:female, whereas my non-EA org was closer to 30:70 with employees being mostly female.
(I’m uninterested to what degree differences in preferences between sexes are innate vs. socialized). Getting that out of the way: my org prioritized benefits such as generous Paid Time Off and flexible schedules, incentives which tend to be requested more often by women than men as they become more senior. How much does the talent constraint and gender skew in EA orgs, at least in part, overlap?
One example from my old NGO: PTO increases where related to seniority, a measure that seldom seems incentivized as much as it used to as organizations want to signal more interested in performance and notions of merit. Considering how much expense and productivity is lost from losing an employee and having to replace them, I suspect rewarding seniority is less irrational than some may think.
PTO was also given for going ‘above and beyond’ by lending yourself to smaller programs within the org that needed a temporary injection of labor. This scheme seemed similar to a physician retention program piloted in Stanford’s Emergency Dept. around 2014 - domestic services (like Blue Apron, or cleaning services), along with other non-monetary rewards, were given to MD’s that participated in activities outside their position’s core functions, such as mentorship. Interestingly, prior to the pilot these activities were mostly taken on by men, but women achieved parity in participation once the incentives rolled out. This was considered particularly promising as those activities are associated with advancement.
Terrific anecdata, thanks for sharing! Great illustrations of how intentional compensation/HR policies can help organizations access broader pools of talent.
The EA survey showed the community as a whole tilts heavily male as you say, but I have no idea what the gender split would look like if you looked only at people who work at EA orgs (or at senior people in EA orgs). Would be fascinating to do a survey of EA employees to get a sense of demographics, skills, opportunity costs, how they found the job, etc. In a Facebook discussion about this post someone proposed looking for “a Head of Compensation and People Analytics for the EA community”, and this is the sort of data they could collect and use to inform specific policy suggestions.
Two things I should have mentioned in my first post the would have provided some clarity. While many employees certainly were privileged, the HQ was in a lower cost of living city—it was easier to live on a more modest salary. But I completely agree: although there was usually an excess of applicants, the low salary must have filtered out a lot of people.
I’m curious what the cultures are like at different organizations recognized as Effective? I’m sure some individuals participating in this forum could speak to that. I’ve read the observation that EA skews somewhere in the neighborhood of 70:30 male:female, whereas my non-EA org was closer to 30:70 with employees being mostly female.
(I’m uninterested to what degree differences in preferences between sexes are innate vs. socialized). Getting that out of the way: my org prioritized benefits such as generous Paid Time Off and flexible schedules, incentives which tend to be requested more often by women than men as they become more senior. How much does the talent constraint and gender skew in EA orgs, at least in part, overlap?
One example from my old NGO: PTO increases where related to seniority, a measure that seldom seems incentivized as much as it used to as organizations want to signal more interested in performance and notions of merit. Considering how much expense and productivity is lost from losing an employee and having to replace them, I suspect rewarding seniority is less irrational than some may think.
PTO was also given for going ‘above and beyond’ by lending yourself to smaller programs within the org that needed a temporary injection of labor. This scheme seemed similar to a physician retention program piloted in Stanford’s Emergency Dept. around 2014 - domestic services (like Blue Apron, or cleaning services), along with other non-monetary rewards, were given to MD’s that participated in activities outside their position’s core functions, such as mentorship. Interestingly, prior to the pilot these activities were mostly taken on by men, but women achieved parity in participation once the incentives rolled out. This was considered particularly promising as those activities are associated with advancement.
Terrific anecdata, thanks for sharing! Great illustrations of how intentional compensation/HR policies can help organizations access broader pools of talent.
The EA survey showed the community as a whole tilts heavily male as you say, but I have no idea what the gender split would look like if you looked only at people who work at EA orgs (or at senior people in EA orgs). Would be fascinating to do a survey of EA employees to get a sense of demographics, skills, opportunity costs, how they found the job, etc. In a Facebook discussion about this post someone proposed looking for “a Head of Compensation and People Analytics for the EA community”, and this is the sort of data they could collect and use to inform specific policy suggestions.