I found this post and the comments very interesting, and Iād be excited to see more people doing the sort of things suggested in this post.
That said, thereās one point of confusion that remains for me, which is somewhat related to the point that āRight now the market for large EA consulting seems very isolated to OpenPhilā. In brief, the confusion is something like āI agree that there is sufficient demand for EA consultancies. But a large enough fraction of that demand is from Open Phil that it seems unclear why Open Phil wouldnāt instead or also do more in-house hiring.ā
I think the resolution of this mystery is something like:
Really Open Phil should and plans to do both (a) more in-house hiring and (b) more encouragement and contracting of EA consultancies, but this post just emphasises one half of that
There are many reasons why Open Phil doesnāt want to just hire more people in-house, and āour needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizationsā is actually a smaller part of that than this post (to me) implies
The rest of this comment just explains my confusion a bit more, and may be worth skipping.
The post says:
EA organizations like Open Phil and CEA could do a lot more if we had access to more analysis and more talent, but for several reasons we canāt bring on enough new staff to meet these needs ourselves, e.g. because our needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizations
[...] This system works because even though demand for these services can fluctuate rapidly at each individual client, in aggregate across many clients there is a steady demand for the consultanciesā many full-time employees, and there is plenty of useful but less time-sensitive work for them to do between client requests. [emphasis added]
But then elsewhere you (Luke) write things like:
If their current typical level of analysis quality can be maintained, I would like to see RP scale as quickly as they can.
And:
If this was feasible to do while maintaining quality, Iād probably want to commission enough ongoing analysis from RP on AI governance research questions alone to sustain >10 FTEs there.
And:
(Even within Open Phil, a bit of robustness could come from multiple teams demanding a particular genre of services, e.g. at least 3 pretty independent teams at Open Phil have contracted Rethink Priorities for analysis work. But still much safer for contractors if there are several truly independent clients.)
In light of this and other things, I guess it seems to me like Open Phil is big enough, RP researchers are generalist enough (or are sufficiently interested and capable in multiple Open Phil focus areas), and demand will continue to remain high enough that it seems like it also could really make sense for Open Phil to hire more people who are roughly like RP researchers.
It seems one couldāve in the past predicted, or at least can now predict, that some RP researchers will continue to be in demand by someone at Open Phil, for some project,for at least few years, which implies that they or similar people could also be hired in-house.
(Iām not saying such people should be hired in-house by Open Phil. I think the current set up is also working well, hence me choosing to work at RP and being excited about RP trying to scale its longtermist work relatively rapidly. Itās just that this makes me think that āour needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizationsā isnāt really as large a cause of the rationale for EA consultancies as this post seems to me to imply?)
Yes, there are several reasons why Open Phil is reluctant to hire in-house talent in many cases, hence the āe.g.ā before ābecause our needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizations.ā
I actually think there is more widespread EA client demand (outside OP) for EA consulting of the types listed in this post than the post itself represents, because there were several people who gave me feedback on the post and said something like āThis is great, I think my org has lots of demand for several of these services if they can be provided to a sufficient quality level, but please donāt quote me on that because I havenāt thought hard enough about this and donāt want people to become over-enthusiastic about this on the basis of my OTOH reaction.ā Perhaps I shouldāve mentioned this in the original post.
(Personal views only)
I found this post and the comments very interesting, and Iād be excited to see more people doing the sort of things suggested in this post.
That said, thereās one point of confusion that remains for me, which is somewhat related to the point that āRight now the market for large EA consulting seems very isolated to OpenPhilā. In brief, the confusion is something like āI agree that there is sufficient demand for EA consultancies. But a large enough fraction of that demand is from Open Phil that it seems unclear why Open Phil wouldnāt instead or also do more in-house hiring.ā
I think the resolution of this mystery is something like:
Really Open Phil should and plans to do both (a) more in-house hiring and (b) more encouragement and contracting of EA consultancies, but this post just emphasises one half of that
There are many reasons why Open Phil doesnāt want to just hire more people in-house, and āour needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizationsā is actually a smaller part of that than this post (to me) implies
Some other reasons are discussed in Reflections on Our 2018 Generalist Research Analyst Recruiting and somewhere in Holden Karnofsky (Open Philanthropy) | EA Global: Reconnect 2021 (I canāt remember the relevant time stamp, unfortunately)
Does that sound right to you?
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The rest of this comment just explains my confusion a bit more, and may be worth skipping.
The post says:
But then elsewhere you (Luke) write things like:
And:
And:
In light of this and other things, I guess it seems to me like Open Phil is big enough, RP researchers are generalist enough (or are sufficiently interested and capable in multiple Open Phil focus areas), and demand will continue to remain high enough that it seems like it also could really make sense for Open Phil to hire more people who are roughly like RP researchers.
It seems one couldāve in the past predicted, or at least can now predict, that some RP researchers will continue to be in demand by someone at Open Phil, for some project, for at least few years, which implies that they or similar people could also be hired in-house.
(Iām not saying such people should be hired in-house by Open Phil. I think the current set up is also working well, hence me choosing to work at RP and being excited about RP trying to scale its longtermist work relatively rapidly. Itās just that this makes me think that āour needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizationsā isnāt really as large a cause of the rationale for EA consultancies as this post seems to me to imply?)
A couple quick replies:
Yes, there are several reasons why Open Phil is reluctant to hire in-house talent in many cases, hence the āe.g.ā before ābecause our needs change over time, so we canāt make a commitment that thereās much future work of a particular sort to be done within our organizations.ā
I actually think there is more widespread EA client demand (outside OP) for EA consulting of the types listed in this post than the post itself represents, because there were several people who gave me feedback on the post and said something like āThis is great, I think my org has lots of demand for several of these services if they can be provided to a sufficient quality level, but please donāt quote me on that because I havenāt thought hard enough about this and donāt want people to become over-enthusiastic about this on the basis of my OTOH reaction.ā Perhaps I shouldāve mentioned this in the original post.