I have private information (e.g. from senior people at Rethink Priorities and former colleagues) that suggests operations ability at RP is unusually high. They say that Abraham Rowe, COO, is unusually good.
The reason why this comment is useful is that:
This high operations ability might be hard to observe from the inside, if you are that person (Rowe) who is really good. Also, high ability operations people may be attracted to a place where things run well and operations is respected. There may be other founder effects from Rowe. This might add nuance to Rowe’s comment.
It seems possible operations talent was (is) limited or undervalued in EA. Maybe RP’s success is related to operations ability (allows management to focus, increases org-wide happiness and confidence).
I appreciate it, but I want to emphasize that I think a lot of this boils down to careful planning and prep in advance, a really solid ops team all around, and a structure that lets operations operate a bit separately from research, so Peter and Marcus can really focus on scaling the research side of the organization / think about research impact a lot. I do agree that overall RP has been largely operationally successful, and that’s probably helped us maintain a high quality of output as we grow.
I also think a huge part of RP’s success has been Peter, Marcus, and other folks on the team being highly skilled at identifying low-hanging fruit in the EA research space, and just going out and doing that research.
To the extent that you think good operations can emerge out of replicable processes rather than singularly talented ops managers, do you think it would be useful to write a longer article about how RP does operations? (Or perhaps you’ve already written this and I missed it)
I definitely think that we are very lucky to have Abraham working with us. I think another thing is that there are at least three people (Abraham, Marcus, me, and probably other people too if given the chance) each capable of founding and running an organization all focused instead on making just one organization really great and big.
I definitely think having Abraham be able to fully handle operations allows Marcus and me to focus nearly entirely on driving our research quality, which is a good thing. Marcus and I also have clear subfocuses (Marcus does animals and global health / development, whereas I focus on longtermism, surveys, and EA movement building) which allow us to further focus our time specifically on making things great.
I have private information (e.g. from senior people at Rethink Priorities and former colleagues) that suggests operations ability at RP is unusually high. They say that Abraham Rowe, COO, is unusually good.
The reason why this comment is useful is that:
This high operations ability might be hard to observe from the inside, if you are that person (Rowe) who is really good. Also, high ability operations people may be attracted to a place where things run well and operations is respected. There may be other founder effects from Rowe. This might add nuance to Rowe’s comment.
It seems possible operations talent was (is) limited or undervalued in EA. Maybe RP’s success is related to operations ability (allows management to focus, increases org-wide happiness and confidence).
I appreciate it, but I want to emphasize that I think a lot of this boils down to careful planning and prep in advance, a really solid ops team all around, and a structure that lets operations operate a bit separately from research, so Peter and Marcus can really focus on scaling the research side of the organization / think about research impact a lot. I do agree that overall RP has been largely operationally successful, and that’s probably helped us maintain a high quality of output as we grow.
I also think a huge part of RP’s success has been Peter, Marcus, and other folks on the team being highly skilled at identifying low-hanging fruit in the EA research space, and just going out and doing that research.
To the extent that you think good operations can emerge out of replicable processes rather than singularly talented ops managers, do you think it would be useful to write a longer article about how RP does operations? (Or perhaps you’ve already written this and I missed it)
This potentially sounds useful, and I can definitely write about it at some point (though no promises on when just due to time constraints right now).
I definitely think that we are very lucky to have Abraham working with us. I think another thing is that there are at least three people (Abraham, Marcus, me, and probably other people too if given the chance) each capable of founding and running an organization all focused instead on making just one organization really great and big.
I definitely think having Abraham be able to fully handle operations allows Marcus and me to focus nearly entirely on driving our research quality, which is a good thing. Marcus and I also have clear subfocuses (Marcus does animals and global health / development, whereas I focus on longtermism, surveys, and EA movement building) which allow us to further focus our time specifically on making things great.