Thanks for taking the time to write thoughtful criticism. Wanted to add a few quick notes (though note that I’m not really impartial as I’m socially very close with Redwood)
- I personally found MLAB extremely valuable. It was very well-designed and well-taught and was the best teaching/learning experience I’ve had by a fairly wide margin - Redwood’s community building (MLAB, REMIX and people who applied to or worked at Redwood) has been a great pipeline for ARC Evals and our biggest single source for hiring (we currently have 3 employees and 2 work triallers who came via Redwood community building efforts). - It was also very useful for ARC Evals to be able to use Constellation office space while we were getting started, rather than needing to figure this out by ourselves. - As a female person I feel very comfortable in Constellation. I’ve never felt that I needed to defer or was viewed for my dating potential rather than my intellectual contributions. I do think I’m pretty happy to hold my ground and sometimes oblivious to things that bother other people, so that might not be a very strong evidence that it isn’t an issue for other people. However, I have been bothered in the past by places that try to make up the gender balance by hiring a lot of women for non-technical roles. In these places, people assume that the women who are there are non-technical. I think it would make the environment worse for me personally if there was pressure for Constellation to balance the gender ratios. - I think there have been various ways in which Redwood culture and management style were not great. I think some of this was due to difficult tradeoffs or normal challenges of being a new organization, and some of it was unforced errors. I think they are mostly aware of the issues and taking steps to fix them, although I don’t think I expect them to be excellent at management that soon. Some of my recommendations (which I’ve told them before and think they have mostly taken on board): -- If Buck is continuing to manage people (and maybe also if not), he should get management coaching —Give employees lots of concrete positive feedback (at least once per week) -- When letting people go, be very clear that hiring is noisy, people perform differently at different organizations; Redwood is a challenging and often low-management environment that, like a PhD program, is not a good fit for everyone; they shouldn’t be too discouraged. (I think Redwood believes this but hasn’t been as clear as they could be about communicating it) -- Make sure expectations are clear for work trials —Make growth for their employees a serious priority, especially for their top performers—this should be something that is done deliberately with time set aside for it
I personally found MLAB extremely valuable. It was very well-designed and well-taught and was the best teaching/learning experience I’ve had by a fairly wide margin
Strong +1, I was really impressed with the quality of MLAB. I got a moderate amount out of doing it over the summer, and would have gotten much much more if I had done it a year or two before. I think that kind of outreach is high value, though plausibly a distraction from the core mission
Thanks for taking the time to write thoughtful criticism. Wanted to add a few quick notes (though note that I’m not really impartial as I’m socially very close with Redwood)
- I personally found MLAB extremely valuable. It was very well-designed and well-taught and was the best teaching/learning experience I’ve had by a fairly wide margin
- Redwood’s community building (MLAB, REMIX and people who applied to or worked at Redwood) has been a great pipeline for ARC Evals and our biggest single source for hiring (we currently have 3 employees and 2 work triallers who came via Redwood community building efforts).
- It was also very useful for ARC Evals to be able to use Constellation office space while we were getting started, rather than needing to figure this out by ourselves.
- As a female person I feel very comfortable in Constellation. I’ve never felt that I needed to defer or was viewed for my dating potential rather than my intellectual contributions. I do think I’m pretty happy to hold my ground and sometimes oblivious to things that bother other people, so that might not be a very strong evidence that it isn’t an issue for other people. However, I have been bothered in the past by places that try to make up the gender balance by hiring a lot of women for non-technical roles. In these places, people assume that the women who are there are non-technical. I think it would make the environment worse for me personally if there was pressure for Constellation to balance the gender ratios.
- I think there have been various ways in which Redwood culture and management style were not great. I think some of this was due to difficult tradeoffs or normal challenges of being a new organization, and some of it was unforced errors. I think they are mostly aware of the issues and taking steps to fix them, although I don’t think I expect them to be excellent at management that soon. Some of my recommendations (which I’ve told them before and think they have mostly taken on board):
-- If Buck is continuing to manage people (and maybe also if not), he should get management coaching
—Give employees lots of concrete positive feedback (at least once per week)
-- When letting people go, be very clear that hiring is noisy, people perform differently at different organizations; Redwood is a challenging and often low-management environment that, like a PhD program, is not a good fit for everyone; they shouldn’t be too discouraged. (I think Redwood believes this but hasn’t been as clear as they could be about communicating it)
-- Make sure expectations are clear for work trials
—Make growth for their employees a serious priority, especially for their top performers—this should be something that is done deliberately with time set aside for it
Strong +1, I was really impressed with the quality of MLAB. I got a moderate amount out of doing it over the summer, and would have gotten much much more if I had done it a year or two before. I think that kind of outreach is high value, though plausibly a distraction from the core mission