These feel like they should be obvious points and yet I hadn’t thought about them before. So this was also an update for me! I’ve been considering PhDs, and your stated downsides don’t seem like big downsides for me personally, so it could be relevant to me too.
Ok, so the imagine you/we (the EA community) successfully make the case and encourage demand for RA positions. Is there supply?
I don’t recall ever seeing an RA position formally advertised (though I haven’t been looking out for them per se, don’t check the 80k job board very regularly, etc)
If I imagine myself or my colleagues at Sentience Institute with an RA, I can imagine that we’d periodically find an RA helpful, but not enough for a full-time role.
Might be different at other EA/longtermist nonprofits but we’re primarily funding constrained. Apart from the sense that they might accept a slightly lower salary, why would we hire an RA when we could hire a full blown researcher (who might sometimes have to do the lit reviews and grunt-work themselves)?
I actually think full-time RA roles are very commonly (probably more often than not?) publicly advertised. Some fields even have centralizedjob boards that aggregate RA roles across the discipline, and on top of that, there are a growing number of formalized predoctoralRA programs at major research universities in the U.S. I am actually currently working as an RA in an academic research group that has had roles posted on the 80,000 Hours job board. While I think it is common for students to approach professors in their academic program and request RA work, my sense is that non-students seeking full-time RA positions very rarely have success cold-emailing professors and asking if they need any help. Most professors do not have both ongoing need for an (additional) RA and the funding to hire one (whereas in the case of their own students, universities often have special funding set aside for students’ research training, and professors face an expectation that they help interested students to develop as researchers).
Separately, regarding the second bullet point, I think it is extremely common for even full-time RAs to only periodically be meaningfully useful and to spend the rest of their time working on relatively low-priority “back burner” projects. In general, my sense is that work for academic RAs often comes in waves; some weeks, your PI will hand you loads of things to do, and you’ll be working late, but some weeks, there will be very little for you to do at all. In many cases, I think RAs are hired at least to some extent for the value of having them effectively on call.
In regards to the third bullet point, there might be a nontrivial boost to the senior researchers’ productivity and well-being.
Doing grunt-work can be disproportionally (to its time) tiring and demotivating, and most people have some type of work that they dislike or just not good at which could perhaps be delegated. Additionally, having a (strong and motivated) RA might just be more fun and help with making personal research projects more social and meaningful.
Regarding the salary, I’ve quickly checked GiveWell’s salaries at Glassdoor
So from that I’d guess that an RA could cost about 60% as much as a senior researcher. (I’m sure that there is better and more relevant information out there)
Ok, so the imagine you/we (the EA community) successfully make the case and encourage demand for RA positions. Is there supply?
I think you’re asking ”...encourage that people seekRA positions. Would there be enough demand for those aspiring RAs?”? Is that right? (I ask because I think I’m more used to thinking of demand for a type of worker, and supply of candidates for those positions.)
I don’t have confident answers to those questions, but here are some quick, tentative thoughts:
I’ve seen some RA positions formally advertised (e.g., on the 80k job board)
I remember one for Nick Bostrom and I think one for an economics professor, and I think I’ve seen others
I also know of at least two cases where an RA positions was opened but not widely advertised, including one case where the researcher was only a couple years into their research career
I have a vague memory of someone saying that proactively reaching out to researchers to ask if they’d want you to be an RA might work surprisingly often
I also have a vague impression that this is common with university students and professors
But I think this person was saying it in relation to EA researchers
(Of course, a vague memory of someone saying this is not very strong evidence that it’s true)
I do think there are a decent number of EA/longtermist orgs which have or could get more funding than they are currently able or willing to spend on their research efforts, e.g. due to how much time from senior people would be consumed for hiring rounds or managing and training new employees
Some of these constraints would also constrain the org from taking on RAs
But maybe there are cases where the constraint is smaller for RAs than for more independent researchers?
One could think of this in terms of the org having already identified a full researcher whose judgement, choices, output, etc. the org is happy with, and they’ve then done further work to get that researcher on the same page with the org, more trained up, etc. The RA can slot in under that researcher and help them do their work better. So there may be less need to carefully screen them up front, and they may take up less management time from the most senior staff (instead being managed by the researcher themselves).
I think this can also help answer “Apart from the sense that they might accept a slightly lower salary, why would we hire an RA when we could hire a full blown researcher”? Sometimes it may be easier to find someone who would be a fit for an RA role than someone who’d be a fit for a full researcher role.
(It’s worth noting that this is partly about the extent to which the person already has credible signals of fit, already has developed good judgement and research taste, etc. So some of those RAs may then later be great fits for full researcher roles. Though also some could perhaps remain as RAs and just keep providing more and more value in such roles.)
But again, these are quick, tentative thoughts. I’ve neither worked as nor had an RA, haven’t been closely involved with any RA hiring decisions, haven’t done research into how RAing works and what value it provides in non-EA academia, etc.
These feel like they should be obvious points and yet I hadn’t thought about them before. So this was also an update for me! I’ve been considering PhDs, and your stated downsides don’t seem like big downsides for me personally, so it could be relevant to me too.
Ok, so the imagine you/we (the EA community) successfully make the case and encourage demand for RA positions. Is there supply?
I don’t recall ever seeing an RA position formally advertised (though I haven’t been looking out for them per se, don’t check the 80k job board very regularly, etc)
If I imagine myself or my colleagues at Sentience Institute with an RA, I can imagine that we’d periodically find an RA helpful, but not enough for a full-time role.
Might be different at other EA/longtermist nonprofits but we’re primarily funding constrained. Apart from the sense that they might accept a slightly lower salary, why would we hire an RA when we could hire a full blown researcher (who might sometimes have to do the lit reviews and grunt-work themselves)?
I actually think full-time RA roles are very commonly (probably more often than not?) publicly advertised. Some fields even have centralized job boards that aggregate RA roles across the discipline, and on top of that, there are a growing number of formalized predoctoral RA programs at major research universities in the U.S. I am actually currently working as an RA in an academic research group that has had roles posted on the 80,000 Hours job board. While I think it is common for students to approach professors in their academic program and request RA work, my sense is that non-students seeking full-time RA positions very rarely have success cold-emailing professors and asking if they need any help. Most professors do not have both ongoing need for an (additional) RA and the funding to hire one (whereas in the case of their own students, universities often have special funding set aside for students’ research training, and professors face an expectation that they help interested students to develop as researchers).
Separately, regarding the second bullet point, I think it is extremely common for even full-time RAs to only periodically be meaningfully useful and to spend the rest of their time working on relatively low-priority “back burner” projects. In general, my sense is that work for academic RAs often comes in waves; some weeks, your PI will hand you loads of things to do, and you’ll be working late, but some weeks, there will be very little for you to do at all. In many cases, I think RAs are hired at least to some extent for the value of having them effectively on call.
In regards to the third bullet point, there might be a nontrivial boost to the senior researchers’ productivity and well-being.
Doing grunt-work can be disproportionally (to its time) tiring and demotivating, and most people have some type of work that they dislike or just not good at which could perhaps be delegated. Additionally, having a (strong and motivated) RA might just be more fun and help with making personal research projects more social and meaningful.
Regarding the salary, I’ve quickly checked GiveWell’s salaries at Glassdoor
So from that I’d guess that an RA could cost about 60% as much as a senior researcher. (I’m sure that there is better and more relevant information out there)
I think you’re asking ”...encourage that people seek RA positions. Would there be enough demand for those aspiring RAs?”? Is that right? (I ask because I think I’m more used to thinking of demand for a type of worker, and supply of candidates for those positions.)
I don’t have confident answers to those questions, but here are some quick, tentative thoughts:
I’ve seen some RA positions formally advertised (e.g., on the 80k job board)
I remember one for Nick Bostrom and I think one for an economics professor, and I think I’ve seen others
I also know of at least two cases where an RA positions was opened but not widely advertised, including one case where the researcher was only a couple years into their research career
I have a vague memory of someone saying that proactively reaching out to researchers to ask if they’d want you to be an RA might work surprisingly often
I also have a vague impression that this is common with university students and professors
But I think this person was saying it in relation to EA researchers
(Of course, a vague memory of someone saying this is not very strong evidence that it’s true)
I do think there are a decent number of EA/longtermist orgs which have or could get more funding than they are currently able or willing to spend on their research efforts, e.g. due to how much time from senior people would be consumed for hiring rounds or managing and training new employees
Some of these constraints would also constrain the org from taking on RAs
But maybe there are cases where the constraint is smaller for RAs than for more independent researchers?
One could think of this in terms of the org having already identified a full researcher whose judgement, choices, output, etc. the org is happy with, and they’ve then done further work to get that researcher on the same page with the org, more trained up, etc. The RA can slot in under that researcher and help them do their work better. So there may be less need to carefully screen them up front, and they may take up less management time from the most senior staff (instead being managed by the researcher themselves).
I think this can also help answer “Apart from the sense that they might accept a slightly lower salary, why would we hire an RA when we could hire a full blown researcher”? Sometimes it may be easier to find someone who would be a fit for an RA role than someone who’d be a fit for a full researcher role.
(It’s worth noting that this is partly about the extent to which the person already has credible signals of fit, already has developed good judgement and research taste, etc. So some of those RAs may then later be great fits for full researcher roles. Though also some could perhaps remain as RAs and just keep providing more and more value in such roles.)
But again, these are quick, tentative thoughts. I’ve neither worked as nor had an RA, haven’t been closely involved with any RA hiring decisions, haven’t done research into how RAing works and what value it provides in non-EA academia, etc.