Sparked by this comment over on the Longterm Future April 2019 grants thread:
This is combined with an environment that is starved on management capacity, and so has very little room to give people feedback on their plans and actions.
Who in the EA community actively enjoys managing people?
Who in EA actively enjoys managing research teams?
Who in EA actively enjoys managing operations teams?
Who in EA actively enjoys organizing events & conferences?
I feel like I don’t have a very clear map of this space, and it seems like an important limiting factor for the community.
Me.
Me. But also a TON of people outside of the community. I have been a storng advocate for EA orgs hiring outside of the community for senior management roles.
I enjoy organizing events and coordinating new online groups and projects, as well as coaching people, but am rather unskilled at these things at the moment. I expect management to ever-increasingly be an important hat of mine in my future. I would highly welcome marginal domain-specific mentorship here!
(coughcough, to the person reading this who knows something about these things) :)
I actively enjoy managing people, research teams, and operations teams. (It also feels like a particularly effective use of my time in terms of payoff).
I think I do.
Me! (Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Machine Learning Engineers, Programs, and Products)
FWIW, I would enjoy more opportunities to organize events and conferences, and manage operations teams.
I love managing people! It’s definitely one of the most fun ways I spend my time. Currently I’m a student government representative at my university and I oversee a team of 50 students in 9 different project teams.
Always looking for ways to improve, so if there are any more experienced managers out there, I’d love to chat!
I actively enjoy managing people, although it has taken about a decade of experience to get to this point. I’m also good at it, which I think is very important as well.
I’ve done management (of software engineers in a startup) and decided to move away from it for now, but can see a future in which I do more of it.
I strongly suspect the reason EA is so obsessed (read: dependent) on high agency operations types is because of a lack of managerial talent
Me! I don’t just enjoy people management, I am passionate about leadership and consider it to be my strongest skill set.
[I see I’m a bit late to the party on this once since the latest replies were in 2019. It seems like the underlying concern about lack of management capacity in EA organizations is still a pressing issue though. Does anyone strongly agree/disagree? Please comment as I’d love to chat further, or send me a message]
I have 11.5 years of experience managing software teams in industry (Amazon, Bloomberg). I’m now pivoting my career to EA and have been deeply engaged in the community for about 6 months. I love managing and growing high-performance teams, and scaled an organization from 8 people (1 team) to 25 people (3 teams). I take a people-oriented, supportive, coaching approach to management—this helps me find the win-win of happy employees who are learning and growing in their careers, and delivering amazing results. If someone reads this and is hiring for an operations or technology manager role in EA, please feel free to send me a message. My preferred cause areas are EA movement building, AI safety, and alternative proteins, but I’m open to other causes in order to gain experience and do good.
I also am piloting a pay-what-you-can leadership coaching program for current and aspiring EA managers. If you’re interested, send me a message!
I enjoy managing at my policy job, and I’m actively working on growing that skill set, but I’m not sure how closely that aligns with your sub questions. I second the comment below—what kind of answer are you looking for?