My understanding, though I’m not sure the board ever publicly confirmed this, was they decided that Larissa was acting on behalf of Leverage Research, and hence contrary to the best interests of CEA, and they wanted to stop the entryism.
IIRC the official reason (or at least the thing that caused stuff to come to a head) was that Larissa and Kerry had been dating for multiple months but had never told the rest of leadership or the board about it.
Larissa and I did start dating shortly before we left CEA but we were told repeatedly and in writing that this was not a factor in Larissa’s departure.
We believe we followed CEAs policy around co-workers dating and have never received any indication to the contrary from CEA.
I was told this dozens of times by many different employees. None of them were board members, but they all seemed to agree it was the thing that caused the conflict to escalate.
I think the disagreement here is that we followed the CEA policy and were told explicitly and in writing at the time by the board that our dating had nothing to do with their decision. That doesn’t mean staff weren’t upset.
I don’t know what “nothing to do” means. I do now believe that it had nothing legally to do with the firing, but it still seems like the thing that “brought things to a head”.
No, we didn’t do anything wrong. Like I said, we followed the policy.
People were upset that we were dating but not because there was some coverup or anything. Some folks had strategic disagreements with me and us dating made that a larger problem.
If you both leaving was performance-related, it’s sort of weird for you both to leave at the same time. Was both of you leaving performance-related? Or did you both leave the same time because you were dating? Can you say more about why you both left at the same time?
I don’t know that this requires further scrutiny—not wanting to continue working at an organisation that fired your girlfriend seems like the default response.
I do enjoy the secret Leverage spy stories as it makes my life seem more exciting than it is but they don’t ever make me feel very optimistic about EA epistemics.
Uggh I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up conversations about current Leverage in this thread, as it’s very off-topic. I just thought it’d be instructive to include a link for the only other time I remember in recent memory about a board very clearly firing a CEO, when the much more normal thing to do in that context is pretend the CEO resigned, or leaving it ambiguous.
I thought there were interesting parallels, that’s all. Didn’t mean to draw so much heat.
What’s the lore behind that update? This was before I followed EA community stuff
My understanding, though I’m not sure the board ever publicly confirmed this, was they decided that Larissa was acting on behalf of Leverage Research, and hence contrary to the best interests of CEA, and they wanted to stop the entryism.
IIRC the official reason (or at least the thing that caused stuff to come to a head) was that Larissa and Kerry had been dating for multiple months but had never told the rest of leadership or the board about it.
This isn’t true.
Larissa and I did start dating shortly before we left CEA but we were told repeatedly and in writing that this was not a factor in Larissa’s departure.
We believe we followed CEAs policy around co-workers dating and have never received any indication to the contrary from CEA.
I was told this dozens of times by many different employees. None of them were board members, but they all seemed to agree it was the thing that caused the conflict to escalate.
I think the disagreement here is that we followed the CEA policy and were told explicitly and in writing at the time by the board that our dating had nothing to do with their decision. That doesn’t mean staff weren’t upset.
I don’t know what “nothing to do” means. I do now believe that it had nothing legally to do with the firing, but it still seems like the thing that “brought things to a head”.
So did you do something wrong then, even if that wasn’t why you left? How long did it take you to tell the organisation that you were dating?
No, we didn’t do anything wrong. Like I said, we followed the policy.
People were upset that we were dating but not because there was some coverup or anything. Some folks had strategic disagreements with me and us dating made that a larger problem.
how long did it take you to tell the organisation that you were dating?
It was a short timeline. I don’t remember exactly but we told senior leadership and the board quite soon after we decided to start dating.
Less than a month?
Yes
If you both leaving was performance-related, it’s sort of weird for you both to leave at the same time. Was both of you leaving performance-related? Or did you both leave the same time because you were dating? Can you say more about why you both left at the same time?
I don’t know that this requires further scrutiny—not wanting to continue working at an organisation that fired your girlfriend seems like the default response.
did you declare to the rest of CEA that you were dating as soon as you started dating? If not, how long was the gap?
I do enjoy the secret Leverage spy stories as it makes my life seem more exciting than it is but they don’t ever make me feel very optimistic about EA epistemics.
Thanks for the response; would you mind sharing the reason the board gave for firing you?
Regarding epistemics, is Leverage still operating according to this plan, with samples below:
Uggh I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up conversations about current Leverage in this thread, as it’s very off-topic. I just thought it’d be instructive to include a link for the only other time I remember in recent memory about a board very clearly firing a CEO, when the much more normal thing to do in that context is pretend the CEO resigned, or leaving it ambiguous.
I thought there were interesting parallels, that’s all. Didn’t mean to draw so much heat.