Upcoming posts about not yet created EA project or institution called “EA common application”.
I know a writer/”founder” who wrote up documents related to an “EA common application”.
Importantly, their vision seemed to get serious interest and funding—but they later exited or got kicked off the project[1][2].
I have access to these documents written by this person.
In the last few months, EAs have asked for these documents to read and distribute to others. Some requests have come from people I have never met.
There seems to be a lot of interest. In a friendly manner, people tracked other people down during a major conference [3]and then wrote very long messages on SwapCard, which seems like a lot of commitment[4].
I’m unsure if this actually represents general positive sentiment (but if there is a strong team being put together, please PM me and I can just skip all the writing described in this comment chain).
For my own idiosyncratic reasons, related to this particular project of the common application, it seems bad for me to organize, or put people together. Similarly, being a single point of contact, or “holding on to these documents or ideas” seems inappropriate.
Yet, with the pressure/sentiment described above, it’s irresponsible to do nothing or just sit on the document . So I plan to write up some posts and share the documents.
I’ll write this all up quickly. The resulting output might be low quality, or confusing to people not engaged or in the “common app headspace” (like, 99% of forum users).
The truth is that writing about this is pretty hard, orthogonal to founder skill, and there’s just a lot going on, it’s one of the more complex projects, and the content is by its nature opinionated.
All this content will be posted on a new EA forum account, with much more conventional communication norms than the one used here.
I’ll write a little more below for some context, as I prepare a document.
Quick, basic overview of EA Common Application (1/2)
(Note that the following describes one vision of the common application, and is dependent on founding team preferences and ability. Things will be different, even if everything goes perfectly. The below content might also be wrong or misleading.)
Basically, the “common application” is a common point of entry for EAs and talented individuals applying to EA organizations.
Concretely, this would include a website that is used by applicants and EA orgs. It would also become a team or institution that is universally seen as competent, principled and transparent by all EAs. To say it simply, it would be a website that everyone uses and applies to, when working in EA. It’s just the optimal thing to do.
To the organizations and applicants that are users, the common application will be simple and straightforward.
But for the founders/creators, achieving this is harder than it sounds, and in the best version, there are (extraordinarily) complex considerations[1].
But as demanding as it is, it’s equally or more valuable to EA. Even in the early stages, the value of the common application includes:
A streamlined, common place for thousands of talented people looking to contribute or work at EA orgs, as well as a competent institution that provides services, advice and standards to EA organizations.
The common application can coordinate with EA, responding to gaps as well as surpluses for talent, for example by creating grants or special programs to keep talent from bouncing off, or coordinating with headhunting or hiring agencies to fill gaps.
One of the key powers of the common application is sharing applicant interest and progress among organizations, e.g. there might be 10 extremely talented candidates who got rejected in the last stage of a hiring round. This talent can be retained in EA and hired in other organizations.
At the same time, while sharing all of this information, the common application must not disadvantage applicants, even though adverse information can leak in complex, implicit ways.
Quick, basic overview of EA Common Application (2/2)
The bread and butter of the common application is the day-to-day work to get operations running smoothly and build expertise and trust among EA orgs and applicants.
While much of this seems seems mundane, just the basic operations and having experienced, trusted staff perform friendly check-ins with talented candidates is important (I think focus might be on engaging and retaining highly talented “liminal” EAs, as opposed to existing highly-engaged EAs). It is key to have founder(s) who respects and will execute this unglamorous work.
That being said, in the later stages (year 2 and after), the common application can provide enormous and unique value:
Working as a servant to EA organizations, the common application can develop assessment, screening and guidance tools for candidates and organizations that makes EA organizations recruit more effectively and provides confidence and insight for EAs in their job search.
The common application can go far beyond streamlining recruiting, bringing strong candidates into EA, and make better matches for existing talent, for example, creating new roles, catching candidates who might bounce off EA, and building up deep pools of talent beyond any single job search.
This activity in the common application will provide a way to further develop and grow the pool of EA “vetting” and communication that is important for EA scaling, supporting existing strong EA culture, norms and institutions
This vision of the common application is unusual. It’s hard to think of any other movement that has an institution like this. In later stages, some of the ideas, methods and practices could be groundbreaking.
The previous writer/”founder” had interest from professors in Stanford GSB , Sloan/MIT and Penn State, as well as other schools, who expressed interest in working for free, studying and developing methods (market design, assessment) for this common application (because the work and data can produce publications).
A common application builds on some of the best traits of Effective Altruism: consideration of others and their contributions outside of one’s own organization, the coordination and communication between EAs and organizations, and a talent pool that should only increase in value over time.
This provides an enduring asset for the movement, a pillar that provides stability, confidence and happiness, and enhances object level work for hundreds or thousands of people in the coming years.
I don’t fully understand Triplebyte, but the common application seems more extensive in functionality.
I expect EAs who create a common application to believe they can achieve closer and more effective coordination between EA organizations than many portals or job search sites.
For example, (in one vision of the common application) with the consent of organizations and explicit agreement by candidates, organizations can share (carefully controlled, positive) information about candidates who don’t end up accepting a job offer, or share other expertise or knowledge about hiring or talent pools they come across.
I think this post, and future, not yet posted content, by the account “che” will be more explicit and clarify the role and value of a common application.
Upcoming posts about not yet created EA project or institution called “EA common application”.
I know a writer/”founder” who wrote up documents related to an “EA common application”.
Importantly, their vision seemed to get serious interest and funding—but they later exited or got kicked off the project[1][2].
I have access to these documents written by this person.
In the last few months, EAs have asked for these documents to read and distribute to others. Some requests have come from people I have never met.
There seems to be a lot of interest. In a friendly manner, people tracked other people down during a major conference [3]and then wrote very long messages on SwapCard, which seems like a lot of commitment[4].
I’m unsure if this actually represents general positive sentiment (but if there is a strong team being put together, please PM me and I can just skip all the writing described in this comment chain).
The reasons around this writer/”founders” removal are interesting and important by themselves, but writing about them would occupy a lot of space.
This writer/”founder” will remain anonymous in the documents, for example, because it may be necessary to “trash talk” them.
They did this, not by sending messages, not by requesting meetings, but by physically flagging down while walking between buildings!
I am not joking, there are hours of work in here, this is impressive.
(Continued)
For my own idiosyncratic reasons, related to this particular project of the common application, it seems bad for me to organize, or put people together. Similarly, being a single point of contact, or “holding on to these documents or ideas” seems inappropriate.
Yet, with the pressure/sentiment described above, it’s irresponsible to do nothing or just sit on the document . So I plan to write up some posts and share the documents.
I’ll write this all up quickly. The resulting output might be low quality, or confusing to people not engaged or in the “common app headspace” (like, 99% of forum users).
The truth is that writing about this is pretty hard, orthogonal to founder skill, and there’s just a lot going on, it’s one of the more complex projects, and the content is by its nature opinionated.
All this content will be posted on a new EA forum account, with much more conventional communication norms than the one used here.
I’ll write a little more below for some context, as I prepare a document.
Quick, basic overview of EA Common Application (1/2)
(Note that the following describes one vision of the common application, and is dependent on founding team preferences and ability. Things will be different, even if everything goes perfectly. The below content might also be wrong or misleading.)
Basically, the “common application” is a common point of entry for EAs and talented individuals applying to EA organizations.
Concretely, this would include a website that is used by applicants and EA orgs. It would also become a team or institution that is universally seen as competent, principled and transparent by all EAs. To say it simply, it would be a website that everyone uses and applies to, when working in EA. It’s just the optimal thing to do.
To the organizations and applicants that are users, the common application will be simple and straightforward.
But for the founders/creators, achieving this is harder than it sounds, and in the best version, there are (extraordinarily) complex considerations[1].
But as demanding as it is, it’s equally or more valuable to EA. Even in the early stages, the value of the common application includes:
A streamlined, common place for thousands of talented people looking to contribute or work at EA orgs, as well as a competent institution that provides services, advice and standards to EA organizations.
A central place that provides insights about EA recruiting (like this, but automatically for everyone, at the time), and observes and can intervene in bad outcomes (“really hard to find an EA job”).
The common application can coordinate with EA, responding to gaps as well as surpluses for talent, for example by creating grants or special programs to keep talent from bouncing off, or coordinating with headhunting or hiring agencies to fill gaps.
To see this:
One of the key powers of the common application is sharing applicant interest and progress among organizations, e.g. there might be 10 extremely talented candidates who got rejected in the last stage of a hiring round. This talent can be retained in EA and hired in other organizations.
At the same time, while sharing all of this information, the common application must not disadvantage applicants, even though adverse information can leak in complex, implicit ways.
There is a tension between the two issues above.
Quick, basic overview of EA Common Application (2/2)
The bread and butter of the common application is the day-to-day work to get operations running smoothly and build expertise and trust among EA orgs and applicants.
While much of this seems seems mundane, just the basic operations and having experienced, trusted staff perform friendly check-ins with talented candidates is important (I think focus might be on engaging and retaining highly talented “liminal” EAs, as opposed to existing highly-engaged EAs). It is key to have founder(s) who respects and will execute this unglamorous work.
That being said, in the later stages (year 2 and after), the common application can provide enormous and unique value:
Working as a servant to EA organizations, the common application can develop assessment, screening and guidance tools for candidates and organizations that makes EA organizations recruit more effectively and provides confidence and insight for EAs in their job search.
The common application can go far beyond streamlining recruiting, bringing strong candidates into EA, and make better matches for existing talent, for example, creating new roles, catching candidates who might bounce off EA, and building up deep pools of talent beyond any single job search.
This activity in the common application will provide a way to further develop and grow the pool of EA “vetting” and communication that is important for EA scaling, supporting existing strong EA culture, norms and institutions
This vision of the common application is unusual. It’s hard to think of any other movement that has an institution like this. In later stages, some of the ideas, methods and practices could be groundbreaking.
The previous writer/”founder” had interest from professors in Stanford GSB , Sloan/MIT and Penn State, as well as other schools, who expressed interest in working for free, studying and developing methods (market design, assessment) for this common application (because the work and data can produce publications).
A common application builds on some of the best traits of Effective Altruism: consideration of others and their contributions outside of one’s own organization, the coordination and communication between EAs and organizations, and a talent pool that should only increase in value over time.
This provides an enduring asset for the movement, a pillar that provides stability, confidence and happiness, and enhances object level work for hundreds or thousands of people in the coming years.
Would it be fair to say that Triplebyte is a similar thing for the software engineering industry?
I don’t fully understand Triplebyte, but the common application seems more extensive in functionality.
I expect EAs who create a common application to believe they can achieve closer and more effective coordination between EA organizations than many portals or job search sites.
For example, (in one vision of the common application) with the consent of organizations and explicit agreement by candidates, organizations can share (carefully controlled, positive) information about candidates who don’t end up accepting a job offer, or share other expertise or knowledge about hiring or talent pools they come across.
I think this post, and future, not yet posted content, by the account “che” will be more explicit and clarify the role and value of a common application.