Update 2024-Jul-5 as this seems to be getting some attention again: I am not sure whether I endorse the take below anymore—I think 80k made some UI changes that largely address my concerns.
The 80k job board has too much variance.
(Quickly written, will probably edit at some point in future)
Jobs on the main 80k job board can range from (in my estimation) negligible value to among the best opportunities I’m aware of. I have also seen a few jobs that I think are probably actively harmful (e.g., token alignment orgs trying to build AGI where the founders haven’t thought carefully about alignment—based on my conversations with them).
I think a helpful orientation towards jobs on the jobs board is, at least one person with EA values who happens to work at 80k thinks it’s worth signal boosting. And NOT EA/80k endorses all of these jobs without a lot more thought from potential applicants.
Jobs are also on the board for a few different reasons, e.g., building career cap vs. direct impact vs.… and there isn’t lots of info about why the job is there in the first place.
I think 80k does try to give more of this vibe than people get. I don’t mean to imply that they are falling short in an obvious way.
I also think that the jobs board is more influential than 80k thinks. Explicit endorsements of organisations from core EA orgs are pretty rare, and I think they’d be surprised how many young EAs overupdate on their suggestions (but only medium confidence about it being pretty influential).
My concrete improvement would be to separate jobs into a few different boards to the degree that they endorse the organisation.
One thing I find slightly frustrating is the response that I have heard from 80k staff to this is that the main reason they don’t do this is around managing relationships with the organisations (which could be valid). Idk if it’s the right call but I think it’s a little sus, I think people are too quick to jump to the nice thing that doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable over the impact maximising thing (pin to write more about this in future).
One error that I think I’m making is criticising an org for doing a thing that is probably much better than not doing the thing even if it think it’s leaving some value on the table, I think that this is kind of unhealthy and incentives inaction. I’m not sure what to do about this other than flag that I think 80k is great as is most of the stuff they do and I’d rather orgs had a policy of occasionally producing things that I feel moderately about if this helps them do a bunch of cool stuff, than underperform and not get much done (pin to write more about this in future).
My best idea for solving this is making an alternative view for 80k’s job board that has some reasons to obviously prefer it, and to add features to it like “here’s a link to the org’s AMA post”, where I hope the community can comment on things like “this org is trying to build an AGI with little concern for safety”, and lots of people can upvote it. No political problems for 80k. Lots of good high quality discussions. Hopefully.
Regarding some jobs being there just for building career capital—I only learned about this a few days ago and it kind of worries me. I don’t have good ideas on how to solve it
>it kind of worries me Is that because you think the job board shouldn’t list career capital roles, because it wasn’t obvious that the roles were career capital-related, or something else?
In case it’s helpful, the first thing below the title on the job board says: >Some of these roles directly address some of the world’s most pressing problems, while others may help you build the career capital you need to have a big impact later.
I’d be interested in any ideas you had for communicating more clearly that a bunch of the roles are there for a mix of career capital and impact reasons. Giving our guess of the extent to which each role is being listed for career capital vs impact reasons isn’t feasible for various reasons unfortunately.
You have that line there, but I didn’t notice it in years, and I recently talked to other people who didn’t notice it and were also very surprised. The only person I think I talked to who maybe knew about it is Caleb, who wrote this shortform.
Everyone (I talked to) thinks 80k is the place to find an impactful job.
Maybe the people I talk to are a very biased sample somehow, it could be, but they do include many people who are trying to have a high impact with their career right now
Oh this is a cool idea! I endorse this on the current margin and think it’s cool that you are trying this out.
I think that ideally a high context person/org could do the curation and split this into a bunch of different categories based on their view (ideally this is pretty opinionated/inside viewy).
I think linking to organisations’ AMAs on the EA Forum is a neat idea! Thanks for sharing. I’ve added it to our list of feature ideas we might build in the future.
I admit I’m a bit worried when I hear “might build in the future” about a feature that seems very small to me (I could add it to my own version), and a part of me is telling me this is your way of saying you actually never want to build it. I’m not sure how to phrase my question exactly.. maybe “if someone else would do the dev work, would you be happy just putting it in, or is there another bottle neck?”
Also excuse me for my difficulty understanding subtext, I am trying
Oh, may I please try to convince you not to create your own voting system?
Initial reasons, as an invitation to push back:
Commenting is more important than voting
If, for example, someone thinks a specific org is actively harmful, I think:
Good situation: Someone writes a comment with the main arguments, references, and so on.
Bad situation: Someone needs to get lots of people to downvote the position. (Or people don’t notice) (or the org gets lots of people to upvote) (or other similar situations)
Upvoting comments is better than both
And the double “upvote/downvote” + “agree/disagree” is even better, where the best comments float up.
See how conversations like that in the forum/lesswrong look. This is unusually good for the internet, and definitely better than upvoting/downvoting alone.
Is this system perfect? No, but it’s better than anything I’ve seen, definitely better than upvotes alone.
[Reducing friction for people to voice their opinion] is key
+ For platforms like this, the amount of active users matters, there’s an importance in having a critical mass.
So:
Adding a new platform is friction.
I vote for using an existing platform. Like the EA Forum.
Maybe a post without the “frontpage” tag
Maybe a comment on a post
These conversations already fit the EA Forum
It’s discussing the impact of the org.
(I wouldn’t be too surprised if there’s a good reason to use something else, but I doubt it would be a good idea to create a NEW platform)
I have tried to convince the forum team of this, using the methods they asked to be convinced via. There has been some move to put jobs on the forum, but no in a searchable way. I think a new site that pushes better norms would be better.
I largely agree with the object level points you make but I don’t see why you wouldn’t want a new org with better processes.
Update 2024-Jul-5 as this seems to be getting some attention again: I am not sure whether I endorse the take below anymore—I think 80k made some UI changes that largely address my concerns.
The 80k job board has too much variance.
(Quickly written, will probably edit at some point in future)
Jobs on the main 80k job board can range from (in my estimation) negligible value to among the best opportunities I’m aware of. I have also seen a few jobs that I think are probably actively harmful (e.g., token alignment orgs trying to build AGI where the founders haven’t thought carefully about alignment—based on my conversations with them).
I think a helpful orientation towards jobs on the jobs board is, at least one person with EA values who happens to work at 80k thinks it’s worth signal boosting. And NOT EA/80k endorses all of these jobs without a lot more thought from potential applicants.
Jobs are also on the board for a few different reasons, e.g., building career cap vs. direct impact vs.… and there isn’t lots of info about why the job is there in the first place.
I think 80k does try to give more of this vibe than people get. I don’t mean to imply that they are falling short in an obvious way.
I also think that the jobs board is more influential than 80k thinks. Explicit endorsements of organisations from core EA orgs are pretty rare, and I think they’d be surprised how many young EAs overupdate on their suggestions (but only medium confidence about it being pretty influential).
My concrete improvement would be to separate jobs into a few different boards to the degree that they endorse the organisation.
One thing I find slightly frustrating is the response that I have heard from 80k staff to this is that the main reason they don’t do this is around managing relationships with the organisations (which could be valid). Idk if it’s the right call but I think it’s a little sus, I think people are too quick to jump to the nice thing that doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable over the impact maximising thing (pin to write more about this in future).
One error that I think I’m making is criticising an org for doing a thing that is probably much better than not doing the thing even if it think it’s leaving some value on the table, I think that this is kind of unhealthy and incentives inaction. I’m not sure what to do about this other than flag that I think 80k is great as is most of the stuff they do and I’d rather orgs had a policy of occasionally producing things that I feel moderately about if this helps them do a bunch of cool stuff, than underperform and not get much done (pin to write more about this in future).
Agree!
My best idea for solving this is making an alternative view for 80k’s job board that has some reasons to obviously prefer it, and to add features to it like “here’s a link to the org’s AMA post”, where I hope the community can comment on things like “this org is trying to build an AGI with little concern for safety”, and lots of people can upvote it. No political problems for 80k. Lots of good high quality discussions. Hopefully.
What do you think?
Regarding some jobs being there just for building career capital—I only learned about this a few days ago and it kind of worries me. I don’t have good ideas on how to solve it
>it kind of worries me
Is that because you think the job board shouldn’t list career capital roles, because it wasn’t obvious that the roles were career capital-related, or something else?
What worries me:
I think lots of people take (and took) a job from 80k’s board..
hoping to do something impactful.
in fact doing something neutral or perhaps (we could discuss this point,) actively harmful.
Unaware that this is the situation.
What do you think? (does this seems true? does it seem worrying?)
In case it’s helpful, the first thing below the title on the job board says:
>Some of these roles directly address some of the world’s most pressing problems, while others may help you build the career capital you need to have a big impact later.
I’d be interested in any ideas you had for communicating more clearly that a bunch of the roles are there for a mix of career capital and impact reasons. Giving our guess of the extent to which each role is being listed for career capital vs impact reasons isn’t feasible for various reasons unfortunately.
TL;DR: I think this is very under communicated
You have that line there, but I didn’t notice it in years, and I recently talked to other people who didn’t notice it and were also very surprised. The only person I think I talked to who maybe knew about it is Caleb, who wrote this shortform.
Everyone (I talked to) thinks 80k is the place to find an impactful job.
Maybe the people I talk to are a very biased sample somehow, it could be, but they do include many people who are trying to have a high impact with their career right now
I checked if people know this by opening a poll for the EA Twitter community:
Could you say more on why it’s not feasible? Maybe it’s something we could solve?
Just saying, filtering the jobs by org does sound good to me (in almost all situations), in case that’s the bottle neck.
“This org—we think it’s impactful. That org—just career building”
Oh this is a cool idea! I endorse this on the current margin and think it’s cool that you are trying this out.
I think that ideally a high context person/org could do the curation and split this into a bunch of different categories based on their view (ideally this is pretty opinionated/inside viewy).
Next idea: Have a job board with open vetting, where anyone can comment or disagree with the impact analysis, including the company itself.
What do you think?
I think linking to organisations’ AMAs on the EA Forum is a neat idea! Thanks for sharing. I’ve added it to our list of feature ideas we might build in the future.
Thank you!
I admit I’m a bit worried when I hear “might build in the future” about a feature that seems very small to me (I could add it to my own version), and a part of me is telling me this is your way of saying you actually never want to build it. I’m not sure how to phrase my question exactly.. maybe “if someone else would do the dev work, would you be happy just putting it in, or is there another bottle neck?”
Also excuse me for my difficulty understanding subtext, I am trying
FYI there is a super-linear prize for an automated jobs board. https://www.super-linear.org/prize?recordId=recSFgbnu7VzAHCqY
Yeah, have an automation to put the tweets in an Airtable, and something to export the past tweets, just gotta put them together.
Do note that it doesn’t solve the problem of high variance
The next feature I want to get is voting, which will work on that problem.
Oh, may I please try to convince you not to create your own voting system?
Initial reasons, as an invitation to push back:
Commenting is more important than voting
If, for example, someone thinks a specific org is actively harmful, I think:
Good situation: Someone writes a comment with the main arguments, references, and so on.
Bad situation: Someone needs to get lots of people to downvote the position. (Or people don’t notice) (or the org gets lots of people to upvote) (or other similar situations)
Upvoting comments is better than both
And the double “upvote/downvote” + “agree/disagree” is even better, where the best comments float up.
See how conversations like that in the forum/lesswrong look. This is unusually good for the internet, and definitely better than upvoting/downvoting alone.
Is this system perfect? No, but it’s better than anything I’ve seen, definitely better than upvotes alone.
[Reducing friction for people to voice their opinion] is key
+ For platforms like this, the amount of active users matters, there’s an importance in having a critical mass.
So:
Adding a new platform is friction.
I vote for using an existing platform. Like the EA Forum.
Maybe a post without the “frontpage” tag
Maybe a comment on a post
These conversations already fit the EA Forum
It’s discussing the impact of the org.
(I wouldn’t be too surprised if there’s a good reason to use something else, but I doubt it would be a good idea to create a NEW platform)
I have tried to convince the forum team of this, using the methods they asked to be convinced via. There has been some move to put jobs on the forum, but no in a searchable way. I think a new site that pushes better norms would be better.
I largely agree with the object level points you make but I don’t see why you wouldn’t want a new org with better processes.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uxfWrFNH7jSSGhkkS/unofficial-pr-faq-posting-more-jobs-to-the-forum-but-they
Any chance you’d share what you don’t like?
That they posted like they have the job features even though they don’t?
(btw I don’t recommend using the forum’s FILTERING/SEARCHING, I’d only use their commenting and upvoting. And login)
It’s not searchable, filterable, or capable of taking a feed from.
I see.
So indeed I wouldn’t use the forum for that. I’d only link from [something filterable and so on] to forum comments.
What do you think?