Now, let’s count off those who are already in such situations, many of whom are at the highest levels of EA, some who have been successfully navigating all this complexity for a decade. What are their secrets? Can there, maybe, be some lessons from them that can mitigate some of the ill-effects for those who in the future are still going to inevitably find themselves there?
My hypothesis: it is some combination of A) they made these mistakes and learned from them, or B) things worked out by luck/fluke. (but it would be great if we could get some actual accounts, rather than just having me hypothesize about it)
By “made these mistakes and learned from them,” I mean scenarios like Alice and Bob worked together on a small team and dated and broke up and it was really hard to work together. But it didn’t get publicized. Or Carl and Dan (a manager and a direct report) lived together as roommates, but it turned out that they were a really bad match as roommates, which affected their working relationship. Now neither of them live with workmates.
Of course, “things worked out” also probably happened. I can imagine 10 colleagues putting on swimsuits and hanging out in a hot tub together and nobody felt pressured or uncomfortable. Sometimes you take risks and things work out.
I’m not aware of much risk management in the EA community (aside from thinking about risks of careers and publicity), but these seem like perfect scenarios to apply a risk management framework.
Their secrets are just scandals that haven’t come out yet.
By which I don’t mean that all EA leaders are doing scandalous things, but that you’d expect some percentage of them to do so in these conditions, and if the percentage you’ve heard of is lower, my guess is that the rest just hasn’t been publicized.
For example, look at the case of Owen Cotton-Barratt (which I wouldn’t exactly describe as a scandal, but still). It took years between the events happening and being revealed.
Great suggestions, genuinely.
Now, let’s count off those who are already in such situations, many of whom are at the highest levels of EA, some who have been successfully navigating all this complexity for a decade. What are their secrets? Can there, maybe, be some lessons from them that can mitigate some of the ill-effects for those who in the future are still going to inevitably find themselves there?
My hypothesis: it is some combination of A) they made these mistakes and learned from them, or B) things worked out by luck/fluke. (but it would be great if we could get some actual accounts, rather than just having me hypothesize about it)
By “made these mistakes and learned from them,” I mean scenarios like Alice and Bob worked together on a small team and dated and broke up and it was really hard to work together. But it didn’t get publicized. Or Carl and Dan (a manager and a direct report) lived together as roommates, but it turned out that they were a really bad match as roommates, which affected their working relationship. Now neither of them live with workmates.
Of course, “things worked out” also probably happened. I can imagine 10 colleagues putting on swimsuits and hanging out in a hot tub together and nobody felt pressured or uncomfortable. Sometimes you take risks and things work out.
I’m not aware of much risk management in the EA community (aside from thinking about risks of careers and publicity), but these seem like perfect scenarios to apply a risk management framework.
Their secrets are just scandals that haven’t come out yet.
By which I don’t mean that all EA leaders are doing scandalous things, but that you’d expect some percentage of them to do so in these conditions, and if the percentage you’ve heard of is lower, my guess is that the rest just hasn’t been publicized.
For example, look at the case of Owen Cotton-Barratt (which I wouldn’t exactly describe as a scandal, but still). It took years between the events happening and being revealed.