I’m always confused when an EA says they want to do community building, but aren’t interested in operations work (this happens regularly). Starting a new community building org has lots of overlap with operations (50-70%?) — operations just means running orgs and doing things.
I think the real objections underlying people’s beliefs there are:
1. Feeling that operations is low status.
2. People telling them we need lots of community building.
3. Don’t know what operations is.
4. Worried that operations is not a good pathway for personal development.
I’ll come back to 1). For 2), my guess is that there was some over-correction happening, and hopefully things will swing back in the other direction, with e.g. 80k updating their list of priority paths to include operations.
For 3), hopefully this thread helps some.
For 4), I think people significantly underestimate how hard and useful it is to get better at operations, and also underestimate how useful it is to top orgs to do operations work.
People work for years in various operations roles, and become much better at accomplishing larger projects. There’s a lot of demand for mid-senior ops roles in EA right now from the top orgs.
As one random data point, a while back I looked up the backgrounds of ops people I knew at a handful of top EA orgs, and fond out that ~1/2 of ~n=15 of them had engineering backgrounds (e.g. degree, professional experience as software engineer, etc.).
Ok so back to 1) (ops being low status) -- I think this is already in the process of changing. It’s largely just sharing the answers to 2-4, the list of EA ops badasses, and having people at top orgs repeatedly tell people that ops is important.
I’ve been tempted at times to stop using the word operations and find some sexier word that we can use instead, but that doesn’t feel like the right way to change things. I think we should just make it clear that operations is hard, useful, and high status.
Lots of people who “do community building,” are “doing operations” imo.
Lots of people who do operations now will do very interesting things in the future, like starting companies, managing large teams, etc.
Tweet thread for “What is operations and why EA needs great people doing it.”
For “what is operations,” Holden’s post on aptitudes https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bud2ssJLQ33pSemKH/my-current-impressions-on-career-choice-for-longtermists#_Organization_building__running__and_boosting__aptitudes_1_… is the best thing I’ve read on this— the “organization building, running, and boosting” aptitude, including management, recruiting, legal, hr, finance, events, etc.
I’m always confused when an EA says they want to do community building, but aren’t interested in operations work (this happens regularly). Starting a new community building org has lots of overlap with operations (50-70%?) — operations just means running orgs and doing things.
I think the real objections underlying people’s beliefs there are:
1. Feeling that operations is low status.
2. People telling them we need lots of community building.
3. Don’t know what operations is.
4. Worried that operations is not a good pathway for personal development.
I’ll come back to 1). For 2), my guess is that there was some over-correction happening, and hopefully things will swing back in the other direction, with e.g. 80k updating their list of priority paths to include operations.
For 3), hopefully this thread helps some.
For 4), I think people significantly underestimate how hard and useful it is to get better at operations, and also underestimate how useful it is to top orgs to do operations work.
People work for years in various operations roles, and become much better at accomplishing larger projects. There’s a lot of demand for mid-senior ops roles in EA right now from the top orgs.
There are a lot of badasses doing operations work. A few examples: James Bregan, Malo Bourgon, Cate Hall, past-Tara https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tara-mac-aulay-operations-mindset/
As one random data point, a while back I looked up the backgrounds of ops people I knew at a handful of top EA orgs, and fond out that ~1/2 of ~n=15 of them had engineering backgrounds (e.g. degree, professional experience as software engineer, etc.).
As I mentioned here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ejaC35E5qyKEkAWn2/early-career-ea-s-should-consider-joining-fast-growing… , I think joining early at a fast-growing org is a great way to build skills, and this includes operations roles.
Ok so back to 1) (ops being low status) -- I think this is already in the process of changing. It’s largely just sharing the answers to 2-4, the list of EA ops badasses, and having people at top orgs repeatedly tell people that ops is important.
I’ve been tempted at times to stop using the word operations and find some sexier word that we can use instead, but that doesn’t feel like the right way to change things. I think we should just make it clear that operations is hard, useful, and high status.
Lots of people who “do community building,” are “doing operations” imo.
Lots of people who do operations now will do very interesting things in the future, like starting companies, managing large teams, etc.