AMA with GiveWell’s Chief Operations Officer
This AMA is now closed—thanks to everyone who asked questions!
GiveWell’s Operations department is growing! We have roles open across multiple Ops functions: Grants Administration, People Operations, Talent Acquisition, Technology, and the offices of the CEO and COO. We hope to make multiple hires for many of these roles.
We’re hosting an Ask Me Anything session with our COO, Sai Jahann, to answer questions from the Forum community about what it’s like to work at GiveWell, our Operations functions, this hiring round, and impactful Operations careers at GiveWell.
We plan to keep this AMA open through the next week. You can start sharing your questions on this post now, and Sai will plan to respond beginning Friday. We’ll prioritize the most upvoted questions if we can’t get to everything.
A few things we won’t be able to cover: commentary on any active or past applications, individualized feedback on application materials, or insight into specific grantmaking decisions made by our Research team. If we’re unable to answer a question, we’ll say so rather than skipping it.
This hiring round is a big event for us. If you’ve ever considered working at GiveWell in an Operations role, we are excited to take your questions and hope you’ll consider applying!
Hi Sai—Thanks for doing this. I’d love your meta-level perspective on building operations functions for rapidly scaling organizations, given what GiveWell has built. (Disclosure: I lead an organization that receives GiveWell funding.)
A few related questions:
As you’ve built out GiveWell’s operational scaffolding to support scaling grant-making, what heuristics would generalize to other organizations? Are there specific roles or seniority levels you’d recommend prioritize building first and why?
At what stage of growth would you suggest an organization start investing in operations capacity, relative to investing further in client- or beneficiary-facing functions?
Do you have any rules of thumb on operations team size, for example operations headcount as a share of total headcount, either as a current benchmark or a target as you scale further?
Many organizations in the sector, including ours, are thinking hard right now about how to build absorptive capacity for scale. Since so much of this comes down to people and structures rather than just funding, I think there’s a lot to learn from a more mature operations function like GiveWell’s. Any general advice would be great!
Heya Tony, thanks for the questions! To be honest I do not feel particularly qualified to answer them, certainly not for any organization other than GiveWell. I tend to be pretty skeptical of off-the-shelf advice about how to build an organization!
One thing I’ll share that has worked for me is to be as opportunistic as possible. When an organization has a lot of gaps—like if you are building across a bunch of different functions (legal, people, finance, tech) for the first time—it’s probably not possible to fill them all at once. So then one heuristic that I’ve found useful is to ask, “what is the gap I can fill the fastest?” Where is my low-hanging fruit? Maybe I know and trust someone from a prior organization I can call, or I think I can get a strong referral for someone, who can come in and fix one of my problems. I think it can be really tempting to over-plan; you might make a list of everything that needs to be built, stack-rank them in order of priority, and then go down the list one at a time, because that is what feels optimal. But building organizations is messy and almost never optimal! So for me, I have tried to find ways to get quick wins / bring in fast, trusted help, and then that can help build momentum (and resources!) to tackle the harder problems.
Hello Sai, thanks for taking the time to host this AMA!
I noticed that the current job posting states that “Location: GiveWell’s staff work primarily remotely, within the US and abroad. The positions offered in this hiring round are all eligible to work fully remotely within the US.”
I had three interrelated questions about the Operations Team’s hiring strategy, particularly for international applicants, for this round and future ones:
Geographic Restrictions: Given that GiveWell already employs staff abroad, what were the primary friction points that made international hiring unfeasible for this specific operational round, and what operational threshold would need to be met to open future rounds globally?
Diversity & LMIC Representation: GiveWell’s Our Mistakes page highlights past challenges in prioritizing staff diversity as a major issue. How is the Operations team thinking about balancing the search for top-fit candidates with improving representation from LMICs where GiveWell’s Top Charities primarily operate?
Cost-Effectiveness of Global Talent: Given GiveWell’s location-adjusted compensation model, hiring qualified international staff may be more cost-effective for the organization as it aims to adjust its absorptive capacity. Is expanding international hiring infrastructure for operational roles part of the plan as GiveWell’s internal scaffolding scales?
Hi tasvidkhan! Sorry for the lag in answering your questions—it took a minute for me to sort through my thoughts on these important topics.
In an ideal world we would love to be in a position to do everything. We’d love to hire people based in any country in the world and compensate them appropriately (tailoring our compensation principles to local market conditions). We’d love to invest a ton of time in building a candidate pipeline for every role that’s diverse across multiple dimensions; it’d be amazing if we could build internship or fellowship opportunities for underrepresented talent. Having a global workforce really requires a lot from an employer—things like making sure managers are trained and informed about the complexities of cross-border management; that we are compliant with employment laws everywhere we have staff, including around performance management and departures; that we can process and renew visas on a timely basis; that we have the ability to manage work across non-overlapping time zones. This is a very incomplete list of considerations!
At the moment, though, we are heavily constrained by our existing operations capacity, especially in People Operations. One of the reasons we are doing such a large hiring push now across Ops is so that we have enough human capacity not just to operate the footprint we currently have, but also to build out additional infrastructure so we can do more. We would love to be able to say “yes” to more internal requests for expansion and to more international candidates next year and further into the future.
Hi Sai! Thanks for taking the time to answer question! I am working on a high-impact career pivot from traditional US Healthcare (non-profit health systems and payer roles) into the global health space. A couple of questions:
What do you see as the most transferrable skills from for-profit business into the global health grantmaking space? What skills have proven most valuable in grantmaking and are most sought after by GiveWell?
How do you view mental health as a potential cause area for GiveWell either as a standalone or contributing factor to overall health? We know mental health increases medical costs, increases mortality, and diminishes quality of life and ability to address the most pressing social determinants of health, however it is rarely a topic I hear about in action-oriented EA conversations.
Thanks!
Hi Madeleine!
I think “grantmaking” can encompass a lot of different kinds of work; the skills you’d need to be an excellent program officer looking at high-impact global health funding opportunities or writing intervention reports, are quite different from the skills that would make you a great CFO or grants administrator or communications liaison. Overall my view is that almost all skills can be transferable in some way from a for-profit environment into a non-profit or mission-focused organization. I’d advise looking for roles where you have some anchor between your skill set and the requirements of the job.
And then, when you are expressing interest or applying for a role, try to be specific, authentic, and personal when you are describing how you might be able to perform the job functions. We see a lot (A LOT) of super generic, likely LLM-generated application responses come through our hiring pipeline. In that environment, a response that is specific and personal to you will be what stands out.
The last thing I’ll add on this front is that, in my (admittedly limited) experience in cost-effectiveness/impact focused organizations, it’s okay—preferable, even—to be uncertain about how you might fit for a given role. I think the common approach is for job applicants to be extremely confident, in sell mode, in their responses. But at least for the roles that I screen for at GiveWell, and in my experience hiring talent over the last 15 years, I definitely prefer when a candidate is honest and calibrated about their skills as well as their uncertainties.
As to your second question, I’m definitely not the right person to ask about intervention area research! But as far as I know, we haven’t found mental health oriented activities that are as or more cost-effective than opportunities in our existing program areas.
Thank you @Sai_Jahann_GW, I really appreciate the insight! It is encouraging to hear this perspective as I navigate this high-impact career pivot!
Hello Sai,
Thank you for taking the time to answer questions! Do you have any advice for someone who is trying to get into EA but doesn’t have the typical quant/research heavy background? I have worked in social impact my entire career (10+ years at this point) in organizations of all shapes and sizes from international humanitarian organizations to local community based organizations and even local governments, mostly in Monitoring & Evaluation/grants management. My work has been somewhat similar in that I’m constantly trying to answer the question of “is any given intervention worth dedicating time and resources to?” but not as rigorous in terms of design. Additionally, many places I’ve worked with in this space don’t make serious efforts to measure outcomes in a rigorous way and there is a tendency to shy away from data that proves the organization’s models wrong. I’ve also seen how measurement and implementation can break down in the field, especially when adapting across contexts. EA has piqued my interest as a field that strives to honestly and transparently evaluate interventions and uses data to truly drive decisions, not just as a requirement. That all being said, do you have any advice on how I can get started in EA/make my profile more competitive? Appreciate any insight you might be able to offer!
Hi Amy, thanks for your question! I can’t and wouldn’t claim to speak for “Effective Altruism” as a whole. The set of organizations within the EA community, or aligned with or inspired by effective altruism principles, is very large and diverse! Each organization is going to have a different view of what core skills are required for different roles on their teams. Some will of course lean more “quant heavy” based on their mission, industry/area, or internal culture. But I would think that there are many organizations and many roles that do not require deep research and quantitative skills. So I hope you won’t let that discourage you from trying to find ways to get involved and have impact in the cause areas that you care about.
Speaking for myself personally, I did not come from a research or quantitative background and I did not have much exposure to the effective altruism community when I joined Coefficient Giving back in 2022. I did have many years of experience as an in-house lawyer, which was relevant for the role I was applying for. I think professional skills & training tend to be transferable across roles.
And then speaking for GiveWell, we open lots of roles that don’t require research experience, and where the core competencies are less focused on quantitative skills and more on interpersonal, communication, organization, or project management skills. I think there can sometimes be a misconception that the only way to have impact at an organization is to be in a research or program role, but that is definitely not the case. Fundraising, recruiting, human resources, project management, legal/compliance, policy… in my opinion, impact comes in many different forms.
Good luck in your exploration of EA and your career search!
Hello and thanks for taking time to host this AMA. Growing Grants Administration, People Operations, Talent Acquisition, Technology, and both the office of the CEO and COO at once is an exciting and major undertaking. Every role listed in this hiring round includes improving processes and systems in its description. Of the seven functions Operations covers, which one do you expect will need to change the most to support GiveWell as it scales and why?
Hi Renee. I think every function within Ops is adapting to the pace and scale of change at GiveWell. Some functions are building infrastructure from scratch. For example, People Ops has always been quite manual, and that was okay when we were onboarding a dozen or so people a year. But at our current and expected growth rate, we can’t just throw more people at the same manual processes; we need the team to build a good systems foundation and automate what they can, then use our human capacity to provide better service when it really matters. Other functions, like Grants Administration have good processes to start with, but need to figure out how to update those processes to accommodate different styles of grantmaking and dramatically higher grant volumes.
Across the board what I’d like to do is build for increased resilience and flexibility for the future. We need to learn to expect even more change, and build systems and processes that can accommodate that by design.
I know I didn’t answer your exact question, so let me know if you have any follow-ups.
Hi Sai, thanks for your response. Your answer did tell me what I wanted to know and half answered my next question which was about AI. You mentioned automating manual processes where possible. Are there any areas or processes in operations where you’ve decided you do not want AI used?
We don’t have a uniform position on this; individual team members across GiveWell have found where AI is and is not useful to them in their work. Where there are legal constraints regarding AI use, we do comply with them, but that’s really the minority of use cases. Overall I’d say our approach has been to try to use AI tools where they have the potential to make human work better; we have not generally found them as useful as a replacement for human thought and communication. For example, on our Grants Admin team we have been experimenting with using AI tools to transfer information between systems that (for whatever reason) can’t talk directly to each other. But we don’t (and likely wouldn’t) use AI tools to read & respond to correspondence from our grantee partners.
Great to see GiveWell expanding its Ops team and hosting this AMA! Solid operations are essential for scaling high-impact work, so getting direct insight from Sai on these roles is invaluable for prospective applicants. Thanks to the team for taking the time to engage with the community!
thank you mattross!
Hi Sai, thank you for taking the time to respond to questions. I’m an undergrad (econ and philosophy at U of Melbourne) very interested in working at GiveWell in two to three years. I’m wondering if there are any things that you would suggest people like me do during study to increase our chances of working with a company like GiveWell?
Hi Adam, thanks for your question! Something you can do now (and ongoing) is to be curious about and engage with our work. That could mean keeping up with our blog or podcast, or digging in to our research write-ups (such as specific grant pages). When candidates apply to jobs at GiveWell, we are always happy to see genuine engagement with our mission, methods, and programs. (Note: you do not need to be a GiveWell donor to be considered or qualified for a role.)
I’ll also say that, although we do have roles that are open to recent graduates, we generally find that candidates are more successful in our hiring process if they’ve already begun developing their professional skills—clear writing, analytical skills, interpersonal skills, and higher-context thinking—before coming to GiveWell. So if you’re not successful in our hiring process right off the bat, I hope you will consider coming back and trying again after you’ve built professional experience and relevant skills at other organizations.
I hope this helps!
Hello Sai
It is good to be a part of this forum and hear more about GiveWell, thank you for your time.
Two quick questions:
Do you perceive any cross collaboration with multilateral entitites like the WorldBank, UNICEF etc with your work?
I have an idea about changing the open market ecosystem in sub-saharan Africa especially Lagos and Kano. Using AI, financial upskilling and providing tools for those whose livelihood focuses on the informal odd jobs in these markets. Is this an area Givewell could be interested in?
Hi Pholukx. Snuck in right under the wire! To your first question, we do collaborate with (and occasionally fund) multilaterals when our program priorities overlap. As to the second, unfortunately I don’t have a great answer for you as I don’t set research strategy in my role; however, I can pass your comment on to our Livelihoods team for consideration. Thank you!