As a comment on this, my perspective is that operations is usually not sexy/fun/exciting when done properly. Different roles naturally have different levels public attention. People who publish well-received books or blogs, who start well-reputed organizations, are the voices on podcasts, and who give speeches at EAG and TEDx events get more public recognition. A part of it is luck, a part is marketing/PR (edit: I don’t want to ignore hard work and effort; that often plays a role also).
A somewhat related issue is that there seems to be a perception in EA that operations work is being an office manager or being an administrative assistant, which is not what the rest of the world understands operations or operations management to be.
In reading about William H. Tunner recently I came across this quote of his, and I found it quite apt in describing a lot of operations work: “The actual operation… is about as glamorous as drops of water on stone. There’s no frenzy, no flap, just the inexorable process of getting the job done.”
This quote from The Personal MBA also resonates: “great management is boring—and often unrewarding. The hallmark of an effective manager is anticipating likely issues and resolving them in advance, before they become an issue… Less skilled managers are actually more likely to be rewarded, since everyone can see them “making things happen” and “moving heaven and earth” to resolve issues—issues they may have created themselves via poor management.”
This comment was so good. The ending paragraph is amazing:
This quote from The Personal MBA also resonates: “great management is boring—and often unrewarding. The hallmark of an effective manager is anticipating likely issues and resolving them in advance, before they become an issue… Less skilled managers are actually more likely to be rewarded, since everyone can see them “making things happen” and “moving heaven and earth” to resolve issues—issues they may have created themselves via poor management.”
I really like how this points out the incentives where high functionality can be punished.
It seems heroic to setup a new org that fights COVID-19 across many continents, you can get press in the NYT, Vox, whatever.
Yet, another person who tracked down the first patients or caused a city to be locked down in the first few days might be far more effective, but despite this pay a high price for this behavior (e.g. many false positives; uncertainty is high).
It can be extremely costly and punishing to anticipate future events and act to prevent them. By its nature the people who are best at this, are often not understood.
Maybe increasing literacy of the issues, as well as institutional competence and capacity can help.
I worry a bit that the movement toward “just get every researcher with a big brain a personal assistant” is exacerbating this dynamic. And it’s even grosser when you consider the typical gender dynamics
I’m curious as to whether these opportunities will actually make who take them worse off in this regard. It seems quite plausible to me that many PA positions would allow people to make connections within the community and build skills that would prepare them for general operations roles (which I would guess to be higher status, except perhaps for the PA’s to couple of most famous people in the movement). And I know you’ve said that operations roles aren’t considered particularly cool, but I’d guess it’d still be cooler than most roles outside of EA and it was my understanding was that there’s a reasonable pathway from operations to management or to founding your own projects.
One way I could see this being an issue is if there was some kind of stigma preventing people from transiting from PA roles to ops or ops to management, but I would be surprised if this were the case. Another way would be if a massive expansion of PA’s meant that a transition from PA to ops were much less viable. This is plausible to me, but I still expect that the transition from PA to ops would still be much easier than breaking into ops directly.
So even though my expectation is that the short-term impact of the expansion of PA roles may be a greater number of women in junior roles, my expectation is that the longer-term impact will be a greater number of women in senior roles or as founders of projects. Once you’ve got a foot in the door, it opens up a lot of opportunities.
Stepping back, there’s a limit to how much we can redistribute social rewards as people are going to hang with the people they want to hang with and admire the people they naturally admire. One way to do this, however, is to highlight the contributions of people who do their job well. For example, I could imagine someone creating a website highlighting how particular ops people were able to dramatically increase the impact of their organisation which would make it easier for people to appreciate the work they do.
Another way to do this would be via providing funding to attend events like EA Global or EAGx as this funding would allow people to form and deepen connections that they otherwise wouldn’t.
“the short-term impact of the expansion of PA roles may be a greater number of women in junior roles, my expectation is that the longer-term impact will be a greater number of women in senior roles or as founders of projects”
Is the norm in EA that personal assistants tend to be women?
As a comment on this, my perspective is that operations is usually not sexy/fun/exciting when done properly. Different roles naturally have different levels public attention. People who publish well-received books or blogs, who start well-reputed organizations, are the voices on podcasts, and who give speeches at EAG and TEDx events get more public recognition. A part of it is luck, a part is marketing/PR (edit: I don’t want to ignore hard work and effort; that often plays a role also).
A somewhat related issue is that there seems to be a perception in EA that operations work is being an office manager or being an administrative assistant, which is not what the rest of the world understands operations or operations management to be.
In reading about William H. Tunner recently I came across this quote of his, and I found it quite apt in describing a lot of operations work: “The actual operation… is about as glamorous as drops of water on stone. There’s no frenzy, no flap, just the inexorable process of getting the job done.”
This quote from The Personal MBA also resonates: “great management is boring—and often unrewarding. The hallmark of an effective manager is anticipating likely issues and resolving them in advance, before they become an issue… Less skilled managers are actually more likely to be rewarded, since everyone can see them “making things happen” and “moving heaven and earth” to resolve issues—issues they may have created themselves via poor management.”
This comment was so good. The ending paragraph is amazing:
I really like how this points out the incentives where high functionality can be punished.
It seems heroic to setup a new org that fights COVID-19 across many continents, you can get press in the NYT, Vox, whatever.
Yet, another person who tracked down the first patients or caused a city to be locked down in the first few days might be far more effective, but despite this pay a high price for this behavior (e.g. many false positives; uncertainty is high).
It can be extremely costly and punishing to anticipate future events and act to prevent them. By its nature the people who are best at this, are often not understood.
Maybe increasing literacy of the issues, as well as institutional competence and capacity can help.
I worry a bit that the movement toward “just get every researcher with a big brain a personal assistant” is exacerbating this dynamic. And it’s even grosser when you consider the typical gender dynamics
I’m curious as to whether these opportunities will actually make who take them worse off in this regard. It seems quite plausible to me that many PA positions would allow people to make connections within the community and build skills that would prepare them for general operations roles (which I would guess to be higher status, except perhaps for the PA’s to couple of most famous people in the movement). And I know you’ve said that operations roles aren’t considered particularly cool, but I’d guess it’d still be cooler than most roles outside of EA and it was my understanding was that there’s a reasonable pathway from operations to management or to founding your own projects.
One way I could see this being an issue is if there was some kind of stigma preventing people from transiting from PA roles to ops or ops to management, but I would be surprised if this were the case. Another way would be if a massive expansion of PA’s meant that a transition from PA to ops were much less viable. This is plausible to me, but I still expect that the transition from PA to ops would still be much easier than breaking into ops directly.
So even though my expectation is that the short-term impact of the expansion of PA roles may be a greater number of women in junior roles, my expectation is that the longer-term impact will be a greater number of women in senior roles or as founders of projects. Once you’ve got a foot in the door, it opens up a lot of opportunities.
Stepping back, there’s a limit to how much we can redistribute social rewards as people are going to hang with the people they want to hang with and admire the people they naturally admire. One way to do this, however, is to highlight the contributions of people who do their job well. For example, I could imagine someone creating a website highlighting how particular ops people were able to dramatically increase the impact of their organisation which would make it easier for people to appreciate the work they do.
Another way to do this would be via providing funding to attend events like EA Global or EAGx as this funding would allow people to form and deepen connections that they otherwise wouldn’t.
In the options menu, you can turn comments into answer and vice versa.
Thanks!
“the short-term impact of the expansion of PA roles may be a greater number of women in junior roles, my expectation is that the longer-term impact will be a greater number of women in senior roles or as founders of projects”
Is the norm in EA that personal assistants tend to be women?
I don’t have stats, but I’m assuming this is what Cristina meant by “typical gender dynamics”