I am not writing in an official CEA capacity but just wanted to respond with a couple quick personal thoughts that don’t cover everything you mentioned
I am sorry you had negative experiences while organizing.
I do think a lot has changed in the community building space in the past year.
Right now CEA has about 1.5 fte covering ~100 groups so it isn’t possible to keep completely up to date on each group but we are working to expand capacity so we can offer some additional support. In particular, our new University Group Accelerator Program aims to add a lot more oversight and support. I wish it had existed when you were starting up your group. It provides mentorship, stipends, and support for people starting groups.
Even though we are expanding support, we strongly encourage groups to be public about how they are doing, for instance by writing on the forum. I think this is helpful for other groups to see as well and drives innovation, collaboration, and progress in the community.
When I am personally thinking about hiring, one of the things that impress me a lot is how successful someone was at passing off their group. I am also impressed with organizers who act as “senior advisors” where they help on some strategy level stuff but not the object level group organizing. I am generally more impressed with someone who does this well than someone who kept doing active organizing until they graduated and let their club die.
I think there is some clout around doing really good organizing but that requires being publically engaged. I also hope people aren’t just doing it for the clout though.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, appreciate it. Super valid points. Upon re-reading it seems I may have come off insultingly towards the community building contingent of EA. Certainly not my intention! I think y’all are doing a great job and I def don’t want to give the impression that I would have a better plan in mind. I am somewhat familiar with the recent initiatives with universities and think they will def be solid also.
Makes me a bit sad that you need to be publicly engaged to receive recognition. I understand this is probably just a truism about life, not anyone in particulars fault.
Good to hear things are moving forward, def rooting for the success of the new initiatives.
Can you comment on why there are only 1.5 FTE covering uni groups? does no one want those jobs? Trying to be very careful abt scaling? Seems remarkably low when considering potential Cost Benefit but I haven’t thought about it enough. I don’t think it would be crazy to have as many as 25 FTE but maybe that is completely ridiculous( maybe this is happening w/ugap?).
Good to hear that you care about delegation/passing off. I wonder if you think it’s worth making it clear to people that this incentive exists? or do you think it is clear already? Moreover if you hire people at the end of senior year of college how do you know whether or not they did a good job passing off the group?
I wonder what you think would happen if you were a nepotist- say you advantaged the community builders you had closer relationships with in hiring/referal decisions. Would you expect to be fired and how quickly?
Again I just want to clarify that I don’t think EA community builders are doing anything specifically wrong per se, and I don’t think most of these issues are even super specific to the community building sector of EA. I think the issues I brought up would be present in pretty much any new social movement that is fast scaling and has lots of opportunities.
Just another super quick response that doesn’t cover everything and is purely my own thoughts and not necessarily accurate to CEA:
We are currently expanding the groups team :) We are careful about scaling too fast and want to make high-quality offers. You can read some more on hiring in previous CEA reports.
Ideally, people have entirely passed off their group by the end of their senior year (ie: someone else has been running the group and they have just been advising).
Much of the groups team’s hiring process is blinded and has clear guidelines and rubrics to help reduce unintentional biases here. (I also think if we were hiring faster this would be even more of a concern!). I think it is basically impossible to remove all biases here (especially in referral decisions since it really relies on having context on the person) but this is something we take seriously and do not tolerate people acting with conflict of interests.
Hi Charles,
I am not writing in an official CEA capacity but just wanted to respond with a couple quick personal thoughts that don’t cover everything you mentioned
I am sorry you had negative experiences while organizing.
I do think a lot has changed in the community building space in the past year.
Right now CEA has about 1.5 fte covering ~100 groups so it isn’t possible to keep completely up to date on each group but we are working to expand capacity so we can offer some additional support. In particular, our new University Group Accelerator Program aims to add a lot more oversight and support. I wish it had existed when you were starting up your group. It provides mentorship, stipends, and support for people starting groups.
Even though we are expanding support, we strongly encourage groups to be public about how they are doing, for instance by writing on the forum. I think this is helpful for other groups to see as well and drives innovation, collaboration, and progress in the community.
When I am personally thinking about hiring, one of the things that impress me a lot is how successful someone was at passing off their group. I am also impressed with organizers who act as “senior advisors” where they help on some strategy level stuff but not the object level group organizing. I am generally more impressed with someone who does this well than someone who kept doing active organizing until they graduated and let their club die.
I think there is some clout around doing really good organizing but that requires being publically engaged. I also hope people aren’t just doing it for the clout though.
Hi,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, appreciate it. Super valid points. Upon re-reading it seems I may have come off insultingly towards the community building contingent of EA. Certainly not my intention! I think y’all are doing a great job and I def don’t want to give the impression that I would have a better plan in mind. I am somewhat familiar with the recent initiatives with universities and think they will def be solid also.
Makes me a bit sad that you need to be publicly engaged to receive recognition. I understand this is probably just a truism about life, not anyone in particulars fault.
Good to hear things are moving forward, def rooting for the success of the new initiatives.
Can you comment on why there are only 1.5 FTE covering uni groups? does no one want those jobs? Trying to be very careful abt scaling? Seems remarkably low when considering potential Cost Benefit but I haven’t thought about it enough. I don’t think it would be crazy to have as many as 25 FTE but maybe that is completely ridiculous( maybe this is happening w/ugap?).
Good to hear that you care about delegation/passing off. I wonder if you think it’s worth making it clear to people that this incentive exists? or do you think it is clear already? Moreover if you hire people at the end of senior year of college how do you know whether or not they did a good job passing off the group?
I wonder what you think would happen if you were a nepotist- say you advantaged the community builders you had closer relationships with in hiring/referal decisions. Would you expect to be fired and how quickly?
Again I just want to clarify that I don’t think EA community builders are doing anything specifically wrong per se, and I don’t think most of these issues are even super specific to the community building sector of EA. I think the issues I brought up would be present in pretty much any new social movement that is fast scaling and has lots of opportunities.
Just another super quick response that doesn’t cover everything and is purely my own thoughts and not necessarily accurate to CEA:
We are currently expanding the groups team :) We are careful about scaling too fast and want to make high-quality offers. You can read some more on hiring in previous CEA reports.
Ideally, people have entirely passed off their group by the end of their senior year (ie: someone else has been running the group and they have just been advising).
Much of the groups team’s hiring process is blinded and has clear guidelines and rubrics to help reduce unintentional biases here. (I also think if we were hiring faster this would be even more of a concern!). I think it is basically impossible to remove all biases here (especially in referral decisions since it really relies on having context on the person) but this is something we take seriously and do not tolerate people acting with conflict of interests.