Lots of EA orgs say they struggle to hire for ops, marketing and comms. But when they post listings for these roles the salaries are often much lower than what they offer for research and engineering, which they generally find easier to fill. My guess is that orgs are just benchmarking against normal market rates for these roles. But the EA labour market is very different to the normal labour market, if these roles are undersupplied inside EA, I think orgs should be willing to pay more for them.
research [...] which they generally find easier to fill
I’m surprised to read that lots of EA orgs find it easier to hire research roles than ops roles, and it doesn’t match what I heard, or the state of 80k’s job board at the moment, with ~1.8x more research roles than ops roles
Edit to clarify: my sense is that many orgs struggle to hire both for ops and for research
very low confidence, but I think 1) orgs tend to advertise research roles more widely than ops roles, 2) with longer decision times, and 3) research roles outnumber ops roles by something like 2:1 or even 4:1, so I wouldn’t read too much into raw numbers of job postings
Given how many people apply for these roles, I don’t understand the struggle. I just attended EAG, which was packed to the rafters with people who have done the bootcamps/courses/programs looking for a way in to a high-impact org; many of them with serious experience in things like journalism, business operations, and academic publishing. EA appears well-manned enough to treat such valuable talent as volunteers/metrics for their career programs; I don’t believe that there is an under-supply issue. I think there aren’t enough jobs.
@Oscar Sykes Can I check for a source/reference to hire for lots of EA orgs saying they struggle to hire for ops, marketing and comms roles? As @SiobhanBall said, lots of people apply for these roles. Is it that the candidates aren’t good enough or have higher salary expectations? That there are lots of applicants to some EA org but not others? That some orgs are willing to pay higher salaries than others? Geographical differences, e.g. higher pay in the US compared to for example the UK?
My impression is often they have a high bar and usually would like both having past experience in those fields and having a lot of context on EA/AI Safety + mission driven
Lots of EA orgs say they struggle to hire for ops, marketing and comms. But when they post listings for these roles the salaries are often much lower than what they offer for research and engineering, which they generally find easier to fill. My guess is that orgs are just benchmarking against normal market rates for these roles. But the EA labour market is very different to the normal labour market, if these roles are undersupplied inside EA, I think orgs should be willing to pay more for them.
I’m surprised to read that lots of EA orgs find it easier to hire research roles than ops roles, and it doesn’t match what I heard, or the state of 80k’s job board at the moment, with ~1.8x more research roles than ops roles
Edit to clarify: my sense is that many orgs struggle to hire both for ops and for research
very low confidence, but I think 1) orgs tend to advertise research roles more widely than ops roles, 2) with longer decision times, and 3) research roles outnumber ops roles by something like 2:1 or even 4:1, so I wouldn’t read too much into raw numbers of job postings
I would interpret all three as signals that orgs find it harder to fill research roles, right?
Given how many people apply for these roles, I don’t understand the struggle. I just attended EAG, which was packed to the rafters with people who have done the bootcamps/courses/programs looking for a way in to a high-impact org; many of them with serious experience in things like journalism, business operations, and academic publishing. EA appears well-manned enough to treat such valuable talent as volunteers/metrics for their career programs; I don’t believe that there is an under-supply issue. I think there aren’t enough jobs.
@Oscar Sykes Can I check for a source/reference to hire for lots of EA orgs saying they struggle to hire for ops, marketing and comms roles? As @SiobhanBall said, lots of people apply for these roles. Is it that the candidates aren’t good enough or have higher salary expectations? That there are lots of applicants to some EA org but not others? That some orgs are willing to pay higher salaries than others? Geographical differences, e.g. higher pay in the US compared to for example the UK?
One example
My impression is often they have a high bar and usually would like both having past experience in those fields and having a lot of context on EA/AI Safety + mission driven