If somebody can’t evaluate jobs on the job board for themselves, I’m not that confident that they’ll take a good path regardless.
That was also my instinctive reaction to this post. At least in the sense of “if someone can’t distinguish what’s mostly for career capital vs. where a specific role ends up saving lives or improving the world, that’s a bit strange.”
That said, I agree with the post that the communication around the job board can probably be improved!
If you’d know that there are many developers (including senior ones) who don’t want to do an effectiveness analysis and mainly want to go work somewhere useful, and expect this to be the 80k job board, would that change your mind?
Or would you say something like “we don’t want to hire those people”?
Thanks, those are good examples and I think you’re changing my mind a bit! If the board just lists all kinds of jobs at a particular org and that org also hires for developers (or some other role that requires comparatively little involvement with organizational strategy, perhaps operations in some cases – though note that operations people often take on various responsibility that shape the direction of an organization), that could be quite misleading. This would be a problem even if we don’t expect 80k to directly recommend to developers to take developer jobs at an org that they don’t think has positive impact.
“does this AI company do more safety or more capabilities?”
That’s yet another challenge, yeah. Especially because there may not even always be a consensus among thoughtful EAs on how much safety work (and what sort of org structure) is enough.
there may not even always be a consensus among thoughtful EAs on how much safety work (and what sort of org structure) is enough.
My current best suggestion is “let there be a place for the community to discuss this, and then job seekers can at least see the discussion, at least see what the main arguments are of if they even exist”.
What do you think?
That was also my instinctive reaction to this post. At least in the sense of “if someone can’t distinguish what’s mostly for career capital vs. where a specific role ends up saving lives or improving the world, that’s a bit strange.”
That said, I agree with the post that the communication around the job board can probably be improved!
If you’d know that there are many developers (including senior ones) who don’t want to do an effectiveness analysis and mainly want to go work somewhere useful, and expect this to be the 80k job board, would that change your mind?
Or would you say something like “we don’t want to hire those people”?
This is extra true for complicated calculations like “does this AI company do more safety or more capabilities?”
[example link for why this matters]
Thanks, those are good examples and I think you’re changing my mind a bit! If the board just lists all kinds of jobs at a particular org and that org also hires for developers (or some other role that requires comparatively little involvement with organizational strategy, perhaps operations in some cases – though note that operations people often take on various responsibility that shape the direction of an organization), that could be quite misleading. This would be a problem even if we don’t expect 80k to directly recommend to developers to take developer jobs at an org that they don’t think has positive impact.
That’s yet another challenge, yeah. Especially because there may not even always be a consensus among thoughtful EAs on how much safety work (and what sort of org structure) is enough.
Thanks for saying!
Regarding
My current best suggestion is “let there be a place for the community to discuss this, and then job seekers can at least see the discussion, at least see what the main arguments are of if they even exist”. What do you think?