I’d be happy for some explanation on why even a binary tag—“impact” vs. “career capital”—is infeasible. What’s the selection process that leads to this being unclear?
Imagine a junior level role in gov’t where you’re working on writing documents about emerging technology that no one important will read. Some things that would seem to my quick thoughts to make this hard:
This job will initially not have much direct impact, but will ramp up if you’re good.
To be clear, even in the world where you’re good, a major source of impact of this role is career capital.
It’s rude to the partners with whom 80k is working to say “your org is not impactful, we’re sending people to you with the understanding that they’ll build career capital and leave”.
I have lots of thoughts and some suggested solutions for this, but my main pushback is that sending someone to that kind of role for that goal without giving them this context is problematic.
Saying “we think this org is impactful but not our top in terms of [our complicated calculation]” isn’t something that I think a non-EA org would be insulted about.
Saying “you’ll learn a lot there that can help you in the rest of your career” might even be considered positive by such organizations.
(I’m not jumping to my actual proposed solutions because (A) I’m trying to keep the post focused, and (B) I’d like to wait for 80k’s comment, which I expect they’ll write soon, and might address what you (JP) wrote)
It’s rude to the partners with whom 80k is working to say “your org is not impactful, we’re sending people to you with the understanding that they’ll build career capital and leave”.
See 80k’s response, which I interpret as “they are willing to be ‘rude’ and say that an org isn’t top recommended”
We plan to visually distinguish between orgs on our top recommended list (which we think are the most promising places to work in each problem area) and other orgs we list.
Building career capital doesn’t automatically mean leaving. If we take the example of the junior-level role in government, building career capital means being able to access senior roles in government in the future instead of leaving.
Hey, (Kush here, new product manager for the 80k job board). This is a good question!
So we basically post roles for a combination of (1) they are an opportunity for people to have impact in the role, (2) they are an opportunity for the person to build career capital to have an impact in the future.
In practice very few roles fall squarely in each of these categories and separating out the mix of each factor ex ante is really hard. (All of the roles we think are the most impactful are also great career capital opportunities, and even in a mostly career building role a great person can have a lot of impact).
I think we haven’t communicated this super well (we’re planning on changing our landing page taglines to reflect, and also have updated our FAQs). I’m also hoping that some of the changes in my other comment help on this but we’re also open to further suggestions
I was quite afraid when I read that there are jobs listed for career capital. I’m glad to read that actually there is a combination of impact and capital. I hope all jobs posted have a significant positive impact.
In my mind “High Impact” should be the first priority. If we have to add other considerations I would also go for “EA Community Expansion and Diversity” as more important than “Career Capital”.
Let’s assume we have already listed all the High Impact opportunities we can find. As the next step I would go for listing the second job position in China rather than the 301st in San Francisco, even if the second one is better for career capital.
Note: I edited my original post to make it more clear.
I’d be happy for some explanation on why even a binary tag—“impact” vs. “career capital”—is infeasible. What’s the selection process that leads to this being unclear?
Imagine a junior level role in gov’t where you’re working on writing documents about emerging technology that no one important will read. Some things that would seem to my quick thoughts to make this hard:
This job will initially not have much direct impact, but will ramp up if you’re good.
To be clear, even in the world where you’re good, a major source of impact of this role is career capital.
It’s rude to the partners with whom 80k is working to say “your org is not impactful, we’re sending people to you with the understanding that they’ll build career capital and leave”.
I have lots of thoughts and some suggested solutions for this, but my main pushback is that sending someone to that kind of role for that goal without giving them this context is problematic.
My secondary pushbacks are
Saying “we think this org is impactful but not our top in terms of [our complicated calculation]” isn’t something that I think a non-EA org would be insulted about.
Saying “you’ll learn a lot there that can help you in the rest of your career” might even be considered positive by such organizations.
(I’m not jumping to my actual proposed solutions because (A) I’m trying to keep the post focused, and (B) I’d like to wait for 80k’s comment, which I expect they’ll write soon, and might address what you (JP) wrote)
JP, regarding your point 3:
See 80k’s response, which I interpret as “they are willing to be ‘rude’ and say that an org isn’t top recommended”
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/YCMgg6x6zWJmran5L/criticism-of-the-80k-job-board-listing-strategy?commentId=zZHtmpFRXGg8SK43b
I endorse their approach here
Building career capital doesn’t automatically mean leaving. If we take the example of the junior-level role in government, building career capital means being able to access senior roles in government in the future instead of leaving.
Hey, (Kush here, new product manager for the 80k job board). This is a good question!
So we basically post roles for a combination of (1) they are an opportunity for people to have impact in the role, (2) they are an opportunity for the person to build career capital to have an impact in the future.
In practice very few roles fall squarely in each of these categories and separating out the mix of each factor ex ante is really hard. (All of the roles we think are the most impactful are also great career capital opportunities, and even in a mostly career building role a great person can have a lot of impact).
I think we haven’t communicated this super well (we’re planning on changing our landing page taglines to reflect, and also have updated our FAQs). I’m also hoping that some of the changes in my other comment help on this but we’re also open to further suggestions
I think I’d be in favour of you guys indicating for each role if it is:
Mainly there for direct impact
Mainly there for career capital
There for both impact and career capital (I.e. neither one clearly dominates the other)
Obviously whoever is putting the role on the board is doing so for a reason, so should know the answer to this question.
Hi,
I was quite afraid when I read that there are jobs listed for career capital. I’m glad to read that actually there is a combination of impact and capital. I hope all jobs posted have a significant positive impact.
In my mind “High Impact” should be the first priority. If we have to add other considerations I would also go for “EA Community Expansion and Diversity” as more important than “Career Capital”.
Let’s assume we have already listed all the High Impact opportunities we can find. As the next step I would go for listing the second job position in China rather than the 301st in San Francisco, even if the second one is better for career capital.
Note: I edited my original post to make it more clear.