I’d hesitate to extrapolate my experience across to operational roles for the reasons you say. That said, my impression was operations folks place a similar emphasis on these things as I. Tanya Singh (one my colleagues) gave a talk on ‘x risk/EA ops’. From the Q&A (with apologies to Roxanne and Tanya for my poor transcription):
One common retort we get about people who are interested in operations is maybe they don’t need to be value-aligned. Surely we can just hire someone who has operations skills but doesn’t also buy into the cause. How true do you think this claim is?
I am by no means an expert, but I have a very strong opinion. I think it is extremely important to be values aligned to the cause, because in my narrow slice of personal experience that has led to me being happy, being content, and that’s made a big difference as to how I approach work. I’m not sure you can be a crucial piece of a big puzzle or a tightly knit group if you don’t buy into the values that everyone is trying to push towards. So I think it’s very very important.
I’d hesitate to extrapolate my experience across to operational roles for the reasons you say. That said, my impression was operations folks place a similar emphasis on these things as I. Tanya Singh (one my colleagues) gave a talk on ‘x risk/EA ops’. From the Q&A (with apologies to Roxanne and Tanya for my poor transcription):