Explicitly asking for a reference the head organizer knows personally.
That feels pretty bad to me! I can imagine some reason that this would be necessary for some programs, but in general requiring this doesnât seem healthy.
I find the request for references on the EA Fundsâ application to be a good middle-ground. Thereâs several sentences to it, but the most relevant one is:
References by people who are directly involved in effective altruism and adjacent communities are particularly useful, especially if we are likely to be familiar with their work and thinking.
Itâs clearly useful to already be in the fund managersâ network, but itâs also clearly not required. Of course thereâs always a difference between the policy and the practice, but this is a pretty good public policy from my perspective.
I should probably be more precise and say the phrasing was something like âpreferably someone who [organizer] knowsâ.
But since this is presented as the better option, I donât think I see much difference between the two, as youâd expect the actual filtering process to favour exactly those people in the organiserâs network.
That feels pretty bad to me! I can imagine some reason that this would be necessary for some programs, but in general requiring this doesnât seem healthy.
I find the request for references on the EA Fundsâ application to be a good middle-ground. Thereâs several sentences to it, but the most relevant one is:
Itâs clearly useful to already be in the fund managersâ network, but itâs also clearly not required. Of course thereâs always a difference between the policy and the practice, but this is a pretty good public policy from my perspective.
I should probably be more precise and say the phrasing was something like âpreferably someone who [organizer] knowsâ.
But since this is presented as the better option, I donât think I see much difference between the two, as youâd expect the actual filtering process to favour exactly those people in the organiserâs network.