I think it was sensible that EA Funds did a private appointment process rather than a public application process for this round of new fund managers.
But for future guest fund managers, would you consider having public applications for that? Quite a few people might be interested and a fit for such a role, but not closely connected with anyone who might nominate them to apply for the role. Maybe even just an expression of interest form would be something EA Funds could have, for people to signal they want to either be a guest fund manager or a permanent one.
Right now, I don’t think this would be better than the alternative because:
To make the form useful, we’d have to ask quite a few questions and people would have to spend a correspondingly large amount of time filling it in. This is already a big issue for the permanent fund managers, but the cost-benefit-ratio looks even worse for guest managers. E.g. if 200 people fill in the form and spend 1h on it per person, that’s a 200 hours time cost for EA community members. Out of those people, we might only appoint ~5 as guest managers, and guest managers would only spend ~50h total on the fund. It’s likely not worth spending 200 hours of EAs’ time (plus time of the chairperson, EA Funds team, and CEA operations) on optimizing how we spend 250 hours of guest managers time.
I expect a lot of people would fill it in, so it would be a lot of work to sort through the replies. I think it would be better to spend the additional time getting more recommendations and reaching out to them, because it will involve fewer wasted applications, for the reasons outlined in the “Our process” section above:
Fund managers control large and fast-growing pools of money and have access to sensitive data. We want to feel confident in their judgment and trustworthiness based on their track record. We felt that it would be considerably harder to sufficiently vet these qualities in candidates who weren’t familiar to us or informal advisors.
We believe that fund managers with a large network in the relevant areas do substantially better. Given that we weren’t expanding into new areas, we thought we would likely learn about the strongest and most well-networked candidates through our extended networks. This seems to have been borne out in practice: applicants who were recommended directly to us on average performed substantially better on our anonymized work tests than applicants who were recommended by other candidates or community members.
Public hiring processes tend to be more effortful, both for us and the applicants. By reaching out to people who we thought might be a good fit, we hopefully saved a lot of time for ourselves and others.
The guest manager model is generally quite effortful already, and making it even more effortful might tip the balance form “overall worth it” to “overall not worth it”. However, if it turns out to work very well and we find a way to make it more efficient, I think it’ll be worth reconsidering having a public application form.
That said, if you think there are significant benefits of having such a form that I’m overlooking, I’m keen to hear them and open to changing my mind and potentially implementing your suggestion.
FWIW, currently, I feel an intuition that the ratio of EA org network-based/private hiring rounds to EA org public hiring rounds is slightly too high.[1] But:
I’m not sure how much I trust that intuition
I haven’t thought it through in detail
The intuition isn’t specific to EA Funds
I think you’d already be aware of the main considerations pushing in favour of my intuition
The reasoning you give sounds pretty valid
In any case, I definitely want to express appreciation for how it seems that, in these comment threads, you are consistently attempting to transparently explain your view and the reasoning behind it and clearly indicate that you’d welcome pushback. That seems really good for the EA Funds staying healthy and gradually improving over time.
[1] I feel that it may be worth noting that I formed this view after starting to be reached out to as part of a few network-based hiring rounds (or similar).
I guess as a personal example, I would be somewhat interested to apply to be a guest fund manager for the EA Infrastructure Fund. I’m not sure who within the EA Funds network would directly recommend or refer me to apply, hence an expression of interest form is the main way I can signal that I am interested and potentially a good fit for this role.
I think if you opened up public applications for the role, I would like to think I would be within the top 25-50% of applicants (I’m very uncertain here though, since I don’t know who I’m applying against. Also, I’m likely to just be in the average candidate range, i.e. the 50% mark). But I think there’s a small chance, maybe 5-10%, that I would be as good as the guest fund managers you would be willing to hire that apply through your private application process. And I think a 5-10% chance is good enough for me to spend up to 1 hour applying for the role.
I also want to be able to know what EA Funds looks for to gauge someone’s grantmaking skill/ability, and going through an application process with questions about this would help me learn about my own grantmaking skills/abilities/fit too.
Also, an expression of interest form should only take 10 minutes to fill out hopefully, and you can contact the top 10-30 candidates (i.e. people who have the most reputable backgrounds) who fill it up to go through a longer, 1-hour application form.
I think my background is somewhat reputable enough within the EA community, but I don’t know who in the EA Funds network would recommend me to apply to be a fund manager. And maybe there’s ~10 other people in similar situations as me who exist, a couple of which could be a good fit to be a guest fund manager, if only they were recommended/referred, or if they could signal their interest through a short form!
Overall though, I understand EA Funds’ viewpoint, and would understand if you continue to keep using a private application process. I guess someone who wanted to apply to be a guest fund manager or permanent fund manager could literally just email you though to signal that they are interested, so that they could be invited to apply. But having an expression of interest form could streamline that for you, and increase the chance that someone who’s a good fit but isn’t connected would still signal to EA Funds that they are interested.
Thanks, that makes sense! Before we can do this, we’d probably need a more reliable and faster way to screen through applications. If we develop that, it could be a good idea.
I think our current process would definitely include candidates that are as well-networked in the EA community as you are. I personally was aware of some of your work, and some of our informal advisors have talked to you before I think.
I think it was sensible that EA Funds did a private appointment process rather than a public application process for this round of new fund managers.
But for future guest fund managers, would you consider having public applications for that? Quite a few people might be interested and a fit for such a role, but not closely connected with anyone who might nominate them to apply for the role. Maybe even just an expression of interest form would be something EA Funds could have, for people to signal they want to either be a guest fund manager or a permanent one.
Right now, I don’t think this would be better than the alternative because:
To make the form useful, we’d have to ask quite a few questions and people would have to spend a correspondingly large amount of time filling it in. This is already a big issue for the permanent fund managers, but the cost-benefit-ratio looks even worse for guest managers. E.g. if 200 people fill in the form and spend 1h on it per person, that’s a 200 hours time cost for EA community members. Out of those people, we might only appoint ~5 as guest managers, and guest managers would only spend ~50h total on the fund. It’s likely not worth spending 200 hours of EAs’ time (plus time of the chairperson, EA Funds team, and CEA operations) on optimizing how we spend 250 hours of guest managers time.
I expect a lot of people would fill it in, so it would be a lot of work to sort through the replies. I think it would be better to spend the additional time getting more recommendations and reaching out to them, because it will involve fewer wasted applications, for the reasons outlined in the “Our process” section above:
The guest manager model is generally quite effortful already, and making it even more effortful might tip the balance form “overall worth it” to “overall not worth it”. However, if it turns out to work very well and we find a way to make it more efficient, I think it’ll be worth reconsidering having a public application form.
That said, if you think there are significant benefits of having such a form that I’m overlooking, I’m keen to hear them and open to changing my mind and potentially implementing your suggestion.
FWIW, currently, I feel an intuition that the ratio of EA org network-based/private hiring rounds to EA org public hiring rounds is slightly too high.[1] But:
I’m not sure how much I trust that intuition
I haven’t thought it through in detail
The intuition isn’t specific to EA Funds
I think you’d already be aware of the main considerations pushing in favour of my intuition
The reasoning you give sounds pretty valid
In any case, I definitely want to express appreciation for how it seems that, in these comment threads, you are consistently attempting to transparently explain your view and the reasoning behind it and clearly indicate that you’d welcome pushback. That seems really good for the EA Funds staying healthy and gradually improving over time.
[1] I feel that it may be worth noting that I formed this view after starting to be reached out to as part of a few network-based hiring rounds (or similar).
I guess as a personal example, I would be somewhat interested to apply to be a guest fund manager for the EA Infrastructure Fund. I’m not sure who within the EA Funds network would directly recommend or refer me to apply, hence an expression of interest form is the main way I can signal that I am interested and potentially a good fit for this role.
I think if you opened up public applications for the role, I would like to think I would be within the top 25-50% of applicants (I’m very uncertain here though, since I don’t know who I’m applying against. Also, I’m likely to just be in the average candidate range, i.e. the 50% mark). But I think there’s a small chance, maybe 5-10%, that I would be as good as the guest fund managers you would be willing to hire that apply through your private application process. And I think a 5-10% chance is good enough for me to spend up to 1 hour applying for the role.
I also want to be able to know what EA Funds looks for to gauge someone’s grantmaking skill/ability, and going through an application process with questions about this would help me learn about my own grantmaking skills/abilities/fit too.
Also, an expression of interest form should only take 10 minutes to fill out hopefully, and you can contact the top 10-30 candidates (i.e. people who have the most reputable backgrounds) who fill it up to go through a longer, 1-hour application form.
I think my background is somewhat reputable enough within the EA community, but I don’t know who in the EA Funds network would recommend me to apply to be a fund manager. And maybe there’s ~10 other people in similar situations as me who exist, a couple of which could be a good fit to be a guest fund manager, if only they were recommended/referred, or if they could signal their interest through a short form!
Overall though, I understand EA Funds’ viewpoint, and would understand if you continue to keep using a private application process. I guess someone who wanted to apply to be a guest fund manager or permanent fund manager could literally just email you though to signal that they are interested, so that they could be invited to apply. But having an expression of interest form could streamline that for you, and increase the chance that someone who’s a good fit but isn’t connected would still signal to EA Funds that they are interested.
Thanks, that makes sense! Before we can do this, we’d probably need a more reliable and faster way to screen through applications. If we develop that, it could be a good idea.
I think our current process would definitely include candidates that are as well-networked in the EA community as you are. I personally was aware of some of your work, and some of our informal advisors have talked to you before I think.
Got it, thanks for explaining!
By the way, EA Funds ran this application process and EA Funds now operates independently of CEA.
Thanks for clarifying! I edited my comment to say EA Funds instead of CEA now.