Thank you for writing this Julia. I think it’s great that we have more shared views and discussion about power dynamics. I’ve recently started working on an EA project full time, and it was jarring to realise that at some of the social events I attend, >50% of the attendees are professional stakeholders (and some of the others will probably be future colleagues/stakeholders).
A couple of the points you made seem particularly important to me, so I thought it might be good to emphasize them and elaborate with some ideas:
Inside view vs outside view
Part of the reason power dynamics aren’t always obvious, is that it’s very easy to come up with self-serving narratives to explain our own feelings and behavior. And our society has egalitarian norms that push us to want to see things as more equal that they are. Here is an specific example of this from my partner, Hannah.
I suspect we should be very humble about our ability to clearly comprehend what is going on here. When so much of our social, romantic and professional lives are at stake all at once, there are huge returns to self-deception. This isn’t a problem that is unique to EA, but EA is ridiculously tightly coupled in places, so it might be particularly hard.
Taking an outside view is likely to be key to understanding and responding to the power dynamics of your relationships. This will include considering things like age, wealth, experience, self esteem, and seniority.
One of the most important area to take an objective/analytical/outside view of power in a relationship is to consider what your alternatives to a given relationship are, and how they compare to the other person’s alternatives (i.e. your respective BATNAs). Growing your BATNA might be a key way to ensure you are not disempowered—e.g.
Make more friends and professional relationships outside EA so you can more easily decouple from the community
Build financial runway so you can quit if needed
Develop skills that are less specifically targeted at an EA career track
The boundary setting things you lay out are great—here are some ideas for relevant boundaries that I have been trying to employ:
Set clearer and harder boundaries than feels necessary—e.g. avoid dating any current or likely future colleagues, set much higher bars to date people who are more closely enmeshed in your social and professional circles.
Try to be in touch with, and trust, your feelings more—if a situation or relationship feels bad, don’t think you need to come up with a narrative to explain it—you can act to set boundaries based on the badness of the feeling alone, and can aim for the minimum viable explanation when telling people why.
Avoid putting too much trust in individuals who don’t seem self-aware about their own perverse incentives. Nobody will be able to see this perfectly, and self-deceptions will be happening. But if someone isn’t able to demonstrate the self awareness or trust to be able to reveal their own incentives, think about backing slowly away.
For any relationship where there is a clear dependency (managers and reports, romantic partners, housemates) - insist on regular conversations about how the relationship is going and how it can be improved. In these conversations you should probably have the expectation that you are both minimizing conflict, and a shared goal of uncovering and resolving those conflicts. (resistance to these conversations is the reddest of red flags in my experience...)
The tone of this post is wary, but largely positive. I think it’s important to highlight that the areas where power dynamics go most unaddressed are where you will find real mistreatment, abuse, and bullying.
I would love EA (and people in general) to be having more open conversations about this. Although we should also be humble. Illegible, unaddressed and painful power dynamics are the norm of human groups, not the exception.
Thank you for writing this Julia. I think it’s great that we have more shared views and discussion about power dynamics. I’ve recently started working on an EA project full time, and it was jarring to realise that at some of the social events I attend, >50% of the attendees are professional stakeholders (and some of the others will probably be future colleagues/stakeholders).
A couple of the points you made seem particularly important to me, so I thought it might be good to emphasize them and elaborate with some ideas:
Inside view vs outside view
Part of the reason power dynamics aren’t always obvious, is that it’s very easy to come up with self-serving narratives to explain our own feelings and behavior. And our society has egalitarian norms that push us to want to see things as more equal that they are. Here is an specific example of this from my partner, Hannah.
I suspect we should be very humble about our ability to clearly comprehend what is going on here. When so much of our social, romantic and professional lives are at stake all at once, there are huge returns to self-deception. This isn’t a problem that is unique to EA, but EA is ridiculously tightly coupled in places, so it might be particularly hard.
Taking an outside view is likely to be key to understanding and responding to the power dynamics of your relationships. This will include considering things like age, wealth, experience, self esteem, and seniority.
One of the most important area to take an objective/analytical/outside view of power in a relationship is to consider what your alternatives to a given relationship are, and how they compare to the other person’s alternatives (i.e. your respective BATNAs). Growing your BATNA might be a key way to ensure you are not disempowered—e.g.
Make more friends and professional relationships outside EA so you can more easily decouple from the community
Build financial runway so you can quit if needed
Develop skills that are less specifically targeted at an EA career track
Develop a more internally-sourced sense of self worth (see Charlie’s post on self-love)
Setting boundaries
The boundary setting things you lay out are great—here are some ideas for relevant boundaries that I have been trying to employ:
Set clearer and harder boundaries than feels necessary—e.g. avoid dating any current or likely future colleagues, set much higher bars to date people who are more closely enmeshed in your social and professional circles.
Try to be in touch with, and trust, your feelings more—if a situation or relationship feels bad, don’t think you need to come up with a narrative to explain it—you can act to set boundaries based on the badness of the feeling alone, and can aim for the minimum viable explanation when telling people why.
Avoid putting too much trust in individuals who don’t seem self-aware about their own perverse incentives. Nobody will be able to see this perfectly, and self-deceptions will be happening. But if someone isn’t able to demonstrate the self awareness or trust to be able to reveal their own incentives, think about backing slowly away.
For any relationship where there is a clear dependency (managers and reports, romantic partners, housemates) - insist on regular conversations about how the relationship is going and how it can be improved. In these conversations you should probably have the expectation that you are both minimizing conflict, and a shared goal of uncovering and resolving those conflicts. (resistance to these conversations is the reddest of red flags in my experience...)
The tone of this post is wary, but largely positive. I think it’s important to highlight that the areas where power dynamics go most unaddressed are where you will find real mistreatment, abuse, and bullying.
I would love EA (and people in general) to be having more open conversations about this. Although we should also be humble. Illegible, unaddressed and painful power dynamics are the norm of human groups, not the exception.