The event being a disaster doesn’t match my experience of myself attending and talking to other attendees who—on the contrary - all seemed to find it very valuable, too.
Also, given the circumstances, the venue swap seemed to have been professionally handled IMO.
data point: I attended, and while I’m glad I did I felt misled by the promotional material. I know of at least two other people who felt the same, and attributed some of the blame to EA as a whole rather than the organizers.
I went in expecting to be able to find mid-career people to hire, but there weren’t any there. Attendees were either senior people looking to hire (broadly defined), or too junior for all but charitable internships (charitable meaning you don’t expect them to be positive EV for your own company, ever, and offer it strictly as a service to the intern). I like mentoring and would very plausibly have signed up for a mentor mixer type thing, but was much worse at it because I was in a hiring mindset.
As I said, I ended up having good conversations with both ultra-junior and senior people, and if offered the chance to redo I’d still go to the days at the first venue. But I know at least two people who had also come to hire mid-career people and felt bait and switched, and one of those… I forget if they literally used the word “exploited”, but it was at least something close to that.
The event being a disaster doesn’t match my experience of myself attending and talking to other attendees who—on the contrary - all seemed to find it very valuable, too. Also, given the circumstances, the venue swap seemed to have been professionally handled IMO.
data point: I attended, and while I’m glad I did I felt misled by the promotional material. I know of at least two other people who felt the same, and attributed some of the blame to EA as a whole rather than the organizers.
Could you say more about the disconnect between promo and reality?
I went in expecting to be able to find mid-career people to hire, but there weren’t any there. Attendees were either senior people looking to hire (broadly defined), or too junior for all but charitable internships (charitable meaning you don’t expect them to be positive EV for your own company, ever, and offer it strictly as a service to the intern). I like mentoring and would very plausibly have signed up for a mentor mixer type thing, but was much worse at it because I was in a hiring mindset.
As I said, I ended up having good conversations with both ultra-junior and senior people, and if offered the chance to redo I’d still go to the days at the first venue. But I know at least two people who had also come to hire mid-career people and felt bait and switched, and one of those… I forget if they literally used the word “exploited”, but it was at least something close to that.