I’m aware of the form, and trying to think honestly about why I haven’t used it/don’t feel very motivated to. I think there’s a few reasons:
Simple akrasia. There’s quite a long list of stuff I could say, some quite subjective, some quite dated, some quite personal and therefore uncomfortable to raise since it feels uncomfortable criticising individuals. The logistics of figuring out which things are worth mentioning and which aren’t are quite a headache.
Direct self-interest. In practice the EA world is small enough that many things I could say couldn’t be submitted anonymously without key details removed. While I do believe that CEA are generally interested in feedback, it’s difficult to believe that, with the best will in the world, if I identify individuals in particularly strong ways and they’re still at the org, it doesn’t lower my expectation of good future interactions with them.
Indirect self-interest/social interest. I like everyone I’ve interacted with from CEA. Some of them I’d consider friends. I don’t want to sour any of those relationships.
Fellow-interest. Some of the issues I could identify relate to group interactions, some of which don’t actually involve me, but that I’m reasonably confident haven’t been submitted, presumably for similar reasons. I’m especially keen not to accidentally put anyone else in the firing line.
In general I think it’s much more effective to discuss issues publicly than anonymously (as this post does) - but that magnifies all the above concerns.
Lack of confidence that submitting feedback will lead to positive change. I could get over some of the above concerns if I were confident that submitting critical feedback would do some real good, but it’s hard to have that confidence—both because CEA employees are human, and therefore have status quo bias/a general instinct to rationalise bad actions, and because as I mentioned some of the issues are subjective or dated, and therefore might turn out not to be relevant any more, not to be reasonable on my end, or not to be resolveable for some other reason.
I realise this isn’t helpful on an object level, but perhaps it’s useful meta-feedback. The last point gives me an idea: large EA orgs could seek out feedback actively, by eg posting discussion threads on their best guess about ‘things people in the community might feel bad about re us’ with minimal commentary, at least in the OPs, and see if anyone takes the bait. Many of the above concerns would disappear or at least alleviate if it felt like I was just agreeing with a statement rather than submitting multiple whinges.
(ETA: I didn’t give you the agreement downvote, fwiw)
Thanks for sharing your reasons here! I definitely don’t think that this problem fully fixes this problem, and it’s helpful to hear how it’s falling short. Some reactions to your points:
Yeah, this makes sense.
Totally makes sense. I haven’t reflected deeply about whether I should offer to keep information shared in the form with other staff (currently I’m not offering this). On the one hand, this might help me to get more data. On the other hand, it seems good to be able to communicate transparently within the team, and I might be left wanting to act on information but unable to do so due to a confidentiality agreement. Maybe I should think about this more.
Again, totally makes sense.
Ditto.
I’m not so sure that it is better to discuss issues publicly—I think that it can make the discussion feel more high stakes in ways that make it harder to resolve. If you’re skeptical that we’ll act without public pressure, that seems like a reason to go public though (though I think maybe you should be less skeptical, see below).
I can see why you’d have this worry, and I think that outside-view we’re probably under-reacting to criticism a bit. FWIW, I did a quick, very rough categorization of the 18 responses I’ve got to the form so far.
I think that 2 were gibberish/spam (didn’t seem to refer to CEA or EA at all).
One was about an issue that had already been resolved by the time it was submitted.
One was generic positive feedback
Four were several-paragraph long comments sharing some takes on EA culture/extra projects we might take on. I think that these fed into my model of what’s important in various ways, and I have taken some actions as a result, but I don’t think I can confidently say “we acted on this” or “it’s resolved”.
Eight were reasonably specific bits of feedback (e.g. on particular bits of text on our websites, or saying that we were focusing too much on a program for reasons). Of these:
I think that we’ve straightforwardly resolved 6 of these (like they suggested we change some text, and the text is now different in the way that they suggested).
One is a bigger issue (mental health support for EAs): we’ve been working on this but I wouldn’t say it’s resolved.
One was based on a premise that I disagree with (and which they didn’t really argue for), so I didn’t make any change.
Two were a bit of a mix between d) and e), and said in part that they didn’t trust CEA to do certain things/about certain topics. My take is that we are doing the things that these people don’t trust us to do, but they probably still disagree. I don’t expect that I’ve resolved the trust issue that these people raise.
Meta:
Obviously I might be biased in my assessment of the above, you might not trust me.
My summary is that we’re probably pretty likely to fix specific feedback, but it’s harder to say whetheer we’ll respond effectively to more general feedback.
This all makes me think that maybe I should publicly respond to submissions (but also that could be a lot of work).
Thanks for the idea about writing comments that help people share their thoughts without getting into details.
I have received EA funding in multiple capacities, and feel quite constrained in my ability to criticise CEA publicly.
I’m sorry to hear that. Here’s an anonymous form, in case that helps.
I’m aware of the form, and trying to think honestly about why I haven’t used it/don’t feel very motivated to. I think there’s a few reasons:
Simple akrasia. There’s quite a long list of stuff I could say, some quite subjective, some quite dated, some quite personal and therefore uncomfortable to raise since it feels uncomfortable criticising individuals. The logistics of figuring out which things are worth mentioning and which aren’t are quite a headache.
Direct self-interest. In practice the EA world is small enough that many things I could say couldn’t be submitted anonymously without key details removed. While I do believe that CEA are generally interested in feedback, it’s difficult to believe that, with the best will in the world, if I identify individuals in particularly strong ways and they’re still at the org, it doesn’t lower my expectation of good future interactions with them.
Indirect self-interest/social interest. I like everyone I’ve interacted with from CEA. Some of them I’d consider friends. I don’t want to sour any of those relationships.
Fellow-interest. Some of the issues I could identify relate to group interactions, some of which don’t actually involve me, but that I’m reasonably confident haven’t been submitted, presumably for similar reasons. I’m especially keen not to accidentally put anyone else in the firing line.
In general I think it’s much more effective to discuss issues publicly than anonymously (as this post does) - but that magnifies all the above concerns.
Lack of confidence that submitting feedback will lead to positive change. I could get over some of the above concerns if I were confident that submitting critical feedback would do some real good, but it’s hard to have that confidence—both because CEA employees are human, and therefore have status quo bias/a general instinct to rationalise bad actions, and because as I mentioned some of the issues are subjective or dated, and therefore might turn out not to be relevant any more, not to be reasonable on my end, or not to be resolveable for some other reason.
I realise this isn’t helpful on an object level, but perhaps it’s useful meta-feedback. The last point gives me an idea: large EA orgs could seek out feedback actively, by eg posting discussion threads on their best guess about ‘things people in the community might feel bad about re us’ with minimal commentary, at least in the OPs, and see if anyone takes the bait. Many of the above concerns would disappear or at least alleviate if it felt like I was just agreeing with a statement rather than submitting multiple whinges.
(ETA: I didn’t give you the agreement downvote, fwiw)
Thanks for sharing your reasons here! I definitely don’t think that this problem fully fixes this problem, and it’s helpful to hear how it’s falling short. Some reactions to your points:
Yeah, this makes sense.
Totally makes sense. I haven’t reflected deeply about whether I should offer to keep information shared in the form with other staff (currently I’m not offering this). On the one hand, this might help me to get more data. On the other hand, it seems good to be able to communicate transparently within the team, and I might be left wanting to act on information but unable to do so due to a confidentiality agreement. Maybe I should think about this more.
Again, totally makes sense.
Ditto.
I’m not so sure that it is better to discuss issues publicly—I think that it can make the discussion feel more high stakes in ways that make it harder to resolve. If you’re skeptical that we’ll act without public pressure, that seems like a reason to go public though (though I think maybe you should be less skeptical, see below).
I can see why you’d have this worry, and I think that outside-view we’re probably under-reacting to criticism a bit. FWIW, I did a quick, very rough categorization of the 18 responses I’ve got to the form so far.
I think that 2 were gibberish/spam (didn’t seem to refer to CEA or EA at all).
One was about an issue that had already been resolved by the time it was submitted.
One was generic positive feedback
Four were several-paragraph long comments sharing some takes on EA culture/extra projects we might take on. I think that these fed into my model of what’s important in various ways, and I have taken some actions as a result, but I don’t think I can confidently say “we acted on this” or “it’s resolved”.
Eight were reasonably specific bits of feedback (e.g. on particular bits of text on our websites, or saying that we were focusing too much on a program for reasons). Of these:
I think that we’ve straightforwardly resolved 6 of these (like they suggested we change some text, and the text is now different in the way that they suggested).
One is a bigger issue (mental health support for EAs): we’ve been working on this but I wouldn’t say it’s resolved.
One was based on a premise that I disagree with (and which they didn’t really argue for), so I didn’t make any change.
Two were a bit of a mix between d) and e), and said in part that they didn’t trust CEA to do certain things/about certain topics. My take is that we are doing the things that these people don’t trust us to do, but they probably still disagree. I don’t expect that I’ve resolved the trust issue that these people raise.
Meta:
Obviously I might be biased in my assessment of the above, you might not trust me.
My summary is that we’re probably pretty likely to fix specific feedback, but it’s harder to say whetheer we’ll respond effectively to more general feedback.
This all makes me think that maybe I should publicly respond to submissions (but also that could be a lot of work).
Thanks for the idea about writing comments that help people share their thoughts without getting into details.
Wow, thanks so much for sharing this publicly!