I think you are right that there can be a lot of overlap between the type of work that an operations associate/junior staff does and the work that a personal assistant does. My main push is that I don’t want people to conflate the two. Seeing job descriptions for “operations managers” that involve managing a boss’s calendar and handling emails for the boss made me think of how frustrated a person would be to apply and accept a manager-level job only to be given menial tasks, similar to what was written in Senior EA ‘ops’ roles: if you want to undo the bottleneck, hire differently. Nonetheless, I think you point stands that at a small team the border can be quite fuzzy.
Regarding the janitor, you make a good point. I had thought about my own experience working with small and medium enterprises. I hadn’t even thought about the facilities department being overseen my the COO, but now that you mention it it makes a lot of sense.
I think you are right that there can be a lot of overlap between the type of work that an operations associate/junior staff does and the work that a personal assistant does. My main push is that I don’t want people to conflate the two. Seeing job descriptions for “operations managers” that involve managing a boss’s calendar and handling emails for the boss made me think of how frustrated a person would be to apply and accept a manager-level job only to be given menial tasks, similar to what was written in Senior EA ‘ops’ roles: if you want to undo the bottleneck, hire differently. Nonetheless, I think you point stands that at a small team the border can be quite fuzzy.
Regarding the janitor, you make a good point. I had thought about my own experience working with small and medium enterprises. I hadn’t even thought about the facilities department being overseen my the COO, but now that you mention it it makes a lot of sense.
EDIT: An Operations Manager role at Open Philanthropy describes the work as including:
processing invoices
keeping various repositories of internal information organized and up-to-date
scheduling/calendar management for a senior staff person
data cleaning
handling mail
managing reception
taking notes on calls
assisting the recruiting team with tasks such as emailing candidates