I think this post is excellent overall, but I do want to register a disagreement with your bid to separate operations work from the work that PAs do in most small nonprofit organizations. You have a keen observation about how the nature of operations work changes with scale: at top levels of a multinational corporation, the notion of a senior operations executive doing PA-style work is ludicrous. But for most EA organizations, that comparison is kind of nonsensical; we’re talking about small outfits with 2-6 staff members and a mishmash of interns, contractors, volunteers and other loosely affiliated workers, not a 100,000-person behemoth with offices around the world. In the context of a small nonprofit, the proportion of operations work that looks like PA work is typically much larger than is the case in a huge company like that. Similarly, I disagree with statements like “You can make a decent argument that the janitor taking out the garbage is necessary for the core functions of the business to go forward (because nobody could work if the floor was covered with garbage), but I think you would be hard pressed to find somebody who considers the janitor to be part of the operations department.” In my experience, organizations (such as schools) that hire janitors consider them maintenance staff, they are situated in the Facilities department, and Facilities is overseen by the COO or equivalent.
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 this post is excellent overall, but I do want to register a disagreement with your bid to separate operations work from the work that PAs do in most small nonprofit organizations. You have a keen observation about how the nature of operations work changes with scale: at top levels of a multinational corporation, the notion of a senior operations executive doing PA-style work is ludicrous. But for most EA organizations, that comparison is kind of nonsensical; we’re talking about small outfits with 2-6 staff members and a mishmash of interns, contractors, volunteers and other loosely affiliated workers, not a 100,000-person behemoth with offices around the world. In the context of a small nonprofit, the proportion of operations work that looks like PA work is typically much larger than is the case in a huge company like that. Similarly, I disagree with statements like “You can make a decent argument that the janitor taking out the garbage is necessary for the core functions of the business to go forward (because nobody could work if the floor was covered with garbage), but I think you would be hard pressed to find somebody who considers the janitor to be part of the operations department.” In my experience, organizations (such as schools) that hire janitors consider them maintenance staff, they are situated in the Facilities department, and Facilities is overseen by the COO or equivalent.
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