I think the reason the OP had a high fraction of ‘long’ processes had more to do with him being a strong applicant who would get through a lot of the early filters. I don’t think a typical ‘EA org’ hiring round passes ~50% of its applicants to a work test.
This doesn’t detract from your other points re. the length in absolute terms. (The descriptions from OP and others read uncomfortably reminiscent of more senior academic hiring, with lots of people getting burned competing for really attractive jobs). There may be some fundamental trade-offs (the standard argument about ‘*really* important to get the right person, so we want to spent a lot of time assessing plausible candidates to pick the right one, false negatives at intermediate stages cost more than false positives, etc. etc.’), but an easy improvement (mentioned elsewhere) is to communicate as best as one can the likelihood of success (perhaps broken down by stage) so applicants can make a better-informed decision.
This is why I think Wave’s two-work-test approach is useful; even if someone “looks good on paper” and makes it through the early filters, it’s often immediately obvious from even a small work sample that they won’t be at the top of the applicant pool, so there’s no need for the larger sample.
Per Buck’s comment, I think identifying software engineering talent is a pretty different problem than identifying e.g. someone who is already a good fit for Open Phil generalist RA roles.
A large part of Wave’s engineer hiring process was aimed at assessing fit with the team & the mission (at least when I was there), which seems similar to part of the problem of hiring Open Phil RAs.
Nearly all of Open Phil’s RA hiring process is focused on assessing someone’s immediate fit for the kind of work we do (via the remote work tests), not (other types of) fit with the team and mission.
Not super clear on the distinction you’re drawing; I feel like a lot of “team fit” and “mission fit” flows from stuff like how similar the candidate’s epistemology & communication style are to the firm’s.
Seems like those sorts of things would also bear on a candidate’s immediate fit for the kind of work the firm does.
I think the reason the OP had a high fraction of ‘long’ processes had more to do with him being a strong applicant who would get through a lot of the early filters. I don’t think a typical ‘EA org’ hiring round passes ~50% of its applicants to a work test.
This doesn’t detract from your other points re. the length in absolute terms. (The descriptions from OP and others read uncomfortably reminiscent of more senior academic hiring, with lots of people getting burned competing for really attractive jobs). There may be some fundamental trade-offs (the standard argument about ‘*really* important to get the right person, so we want to spent a lot of time assessing plausible candidates to pick the right one, false negatives at intermediate stages cost more than false positives, etc. etc.’), but an easy improvement (mentioned elsewhere) is to communicate as best as one can the likelihood of success (perhaps broken down by stage) so applicants can make a better-informed decision.
This is why I think Wave’s two-work-test approach is useful; even if someone “looks good on paper” and makes it through the early filters, it’s often immediately obvious from even a small work sample that they won’t be at the top of the applicant pool, so there’s no need for the larger sample.
Per Buck’s comment, I think identifying software engineering talent is a pretty different problem than identifying e.g. someone who is already a good fit for Open Phil generalist RA roles.
A large part of Wave’s engineer hiring process was aimed at assessing fit with the team & the mission (at least when I was there), which seems similar to part of the problem of hiring Open Phil RAs.
Nearly all of Open Phil’s RA hiring process is focused on assessing someone’s immediate fit for the kind of work we do (via the remote work tests), not (other types of) fit with the team and mission.
Not super clear on the distinction you’re drawing; I feel like a lot of “team fit” and “mission fit” flows from stuff like how similar the candidate’s epistemology & communication style are to the firm’s.
Seems like those sorts of things would also bear on a candidate’s immediate fit for the kind of work the firm does.