I think the reason the OP had a high fraction of âlongâ processes had more to do with him being a strong applicant who would get through a lot of the early filters. I donât think a typical âEA orgâ hiring round passes ~50% of its applicants to a work test.
This doesnât 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 â*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.â), 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 Waveâs two-work-test approach is useful; even if someone âlooks good on paperâ and makes it through the early filters, itâs often immediately obvious from even a small work sample that they wonât be at the top of the applicant pool, so thereâs no need for the larger sample.
Per Buckâs 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 Waveâs 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 Philâs RA hiring process is focused on assessing someoneâs 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 youâre drawing; I feel like a lot of âteam fitâ and âmission fitâ flows from stuff like how similar the candidateâs epistemology & communication style are to the firmâs.
Seems like those sorts of things would also bear on a candidateâs immediate fit for the kind of work the firm does.
I think the reason the OP had a high fraction of âlongâ processes had more to do with him being a strong applicant who would get through a lot of the early filters. I donât think a typical âEA orgâ hiring round passes ~50% of its applicants to a work test.
This doesnât 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 â*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.â), 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 Waveâs two-work-test approach is useful; even if someone âlooks good on paperâ and makes it through the early filters, itâs often immediately obvious from even a small work sample that they wonât be at the top of the applicant pool, so thereâs no need for the larger sample.
Per Buckâs 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 Waveâs 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 Philâs RA hiring process is focused on assessing someoneâs 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 youâre drawing; I feel like a lot of âteam fitâ and âmission fitâ flows from stuff like how similar the candidateâs epistemology & communication style are to the firmâs.
Seems like those sorts of things would also bear on a candidateâs immediate fit for the kind of work the firm does.