|> If you’re a program manager in a small org, you’re basically making highly strategic judgment calls on a weekly basis, and when people don’t have strong mental models around AI safety, they tend to make the wrong ones. I think at present the majority of demand for soft ops roles in the ecosystem looks like this: they’re roles that require one to make frequent judgment calls that benefit highly from field-specific context and a solid internalization of our priorities.
Firstly, I agree that in smaller organisations people do a bit of many things, and having some technical background is helpful.
The way you describe the programme manager role sounds to me like a research manager type position. These positions are most likely to need a technical background. However, there could equally be programme manager roles which dont require technical expertise.
For example, if I’m managing the development of a training course, I hire a subject matter expert to develop the content. I’m managing timelines, I’m managing staffing, I’m managing budgets, I’m managing quality—but I dont need subject matter expertise to do this management role.
Even if I have some subject matter expertise, this expertise might not be fully transferable—I can have deep knowledge about using Excel, but if I’m overseeing training course development on how to design a more efficient electric car battery, my Excel subject matter expertise might be mostly irrelevant.
Now you could hire a subject matter expert to be this programme manager to oversee the development of these training courses. But they might not have the background or skills for this role, because—they are a subject matter expert, not a programme management expert.
More broadly—I dont want my research experts to following up on visas, or drafting a press release, or doing graphic design for an event invitation, or trying to work out which politician would give them a sympathetic hearing, or how much cash flow we need for the next month. There are specialists who have this expertise already, and it seems more efficient to work with these specialists where it makes sense, instead of overweighting on prior AI safety technical expertise.
> There are important exceptions to this, especially at bigger orgs, where soft ops roles can be more specialized and therefore there’s less of a need for a high degree of context and deep mission-alignment (for example, I suspect many soft ops roles at Coefficient Giving are like this).
I agree, I think that larger organisations have a greater capacity to carry specialised non-technical expertise. But I think this specialist expertise could also be available to smaller organisations, perhaps on a fractional basis? If the organisations saw it as being useful. And perhaps if there was a better way of matching expertise to smaller organisations?
I also wonder if there is a potential chicken and egg argument there - ie, that organisations that are willing to accept specialist support (perhaps starting with finance, HR, operations?) are more likely to be stable and successful and grow into a larger organisation? Or conversely, if you have a sole founder and rely on technical researchers for everything, that this kind of structure can place limits on the growth and sustainability of the organisation.
|> If you’re a program manager in a small org, you’re basically making highly strategic judgment calls on a weekly basis, and when people don’t have strong mental models around AI safety, they tend to make the wrong ones. I think at present the majority of demand for soft ops roles in the ecosystem looks like this: they’re roles that require one to make frequent judgment calls that benefit highly from field-specific context and a solid internalization of our priorities.
Firstly, I agree that in smaller organisations people do a bit of many things, and having some technical background is helpful.
The way you describe the programme manager role sounds to me like a research manager type position. These positions are most likely to need a technical background. However, there could equally be programme manager roles which dont require technical expertise.
For example, if I’m managing the development of a training course, I hire a subject matter expert to develop the content. I’m managing timelines, I’m managing staffing, I’m managing budgets, I’m managing quality—but I dont need subject matter expertise to do this management role.
Even if I have some subject matter expertise, this expertise might not be fully transferable—I can have deep knowledge about using Excel, but if I’m overseeing training course development on how to design a more efficient electric car battery, my Excel subject matter expertise might be mostly irrelevant.
Now you could hire a subject matter expert to be this programme manager to oversee the development of these training courses. But they might not have the background or skills for this role, because—they are a subject matter expert, not a programme management expert.
More broadly—I dont want my research experts to following up on visas, or drafting a press release, or doing graphic design for an event invitation, or trying to work out which politician would give them a sympathetic hearing, or how much cash flow we need for the next month. There are specialists who have this expertise already, and it seems more efficient to work with these specialists where it makes sense, instead of overweighting on prior AI safety technical expertise.
> There are important exceptions to this, especially at bigger orgs, where soft ops roles can be more specialized and therefore there’s less of a need for a high degree of context and deep mission-alignment (for example, I suspect many soft ops roles at Coefficient Giving are like this).
I agree, I think that larger organisations have a greater capacity to carry specialised non-technical expertise. But I think this specialist expertise could also be available to smaller organisations, perhaps on a fractional basis? If the organisations saw it as being useful. And perhaps if there was a better way of matching expertise to smaller organisations?
I also wonder if there is a potential chicken and egg argument there - ie, that organisations that are willing to accept specialist support (perhaps starting with finance, HR, operations?) are more likely to be stable and successful and grow into a larger organisation? Or conversely, if you have a sole founder and rely on technical researchers for everything, that this kind of structure can place limits on the growth and sustainability of the organisation.