“EA has very different needs than much of the non-profit world.” In what way?
Effective altruist organizations do work which is uncommon among other non-profit organizations, such as cause prioritization, charity evaluation, and the explicit growth and coordination of a budding social movement. Much of this might require unique skills, or at least ones that are less common to find among people working at conventional NGOs. So, long-time volunteers for EA oganizations who also have a tacit knowledge of dynamics in effective altruism as a community may be quicker and simpler to train than someone who knows nothing of effective altruism. However, if an organization broadened the scope of its search to talent beyond conventional non-profits and the existing EA community, to anyone and everyone from the public and for-profit sectors as well, they’d likely find unique candidates who fit the bill better than anyone else, effective altruist or not. In the past, it seems finding new hires has been difficult enough for small effective altruist organizations in what they consider an acceptable timeframe they feel forced to hire from within the community. However, now that the scope of effective altruism is expanding, past experience alone shouldn’t stop EA organizations to look beyond their own existing circles of influence to find new hires.
I also have to say that there is something very insider-y about this analysis. Much of the advice seems like it boils down to “don’t waste your time with non-EA people.”
So, I don’t agree with Elizabeth’s original comment. AGB has a well upvoted comment above this thread, and I agree with the ratio of earning to give to other effective altruist work he puts forth would be ideal, based on the current state of things. I think he is more or less correct for however wide a net one casts to define the population of effective altruism, even if it’s one so small it only includes people who post to forums like this one and attend conferences every year. I don’t think the proportion of “early adopters”, or whatever they’re called, of effective altruism who go into direct work should be much higher than the total of whatever couple thousand effective altruists there are.
I was just generating a bunch of possible arguments on the fly for Elizabeth’s hypothesis, so I might have motivated myself to produce ones which on their face seem appealing but contain little substance. Like, I was putting myself in the shoes of an EA organization which was desperate to hire the most fitting employees for their team as soon as possible. Most organizations don’t act that dire. On second thought, I think only three of my above points stand up to scrutiny. There was another thread where Tom Ash answered one of my questions that’s made me more skeptical of the capacity of effective altruism to generate new superior giving opportunities in the form of new projects or charities than I once thought. So, there’s likely less capacity for direct work.
If the rest of the effective altruism community does and continues to hold the opinion they can produce many new projects which beat, e.g., Givewell’s top charity recommendations in terms of effectiveness, more of them should be allowed to fail, as we would rightly expect would happen, and we should not keep funding them as that would be a bunch of bloat and cuts into funding we could provide to more effective organizations.
Effective altruist organizations do work which is uncommon among other non-profit organizations, such as cause prioritization, charity evaluation, and the explicit growth and coordination of a budding social movement. Much of this might require unique skills, or at least ones that are less common to find among people working at conventional NGOs. So, long-time volunteers for EA oganizations who also have a tacit knowledge of dynamics in effective altruism as a community may be quicker and simpler to train than someone who knows nothing of effective altruism. However, if an organization broadened the scope of its search to talent beyond conventional non-profits and the existing EA community, to anyone and everyone from the public and for-profit sectors as well, they’d likely find unique candidates who fit the bill better than anyone else, effective altruist or not. In the past, it seems finding new hires has been difficult enough for small effective altruist organizations in what they consider an acceptable timeframe they feel forced to hire from within the community. However, now that the scope of effective altruism is expanding, past experience alone shouldn’t stop EA organizations to look beyond their own existing circles of influence to find new hires.
So, I don’t agree with Elizabeth’s original comment. AGB has a well upvoted comment above this thread, and I agree with the ratio of earning to give to other effective altruist work he puts forth would be ideal, based on the current state of things. I think he is more or less correct for however wide a net one casts to define the population of effective altruism, even if it’s one so small it only includes people who post to forums like this one and attend conferences every year. I don’t think the proportion of “early adopters”, or whatever they’re called, of effective altruism who go into direct work should be much higher than the total of whatever couple thousand effective altruists there are.
I was just generating a bunch of possible arguments on the fly for Elizabeth’s hypothesis, so I might have motivated myself to produce ones which on their face seem appealing but contain little substance. Like, I was putting myself in the shoes of an EA organization which was desperate to hire the most fitting employees for their team as soon as possible. Most organizations don’t act that dire. On second thought, I think only three of my above points stand up to scrutiny. There was another thread where Tom Ash answered one of my questions that’s made me more skeptical of the capacity of effective altruism to generate new superior giving opportunities in the form of new projects or charities than I once thought. So, there’s likely less capacity for direct work.
If the rest of the effective altruism community does and continues to hold the opinion they can produce many new projects which beat, e.g., Givewell’s top charity recommendations in terms of effectiveness, more of them should be allowed to fail, as we would rightly expect would happen, and we should not keep funding them as that would be a bunch of bloat and cuts into funding we could provide to more effective organizations.