Hot take; ultimately this is not a hill I want to die on, and overall I think Bluedot Impact is good for the world. Having interacted with some of the people there, they seem lovely and I don’t want to burn bridges. But I’ve found some of their recent marketing on their website and LinkedIn somewhat aesthetically cringe. It feels like it’s trying very hard to cater to a kind of tech-bro/Silicon Valley speech. Maybe this is working for them, but I can’t help feeling icked by it, and it makes me lose a bit of faith in the project.
For eg, in hiring for a new tech lead role they have an accompanying blog post that says: “We’re hiring for a Tech Lead. Meet Carol, our ideal candidate.”
Meet Carol, a senior engineer at a Series B startup that’s losing its way. Multiple years experience, previously built 0-to-1 at a failed startup and has multiple side projects others are using. Could make £200k+ at FAANG but chooses impact over money.
“I’m tired of building things nobody cares about. I want to ship things that matter, fast, with people who give a shit.” – Carol, probably
Outcome obsessed, not code precious. Will happily torch 3 months of work if something better emerges. Measures success by user impact, not lines shipped
Post-failure wisdom. Has startup scar tissue. Been sold dreams that evaporated. Now has pattern recognition for what’s real vs what’s venture theatre
Full-stack ownership. Talks to users, analyses data, mocks designs, writes docs. Allergic to “that’s not my job”
Speed fundamentalist—Ships to real users fast. Viscerally hates bureaucracy, long meetings, permission-seeking culture
What They Want
Real users, real impact. “I want to ship something on Monday and see 1000 people use it by Friday”
Clear line to survival. Not another pre-PMF prayer circle. Evidence of traction, revenue, or at minimum a brutally honest path to it.
Mission that matters. Not another ad-tech optimisation tool or crypto dashboard that makes the world slightly worse.
Speedy by default. Where “let’s just try it” beats “let’s have another meeting about it”
What They’ll Trade
Will grind when it matters—Happy to pull long hours for launches, crises, or breakthrough moments. Not for theatre
Will learn anything useful—New stack? Fine. New domain? Fine. As long as it’s not resume-driven development
Will work with ambiguity—But not chaos. There’s a difference between startup scrappiness and headless chicken syndrome
Maybe this is working for them, but I can’t help feeling icked by it, and it makes me lose a bit of faith in the project.
Plausibly useful feedback, but I think this is ~0 evidence for how much faith you should have in blue dot relative to factors like reach, content, funding, materials, testimonials, reputation, public writing, past work of team members… If. I were doing a grant evaluation of Blue Dot, it seems highly unlikely that this would make it into the eval
I think it’s counterproductive to criticize organizations that are beginning to do more marketing/outreach. This type of criticism reinforces EA norms that it’s good to build something, but not good to promote or talk about it. Those norms are a contributing factor to EA being so behind on this type of work.
We should be celebrating organizations that are making an effort on this and encouraging others to do more.
It surprises me that this is seen as the norm—it feels almost antithetical to having impact if you never talk about what you’re doing. At the same time, a lot of EA orgs seem to have put serious effort into marketing in recent years (GWWC, 80k, EA Globals, etc.), and I think that’s good.
To be clear, I’m not saying it’s bad to talk about what you’re doing. My concern is more subjective—it’s about the style of marketing. Some of it mimics a kind of entrepreneurial/tech-speak that I personally find aversive. That might just be because this creates an association with Silicon Valley’s culture that has driven AI progress in risky ways, so I react strongly to the vibe. But ultimately, Bluedot may be right that this style resonates with the people they want to hire. If so, great—I’m very open to the idea that my subjective reaction doesn’t line up with what’s impactful.
Re: ‘We should be celebrating organisations that are making an effort on this and encouraging others to do more’ — sure, though I think we may be talking past each other. I agree marketing is important: your ideas won’t have much effect if nobody knows about them. But I’m not for default celebration. Sometimes marketing is misleading, manipulative, or just feels icky, and the value really depends on the context. I’m much more inclined to celebrate marketing that pushes in the direction of truth-seeking. Too often, marketing goes the opposite way. (That’s a general comment, not aimed at Bluedot specifically or any other EA-adjacement org for that matter.)
I totally understand the thinking here and agree it makes sense when you look at it at the individual level. But if you zoom out, the upshot of a community so focused on nitpicks like this is that people leading EA orgs are nervous to say anything about their orgs or work. This leads to research being under distributed, fellowships and courses being under subscribed, ideas largely staying within the community, etc.
EA orgs aren’t going to get better at this work without making some attempts, and right now the incentives are so stacked against trying (because of the nitpick culture) that it’s systematically neglected. I think BlueDot deserves a lot of credit for being willing to try new things.
I disagree completely. The goal of a job ad should be to turn off candidates who are not a good fit so they don’t bother applying, and turn on applicants who would be a good fit.
Their job ad being divisive is a good thing, if it is effective at filtering for the people they are looking for.
I think that the use of an LLM here embodies what they are prioritizing: speed and results-orientation.
The blog post pattern-matches to AI-speak, but clearly communicates what they are looking for. If anything, I would update positively for the prudent use of AI here.
I think it’s possible to gain the efficiency of using LLM assistance without sacrificing style/tone — it just requires taste and more careful prompting/context, which seems worth it for a job ad. Maybe it works for their intended audience, but puts me off.
Hot take; ultimately this is not a hill I want to die on, and overall I think Bluedot Impact is good for the world. Having interacted with some of the people there, they seem lovely and I don’t want to burn bridges. But I’ve found some of their recent marketing on their website and LinkedIn somewhat aesthetically cringe. It feels like it’s trying very hard to cater to a kind of tech-bro/Silicon Valley speech. Maybe this is working for them, but I can’t help feeling icked by it, and it makes me lose a bit of faith in the project.
For eg, in hiring for a new tech lead role they have an accompanying blog post that says: “We’re hiring for a Tech Lead. Meet Carol, our ideal candidate.”
Meet Carol, a senior engineer at a Series B startup that’s losing its way. Multiple years experience, previously built 0-to-1 at a failed startup and has multiple side projects others are using. Could make £200k+ at FAANG but chooses impact over money.
“I’m tired of building things nobody cares about. I want to ship things that matter, fast, with people who give a shit.” – Carol, probably
Outcome obsessed, not code precious. Will happily torch 3 months of work if something better emerges. Measures success by user impact, not lines shipped
Post-failure wisdom. Has startup scar tissue. Been sold dreams that evaporated. Now has pattern recognition for what’s real vs what’s venture theatre
Full-stack ownership. Talks to users, analyses data, mocks designs, writes docs. Allergic to “that’s not my job”
Speed fundamentalist—Ships to real users fast. Viscerally hates bureaucracy, long meetings, permission-seeking culture
What They Want
Real users, real impact. “I want to ship something on Monday and see 1000 people use it by Friday”
Clear line to survival. Not another pre-PMF prayer circle. Evidence of traction, revenue, or at minimum a brutally honest path to it.
Mission that matters. Not another ad-tech optimisation tool or crypto dashboard that makes the world slightly worse.
Speedy by default. Where “let’s just try it” beats “let’s have another meeting about it”
What They’ll Trade
Will grind when it matters—Happy to pull long hours for launches, crises, or breakthrough moments. Not for theatre
Will learn anything useful—New stack? Fine. New domain? Fine. As long as it’s not resume-driven development
Will work with ambiguity—But not chaos. There’s a difference between startup scrappiness and headless chicken syndrome
This also reads a bit like how LLMs write.
Maybe this is working for them, but I can’t help feeling icked by it, and it makes me lose a bit of faith in the project.
Plausibly useful feedback, but I think this is ~0 evidence for how much faith you should have in blue dot relative to factors like reach, content, funding, materials, testimonials, reputation, public writing, past work of team members… If. I were doing a grant evaluation of Blue Dot, it seems highly unlikely that this would make it into the eval
I think it’s counterproductive to criticize organizations that are beginning to do more marketing/outreach. This type of criticism reinforces EA norms that it’s good to build something, but not good to promote or talk about it. Those norms are a contributing factor to EA being so behind on this type of work.
We should be celebrating organizations that are making an effort on this and encouraging others to do more.
It surprises me that this is seen as the norm—it feels almost antithetical to having impact if you never talk about what you’re doing. At the same time, a lot of EA orgs seem to have put serious effort into marketing in recent years (GWWC, 80k, EA Globals, etc.), and I think that’s good.
To be clear, I’m not saying it’s bad to talk about what you’re doing. My concern is more subjective—it’s about the style of marketing. Some of it mimics a kind of entrepreneurial/tech-speak that I personally find aversive. That might just be because this creates an association with Silicon Valley’s culture that has driven AI progress in risky ways, so I react strongly to the vibe. But ultimately, Bluedot may be right that this style resonates with the people they want to hire. If so, great—I’m very open to the idea that my subjective reaction doesn’t line up with what’s impactful.
Re: ‘We should be celebrating organisations that are making an effort on this and encouraging others to do more’ — sure, though I think we may be talking past each other. I agree marketing is important: your ideas won’t have much effect if nobody knows about them. But I’m not for default celebration. Sometimes marketing is misleading, manipulative, or just feels icky, and the value really depends on the context. I’m much more inclined to celebrate marketing that pushes in the direction of truth-seeking. Too often, marketing goes the opposite way. (That’s a general comment, not aimed at Bluedot specifically or any other EA-adjacement org for that matter.)
I totally understand the thinking here and agree it makes sense when you look at it at the individual level. But if you zoom out, the upshot of a community so focused on nitpicks like this is that people leading EA orgs are nervous to say anything about their orgs or work. This leads to research being under distributed, fellowships and courses being under subscribed, ideas largely staying within the community, etc.
EA orgs aren’t going to get better at this work without making some attempts, and right now the incentives are so stacked against trying (because of the nitpick culture) that it’s systematically neglected. I think BlueDot deserves a lot of credit for being willing to try new things.
I disagree completely. The goal of a job ad should be to turn off candidates who are not a good fit so they don’t bother applying, and turn on applicants who would be a good fit.
Their job ad being divisive is a good thing, if it is effective at filtering for the people they are looking for.
I think that the use of an LLM here embodies what they are prioritizing: speed and results-orientation.
The blog post pattern-matches to AI-speak, but clearly communicates what they are looking for. If anything, I would update positively for the prudent use of AI here.
I think it’s possible to gain the efficiency of using LLM assistance without sacrificing style/tone — it just requires taste and more careful prompting/context, which seems worth it for a job ad. Maybe it works for their intended audience, but puts me off.
Sure—I am not per se bothered that much by AI speak. It seems like a reasonable trade-off.