I’ve been somewhat surprised recently to see a number of very direct headhunting attempts from people in the EA community, directed at key staff members of our organization. This is not a one-off, this is attempts to recruit multiple staff from a number of hiring organizations.
This is useful information to know! Thanks for sharing it. I just want to send good vibes for “if you see something you see is weird, lean towards transparency.”
My personal intuition is that it’s good to have a culture where people are politely, and perhaps lightly, headhunted.
However, there definitely could be more issues here:
It seems bad if some groups/orgs get highly targeted. This can create an uncomfortable situation if not handled well.
It’s hard to be polite. I could easily imagine recruiters being pushy or rude.
I imagine that perhaps in this case at least, some orgs used similar logic to target IDinsight (lots of great talent and training, but work seems less directly aligned for specific EA goals), but didn’t realize how many others were doing it.
I’d recommend messaging the Community Health team at CEA to get a bit of coordination. Or just directly send an email to the various orgs flagging the issue. I imagine they might well be able to find a more reasonable solution.
I’m nervous that readers might conflate “the specific situation of IDInsight, which we still know little about, is justified” with, “it’s generally good to have more headhunting”. I mostly agree with the latter, but can’t say much on the former.
First,
This is useful information to know! Thanks for sharing it. I just want to send good vibes for “if you see something you see is weird, lean towards transparency.”
My personal intuition is that it’s good to have a culture where people are politely, and perhaps lightly, headhunted.
However, there definitely could be more issues here:
It seems bad if some groups/orgs get highly targeted. This can create an uncomfortable situation if not handled well.
It’s hard to be polite. I could easily imagine recruiters being pushy or rude.
I imagine that perhaps in this case at least, some orgs used similar logic to target IDinsight (lots of great talent and training, but work seems less directly aligned for specific EA goals), but didn’t realize how many others were doing it.
I’d recommend messaging the Community Health team at CEA to get a bit of coordination. Or just directly send an email to the various orgs flagging the issue. I imagine they might well be able to find a more reasonable solution.
I’m nervous that readers might conflate “the specific situation of IDInsight, which we still know little about, is justified” with, “it’s generally good to have more headhunting”. I mostly agree with the latter, but can’t say much on the former.