This was one of many posts I read as I was first getting into meta EA that was pretty influential on how I think about things. It was useful in a few different ways:
1. Contextualising a lot of the other posts that were published around the same time, written in response to the “It’s hard to get an EA job” post.
2. Providing a concrete model of action with lots of concrete examples of how to implement a hierarchical structure
3. I’ve seen the basic argument for more management made many times over the last few years in various specific contexts. We seem to be taking steps towards this structure within meta EA and specific causes.
“Another example: let’s say you are 80.000h, an effective altruist organization trying to help people have impact with their career. You prioritize focusing mainly on moving ML PhDs to AI safety, and impressive policy people to the governance of AI. At the same time, you are running the currently largest EA mass outreach project. The unfortunate result is that almost all the people interested in having impactful careers have to rely just on the website, and only a tiny fraction gets some personal support.
What might a hierarchical networked structure approach look like? For example, distilling the coaching knowledge, and creating a guide for professional EA groups organizers to provide coaching to a less exclusive group of effective altruists. There are now dozens of professional EA community builders, EA career coaching is part of their daily jobs, yet as far as there is more knowledge than on the website, they are mostly left to rediscover it.”
4. Although the quote above is an illustrative example (and was being discussed by many other posts at the time), I think the framing of this was particularly useful. Arguments like this was one of several factors that led to me starting the Local Career Advice Network, where we worked on compiling current best knowledge on career advice, especially career 1-1s, as well as exploring ways for organizers to develop more localized group resources.
5. Overall, I think I would have liked to see more development of this concept and more applications to concrete situations. In general it seems like we need to be thinking more systematically about building EA infrastructure, but this is slow moving because coordination is hard.
This was one of many posts I read as I was first getting into meta EA that was pretty influential on how I think about things. It was useful in a few different ways:
1. Contextualising a lot of the other posts that were published around the same time, written in response to the “It’s hard to get an EA job” post.
2. Providing a concrete model of action with lots of concrete examples of how to implement a hierarchical structure
3. I’ve seen the basic argument for more management made many times over the last few years in various specific contexts. We seem to be taking steps towards this structure within meta EA and specific causes.
4. Although the quote above is an illustrative example (and was being discussed by many other posts at the time), I think the framing of this was particularly useful. Arguments like this was one of several factors that led to me starting the Local Career Advice Network, where we worked on compiling current best knowledge on career advice, especially career 1-1s, as well as exploring ways for organizers to develop more localized group resources.
5. Overall, I think I would have liked to see more development of this concept and more applications to concrete situations. In general it seems like we need to be thinking more systematically about building EA infrastructure, but this is slow moving because coordination is hard.