I and many others I know find grantmaking rather stressful and psychologically taxing (more than average for other roles in professional EA). Common pain points include discomfort with rejecting people[1], having to make difficult tradeoffs with poor feedback loops, navigating/balancing a number of implicit and explicit commitments (not all of which you still agree with, if you ever did), having to navigate an epistemic/professional environment where people around you are heavily incentivized to manipulate you, and the constant feeling of stress of being behind (not all of it “real”).
So how do people at Open Phil deal with this stress, whether individually or institutionally? And what are some character traits or personality dispositions which would not be a good fit for grantmaking roles at Open Phil[2]?
Yeah, I feel a lot of this stress as well, though FWIW for me personally research was more stressful. I don’t think there’s any crisp institutional advice or formula for dealing with this kind of thing unfortunately. One disposition that I think makes it hard to be a grantmaker at OP (in addition to your list, which I think is largely overlapping) is being overly attached to perfection and satisfyingly clean, beautifully-justifiable answers and decisions.
I and many others I know find grantmaking rather stressful and psychologically taxing (more than average for other roles in professional EA). Common pain points include discomfort with rejecting people[1], having to make difficult tradeoffs with poor feedback loops, navigating/balancing a number of implicit and explicit commitments (not all of which you still agree with, if you ever did), having to navigate an epistemic/professional environment where people around you are heavily incentivized to manipulate you, and the constant feeling of stress of being behind (not all of it “real”).
So how do people at Open Phil deal with this stress, whether individually or institutionally? And what are some character traits or personality dispositions which would not be a good fit for grantmaking roles at Open Phil[2]?
In many cases people you or someone you know have a social or prior professional connection with.
In case it’s helpful context, I wrote a short list of reasons someone might be a poor fit for LTFF fund chair here.
Yeah, I feel a lot of this stress as well, though FWIW for me personally research was more stressful. I don’t think there’s any crisp institutional advice or formula for dealing with this kind of thing unfortunately. One disposition that I think makes it hard to be a grantmaker at OP (in addition to your list, which I think is largely overlapping) is being overly attached to perfection and satisfyingly clean, beautifully-justifiable answers and decisions.