It seems likely that these roles will be extremely competitive to hire for. Most applicants will have similar values (ie: EA-ish). Considering the size of the pool, it seems likely that the top applicants will be similar in terms of quality. Therefore, why do you think there’s a case that someone taking one of these roles will have high counterfactual impact?
Empirically, in hiring rounds I’ve previously been involved in for my team at Open Phil, it has often seemed to be the case that if the top 1-3 candidates just vanished, we wouldn’t make a hire. I’ve also observed hiring rounds that concluded with zero hires. So, basically I dispute the premise that the top applicants will be similar in terms of quality (as judged by OP).
I’m sympathetic to the take “that seems pretty weird.” It might be that Open Phil is making a mistake here, e.g. by having too high a bar. My unconfident best-guess would be that our bar has been somewhat too high in the past, though this is speaking just for myself. I think when you have a lot of strategic uncertainty, as GCR teams often do, that pushes towards a higher hiring bar as you need people who have a wide variety of skills.
I’d probably also gently push back against the notion that our hiring pool is extremely deep, though that’s obviously relative. I think e.g. our TAIS roles will likely get many fewer applicants than roles for similar applicants doing safety research at labs, for a mix of reasons including salience to relevant people and the fact that OP isn’t competitive with labs on salary.
(As of right now, TAIS has only gotten 53 applicants across all its roles since the ad went up, vs. governance which has gotten ~2x as many — though a lot of people tend to apply right around the deadline.)
Echoing Eli: I’ve run ~4 hiring rounds at Open Phil in the past, and in each case I think if the top few applicants disappeared, we probably just wouldn’t have made a hire, or made significantly fewer hires.
It seems likely that these roles will be extremely competitive to hire for. Most applicants will have similar values (ie: EA-ish). Considering the size of the pool, it seems likely that the top applicants will be similar in terms of quality. Therefore, why do you think there’s a case that someone taking one of these roles will have high counterfactual impact?
Empirically, in hiring rounds I’ve previously been involved in for my team at Open Phil, it has often seemed to be the case that if the top 1-3 candidates just vanished, we wouldn’t make a hire. I’ve also observed hiring rounds that concluded with zero hires. So, basically I dispute the premise that the top applicants will be similar in terms of quality (as judged by OP).
I’m sympathetic to the take “that seems pretty weird.” It might be that Open Phil is making a mistake here, e.g. by having too high a bar. My unconfident best-guess would be that our bar has been somewhat too high in the past, though this is speaking just for myself. I think when you have a lot of strategic uncertainty, as GCR teams often do, that pushes towards a higher hiring bar as you need people who have a wide variety of skills.
I’d probably also gently push back against the notion that our hiring pool is extremely deep, though that’s obviously relative. I think e.g. our TAIS roles will likely get many fewer applicants than roles for similar applicants doing safety research at labs, for a mix of reasons including salience to relevant people and the fact that OP isn’t competitive with labs on salary.
(As of right now, TAIS has only gotten 53 applicants across all its roles since the ad went up, vs. governance which has gotten ~2x as many — though a lot of people tend to apply right around the deadline.)
Thank you—this is a very useful answer
Echoing Eli: I’ve run ~4 hiring rounds at Open Phil in the past, and in each case I think if the top few applicants disappeared, we probably just wouldn’t have made a hire, or made significantly fewer hires.
I’m not from Open Philantropy, but it’s likely people worry too much about this.