I’m not officially part of the AMA but I’m one of the disagreevotes so I’ll chime in.
As someone who’s only recently started, the vibe this post gives of it being hard for me to disagree with established wisdom and/or push the org to do things differently, meaning my only role is to ‘just push out more money along the OP party line’, is just miles away from what I’ve experienced.
If anything, I think how much ownership I’ve needed to take for the projects I’m working on has been the biggest challenge of starting the role. It’s one that (I hope) I’m rising to, but it’s hard!
In terms of how open OP is to steering from within, it seems worth distinguishing ‘how likely is a random junior person to substantially shift the worldview of the org’, and ‘what would the experience of that person be like if they tried to’. Luke has, from before I had an offer, repeatedly demonstrated that he wants and values my disagreement in how he reacts to it and acts on it, and it’s something I really appreciate about his management.
Ah, sorry you got that impression from my question! I mostly meant Harvard in terms of “desirability among applicants” as opposed to “established bureaucracy”. My outside impression is that a lot of people I respect a lot (like you!) made the decision to go work at OP instead of one of their many other options. And that I’ve heard informal complaints from leaders of other EA orgs, roughly “it’s hard to find and keep good people, because our best candidates keep joining OP instead”. So I was curious to learn more about OP’s internal thinking about this effect.
I’m not officially part of the AMA but I’m one of the disagreevotes so I’ll chime in.
As someone who’s only recently started, the vibe this post gives of it being hard for me to disagree with established wisdom and/or push the org to do things differently, meaning my only role is to ‘just push out more money along the OP party line’, is just miles away from what I’ve experienced.
If anything, I think how much ownership I’ve needed to take for the projects I’m working on has been the biggest challenge of starting the role. It’s one that (I hope) I’m rising to, but it’s hard!
In terms of how open OP is to steering from within, it seems worth distinguishing ‘how likely is a random junior person to substantially shift the worldview of the org’, and ‘what would the experience of that person be like if they tried to’. Luke has, from before I had an offer, repeatedly demonstrated that he wants and values my disagreement in how he reacts to it and acts on it, and it’s something I really appreciate about his management.
Ah, sorry you got that impression from my question! I mostly meant Harvard in terms of “desirability among applicants” as opposed to “established bureaucracy”. My outside impression is that a lot of people I respect a lot (like you!) made the decision to go work at OP instead of one of their many other options. And that I’ve heard informal complaints from leaders of other EA orgs, roughly “it’s hard to find and keep good people, because our best candidates keep joining OP instead”. So I was curious to learn more about OP’s internal thinking about this effect.