Are there specific skills that you see that regular training programs don’t do well and might be better suited to offer specifically for our ecosystem?
Hmmm, that is a good prompt. I can’t really think of any. I do want to see more EAs know how to manage people, to understand what project management actually is, to understand how to run a meeting, how to develop a team, and so on. But those aren’t skills that EA has a comparative advantage in training people. I guess I see so many EAs with alignment and general EA knowledge, but lacking these kinds of general professional skills, and I really want these people (who have devoted so much time and effort to EA) to have better professional competencies. But that is probably less efficient than finding people who already have the experience/skills/competencies. So I guess I’ve been viewing this more emotionally rather than rationally.
I guess I see so many EAs with alignment and general EA knowledge, but lacking these kinds of general professional skills, and I really want these people (who have devoted so much time and effort to EA) to have better professional competencies.
I very much agree with that. When people with no/little professional experience ask me about getting into impactful work outside research, my default advice is to upskill outside impact orgs for a few years and then see how they can apply this experience later. Sometimes I fear that organizations in our space contribute to the problem by hiring more on the basis of value alignment than professional skills, with hiring managers sometimes not even aware of what the strongest candidate for a role could look like, as they don’t have experience with this.
This ultimately goes up to management, where I’m surprised to see few org founders hiring experienced CEOs and stepping into roles they are better suited to (Chief Strategist, Chief Researcher, Chief Policymaker, etc.). When I started my first startup straight out of school, this is what we did, and that enabled us to grow the org to over 100 people quickly. I would have been out of my depth at that time to hire the kind of middle management orgs need at that size.
That being said, at RAISEimpact, we help org leaders with hiring strategy and thinking about team composition and culture, so hopefully we can help in this way.
I think an “EA MBA” would be a great thing for someone to run, actually. I think EA probably has an advantage in running this kind of stuff: people used to measuring and monitoring their impact don’t fall down the hole of what I’ll call “business training bullshit” as much.
I just think the EAs receiving such training should pay for the full cost themselves, because (assuming it’s good) you’d very quickly become overwhelmed with applications from people who want great-value professional development and have no desire to actually do EA things at the end of it. And you don’t want EA money to be subsidising such people.
Maybe you could have a separate bursary scheme for bona-fide EAs.
(to be clear I think that providing good-value professional development services to altruistically-inclined young adults is a good use of “EA worker time”, just not of “EA money”)
Hmmm, that is a good prompt. I can’t really think of any. I do want to see more EAs know how to manage people, to understand what project management actually is, to understand how to run a meeting, how to develop a team, and so on. But those aren’t skills that EA has a comparative advantage in training people. I guess I see so many EAs with alignment and general EA knowledge, but lacking these kinds of general professional skills, and I really want these people (who have devoted so much time and effort to EA) to have better professional competencies. But that is probably less efficient than finding people who already have the experience/skills/competencies. So I guess I’ve been viewing this more emotionally rather than rationally.
I very much agree with that. When people with no/little professional experience ask me about getting into impactful work outside research, my default advice is to upskill outside impact orgs for a few years and then see how they can apply this experience later. Sometimes I fear that organizations in our space contribute to the problem by hiring more on the basis of value alignment than professional skills, with hiring managers sometimes not even aware of what the strongest candidate for a role could look like, as they don’t have experience with this.
This ultimately goes up to management, where I’m surprised to see few org founders hiring experienced CEOs and stepping into roles they are better suited to (Chief Strategist, Chief Researcher, Chief Policymaker, etc.). When I started my first startup straight out of school, this is what we did, and that enabled us to grow the org to over 100 people quickly. I would have been out of my depth at that time to hire the kind of middle management orgs need at that size.
That being said, at RAISEimpact, we help org leaders with hiring strategy and thinking about team composition and culture, so hopefully we can help in this way.
I think an “EA MBA” would be a great thing for someone to run, actually. I think EA probably has an advantage in running this kind of stuff: people used to measuring and monitoring their impact don’t fall down the hole of what I’ll call “business training bullshit” as much.
I just think the EAs receiving such training should pay for the full cost themselves, because (assuming it’s good) you’d very quickly become overwhelmed with applications from people who want great-value professional development and have no desire to actually do EA things at the end of it. And you don’t want EA money to be subsidising such people.
Maybe you could have a separate bursary scheme for bona-fide EAs.
(to be clear I think that providing good-value professional development services to altruistically-inclined young adults is a good use of “EA worker time”, just not of “EA money”)