When you say “paid”, do you mean full-time? I’ve found that “part-time” people often drop off very quickly. Full-time people would be the domain of 80,000 Hours, so I’d suggest working with them on this.
“no place for orgs to surface such needs beyond posting a job” → This is complicated. I think that software consultancy models could be neat, and of course, full-time software engineering jobs do happen. Both are a lot of work. I’m much less excited about volunteer-type arrangements, outside of being used to effectively help filter candidates for later hiring.
I think that a lot of people just really can’t understand or predict what would be useful without working in an EA org or in an EA group/hub. It took me a while! The obvious advice would be for people who want to really kickstart things, is to first try to work in or right next to an EA org for a year or so; then you’ll have a much better sense.
Working at an EA org to discover needs: This seems much slower than asking people who work there, no? (I am not trying to guess the needs myself)
It really depends on how sophisticated the work is and how tied it is to existing systems.
For example, if you wanted to build tooling that would be useful to Google, it would probably be easiest just to start a job at Google, where you can see everything and get used to the codebases, than to try to become a consultant for Google, where you’d ask for very narrow tasks that don’t require you to be part of their confidential workflows and similar.
Still, I don’t think Google is a good example. It is full of developers who have a culture of automating things and even free time every week to do side projects. This is really extreme.
A better example would be some organization that has 0 developers. If you ask someone in such an organization if there’s anything they want to automate, or some repetitive task they’re doing a lot, or an idea for an app (which is probably terrible but will indicate an underlying need) - things come up
Just throwing a thought: if many EA orgs have software needs and are struggling to employ people who’ll solve them; and on the other hand, part-time employees or volunteer directories don’t help that much—would it make sense to start a SaaS org aimed at helping EA orgs?
I could see a space for software consultancies that work with EA orgs, that basically help build and maintain software for them.
I’m not sure what you mean by SaaS in this case. If you only have 2-10 clients, it’s sort of weird to have a standard SaaS business model. I was imagining more of the regular consultancy payment structure.
In this part I argue that each problem could be mitigated or even fixed by consolidating the workers into a single agency. I focus here on the benefits common to any form of agency
This post explicitly compares the low-bono option with various others on two axes: on entity type (ie individual or agency) and on different funding models.
I’ll note:
When you say “paid”, do you mean full-time? I’ve found that “part-time” people often drop off very quickly. Full-time people would be the domain of 80,000 Hours, so I’d suggest working with them on this.
“no place for orgs to surface such needs beyond posting a job” → This is complicated. I think that software consultancy models could be neat, and of course, full-time software engineering jobs do happen. Both are a lot of work. I’m much less excited about volunteer-type arrangements, outside of being used to effectively help filter candidates for later hiring.
I think that a lot of people just really can’t understand or predict what would be useful without working in an EA org or in an EA group/hub. It took me a while! The obvious advice would be for people who want to really kickstart things, is to first try to work in or right next to an EA org for a year or so; then you’ll have a much better sense.
Developers who’d like to do EA work: Not only full time
I’m talking about discovering needs here. I’m not talking at all about how the needs would be solved
Working at an EA org to discover needs: This seems much slower than asking people who work there, no? (I am not trying to guess the needs myself)
It really depends on how sophisticated the work is and how tied it is to existing systems.
For example, if you wanted to build tooling that would be useful to Google, it would probably be easiest just to start a job at Google, where you can see everything and get used to the codebases, than to try to become a consultant for Google, where you’d ask for very narrow tasks that don’t require you to be part of their confidential workflows and similar.
I agree I won’t get everything
Still, I don’t think Google is a good example. It is full of developers who have a culture of automating things and even free time every week to do side projects. This is really extreme.
A better example would be some organization that has 0 developers. If you ask someone in such an organization if there’s anything they want to automate, or some repetitive task they’re doing a lot, or an idea for an app (which is probably terrible but will indicate an underlying need) - things come up
But also, I tried, and I think 0 such needs surfaced
:)
Just throwing a thought: if many EA orgs have software needs and are struggling to employ people who’ll solve them; and on the other hand, part-time employees or volunteer directories don’t help that much—would it make sense to start a SaaS org aimed at helping EA orgs?
I could see a space for software consultancies that work with EA orgs, that basically help build and maintain software for them.
I’m not sure what you mean by SaaS in this case. If you only have 2-10 clients, it’s sort of weird to have a standard SaaS business model. I was imagining more of the regular consultancy payment structure.
EA Software Consultancy: In case you don’t know these posts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Yea, I was briefly familiar.
I think it’s still tough, and agree with Ben’s comment here.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kQ2kwpSkTwekyypKu/part-1-ea-tech-work-is-inefficiently-allocated-and-bad-for?commentId=ypo3SzDMPGkhF3GfP
But I think consultancy engineers could be a fit for maybe ~20-40% of EA software talent.