A personal and therefore rather limited observation (sample size about 40-50 people in total). Interestingly enough, for all this intensive hiring processes, I’ve happened to come across presumably nice people (in very different EA organisations and across diverse ranges of experience) who are nevertheless spectacularly ineffective, at least using my (probably too high) bar of experience in investments. What surprises me further, such people so far significantly outnumbered highly effective people whom I was fortunate to meet in EA.
I deliberately don’t give examples of ineffectiveness so as not to offend those nice people, but with my 25+ years of working in highly effective business organisations and managing people, believe me – I know what I’m talking about 😉
What you’ve said happens to mirror my observations also. Intensive hiring practices don’t seem to necessarily lead to superior outcomes at all, let alone so superior as to justify the cost.
This situation will not change until EA starts focusing on how to attract or create more donors (I have ideas but no one would read this anyway, so why bother )))
I would also add that this situation is perfectly compatible with talent shortages, if there’s a mismatch in talent needs. For example, in the Meta Coordination Forum, among the most prioritized skills, we see Leadership / Strategy, People management, Strategy development, and various niche skills in Government, Policy, Media. Among the least valued (though to be clear, many respondents still valued these skills), we see Generalist research skills, Quantitative expertise, forecasting, software development and philosophy.
This matches my experience where there are many 10s/100s of people I would be keen to hire as a researcher, but finding people who can autonomously develop and implement strategy for a specific research context is much harder.
Yes, supply of talent is way more than the movement can absorb. Therefore, do you think open hiring rounds (as opposed to, for example, consulting the list of previous near-misses, the HIP directory, or one’s own professional network to source candidates) are cost effective?
A personal and therefore rather limited observation (sample size about 40-50 people in total). Interestingly enough, for all this intensive hiring processes, I’ve happened to come across presumably nice people (in very different EA organisations and across diverse ranges of experience) who are nevertheless spectacularly ineffective, at least using my (probably too high) bar of experience in investments. What surprises me further, such people so far significantly outnumbered highly effective people whom I was fortunate to meet in EA.
I deliberately don’t give examples of ineffectiveness so as not to offend those nice people, but with my 25+ years of working in highly effective business organisations and managing people, believe me – I know what I’m talking about 😉
Hi Alex, thanks for offering your perspective.
What you’ve said happens to mirror my observations also. Intensive hiring practices don’t seem to necessarily lead to superior outcomes at all, let alone so superior as to justify the cost.
As for the main theme of the post, there seems to be a simple fundamental reason for such difficulties in finding an EA-aligned job. EA overall funding is just not big enough to create enough jobs for all interested people. And among other consequences, an important one is that it limits participation in EA − 2019 EA survey by @David_Moss showed that “too few job opportunities” were No. 1 barrier to greater involvement with EA.
This situation will not change until EA starts focusing on how to attract or create more donors (I have ideas but no one would read this anyway, so why bother )))
Thanks Alex. Unsurprisingly, I agree.
I would also add that this situation is perfectly compatible with talent shortages, if there’s a mismatch in talent needs. For example, in the Meta Coordination Forum, among the most prioritized skills, we see Leadership / Strategy, People management, Strategy development, and various niche skills in Government, Policy, Media. Among the least valued (though to be clear, many respondents still valued these skills), we see Generalist research skills, Quantitative expertise, forecasting, software development and philosophy.
This matches my experience where there are many 10s/100s of people I would be keen to hire as a researcher, but finding people who can autonomously develop and implement strategy for a specific research context is much harder.
Yes, supply of talent is way more than the movement can absorb. Therefore, do you think open hiring rounds (as opposed to, for example, consulting the list of previous near-misses, the HIP directory, or one’s own professional network to source candidates) are cost effective?