I also wanted to hop on this thread and add some datapoints, which is useful because I’m the lowest status person in the comments. Super low status!
As the OP said, and other people noted, non-EA culture in North America, and especially the West Coast is flaky. People often suggest making plans or following up, that don’t pan out. Making plans happens as a sort of verbal decoration in casual run-ins. However, not showing up is much rarer.
Note I think that this NA culture also includes people not responding to follow-up emails or messages, even if they seemed very interested before. One reason I’m pointing this out is that there is a flip side to this norm—it makes it more natural to follow up after not getting a reply, under some norms (say, wait a decent 4 weeks; make sure the follow-up doesn’t mention any ignored emails, but instead suggest a promising update).
Someone I know has had a few EA meetings. For confirmed meetings, this person’s experiences suggests EAs are unusually scrupulous and conscientious about attending meetings. They have had only a small number of cases of missed meetings, and it seemed unintentional because the people who missed rescheduled and they gave lots of effort in meetings.
EAs very rarely make promises or plan things that don’t happen, when they say these things in 1on1s outside of a conference.
However, in conferences or to get togethers, it’s common to make plans or discuss things where there isn’t follow up. This actually isn’t because of a culture, but I think because people get genuinely excited and overpromise.
A high level of conscientiousness seems especially true for more established EAs. Senior EAs have say, pointed out a minor typo in an email (like a broken link), which no one does, basically.
In certain situations, the norm of silence or not following up seems efficient or even welcome. It’s extremely awkward for certain people to actively give negative signals in specific situations.
For example, a grant maker who thinks your introductions are unpromising isn’t going to say “Hey, this person you introduced me to seems unpromising and you should stop” or ”Hey Charles, I don’t know you but you’ve sent me 15 PMs on the EA Forum last week, please stop —Linch”.
They’ll just not reply, and combined with the norm about responding, this seems pretty efficient.
I also wanted to hop on this thread and add some datapoints, which is useful because I’m the lowest status person in the comments. Super low status!
As the OP said, and other people noted, non-EA culture in North America, and especially the West Coast is flaky. People often suggest making plans or following up, that don’t pan out. Making plans happens as a sort of verbal decoration in casual run-ins. However, not showing up is much rarer.
Note I think that this NA culture also includes people not responding to follow-up emails or messages, even if they seemed very interested before. One reason I’m pointing this out is that there is a flip side to this norm—it makes it more natural to follow up after not getting a reply, under some norms (say, wait a decent 4 weeks; make sure the follow-up doesn’t mention any ignored emails, but instead suggest a promising update).
Again, super low status! Bottom tier!
Datapoints:
Someone I know has had a few EA meetings. For confirmed meetings, this person’s experiences suggests EAs are unusually scrupulous and conscientious about attending meetings. They have had only a small number of cases of missed meetings, and it seemed unintentional because the people who missed rescheduled and they gave lots of effort in meetings.
EAs very rarely make promises or plan things that don’t happen, when they say these things in 1on1s outside of a conference.
However, in conferences or to get togethers, it’s common to make plans or discuss things where there isn’t follow up. This actually isn’t because of a culture, but I think because people get genuinely excited and overpromise.
A high level of conscientiousness seems especially true for more established EAs. Senior EAs have say, pointed out a minor typo in an email (like a broken link), which no one does, basically.
In certain situations, the norm of silence or not following up seems efficient or even welcome. It’s extremely awkward for certain people to actively give negative signals in specific situations.
For example, a grant maker who thinks your introductions are unpromising isn’t going to say “Hey, this person you introduced me to seems unpromising and you should stop” or ”Hey Charles, I don’t know you but you’ve sent me 15 PMs on the EA Forum last week, please stop —Linch”.
They’ll just not reply, and combined with the norm about responding, this seems pretty efficient.