offer rate is more relevant to selectivity (if you disagree, could you explain why?)
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that our applicants are more dedicated (i.e. more likely to accept an offer). My understanding of Ashby is that it’s used by a bunch of random tech recruiting agencies, and I would guess that their applicants have ~0 pre-existing excitement about the companies they get sent to.
I don’t see any metrics that suggest the opposite is true, or even that it’s a close call or ambiguous in any way.
The statement in the post is “CEA might be slightly more selective than Ashby’s customers, but it does not seem like the difference is large”. This seems consistent with the view that CEA is selective? (It also just implies that Ashby is selective, which is a reasonable thing to believe.[1])
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As a meta point: I kind of get the sense that you feel that this post is intended to be polemical, like we are trying to convince people that CEA isn’t selective or something. But as you originally said: “the authors don’t seem to take an explicit stance on the issue” – we just wanted to share some statistics about our hiring and, at least as evidenced by that first comment of yours, we were somewhat successful in conveying that we didn’t have particularly strong opinions about whether EA jobs are still hard to get.
This post was intended to provide some statistics about our hiring, because we were collecting them for internal purposes anyway so I figured we might as well publish. We threw in the Ashby thing at the end because it was an easily accessible data point, but to be honest I kind of regret doing that – I’m not sure the comparison was useful for many people, and it caused confusion.
Re: offer rate vs hire rate, CEA’s applicants are likely applying to other EA jobs they’d also be dedicated to. CEA may well be more attractive than other EA employers, but I don’t think that’s a given and I’m not sure of the magnitude of any difference there might be. Bigger picture, as I mentioned earlier I think any individual metric is problematic and that we should look at a variety of metrics and see what story they collectively tell.
Re: your meta point, the thing I find confusing is that you “didn’t have particularly strong opinions about whether EA jobs are still hard to get.” There’s a bunch of data, and every data point (CEA’s absolute offer rates at each stage, CEA vs. Ashby at each stage, and CEA vs. other benchmarks like McKinsey and Harvard) supports the idea that EA jobs are hard to get. So I don’t really understand why you present a lot of data that all points the same way, yet remain unconvinced by the conclusion they lead to.
Similarly, I find it confusing that you still seem to endorse the claim that “CEA might be slightly more selective than Ashby’s customers, but it does not seem like the difference is large.” CEA has lower offer rates and lower hire rates at each stage of the process. And in almost every case, the difference is quite large (at least 2x). Even in the one comparison where the difference isn’t huge (hire rates at the person ops/onsite stage), it is still a moderate magnitude (Ashby’s rate is 40% higher than CEA’s) despite the fact that CEA required passing 3 screens to get to that stage vs. 2 for Ashby. I think a more reasonable interpretation of that data would be “It’s very likely that CEA is much more selective than Ashby’s customers, though it’s possible the magnitude of this difference is only moderate (and Ashby is not a perfect reference point.)”
the thing I find confusing is that you “didn’t have particularly strong opinions about whether EA jobs are still hard to get.”… So I don’t really understand why you present a lot of data that all points the same way, yet remain unconvinced by the conclusion they lead to.
I think I’m largely like “bruh, literally zero of our product manager finalist candidates had everhad the title “product manager” before, how could we possibly be more selective than Ashby?”[1]
Some other data points:
When I reach out to people who seem like good fits, they often decline to apply, meaning that they don’t even get into the data set evaluated here
When I asked some people who are well-connected to PMs to pass on the job to others they know, they declined to do so because they thought the PMs they knew would be so unlikely to want it it wasn’t worth even asking
I acknowledge that, if you rely 100% on the data set presented here, maybe you will come to a different conclusion, but I really just don’t think the data set presented here is that compelling.
As mentioned, our candidates are impressive in other ways, and maybe they are more impressive than the average Ashby candidate overall, but I just don’t think we have the evidence to confidently say that.
Hmm, if we are still talking about comparing CEA versus Ashby, I’m not sure this carves reality at the joints: it’s certainly true that people with zero experience have an uphill battle getting hired, but I don’t think CEA is unusual in this regard. (If anything, I would guess that we are more open to people with limited experience.)
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what your point is. Are you saying that my point 1 is misleading because having even any relevant experience can be a big boost for an applicant’s chances to getting hired by CEA, and any relevant experience isn’t a high bar?
Yeah, job experience seems like a major difference between CEA and Ashby. I’d guess that salary could be quite different too (which might be why the CEA role doesn’t seem interesting to experienced PMs).
It sounds like one of the reasons why EA jobs are hard to get (at least for EA candidates) is because EA candidates (typically young people with great academic credentials and strong understanding of EA but relatively little job experience) lack the job experience some roles require. To me this suggests that advising (explicitly or implicitly) young EAs that the most impactful thing they can do is direct work could be counterproductive, and that it might be better to emphasize building career capital.
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that our applicants are more dedicated (i.e. more likely to accept an offer). My understanding of Ashby is that it’s used by a bunch of random tech recruiting agencies, and I would guess that their applicants have ~0 pre-existing excitement about the companies they get sent to.
The statement in the post is “CEA might be slightly more selective than Ashby’s customers, but it does not seem like the difference is large”. This seems consistent with the view that CEA is selective? (It also just implies that Ashby is selective, which is a reasonable thing to believe.[1])
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As a meta point: I kind of get the sense that you feel that this post is intended to be polemical, like we are trying to convince people that CEA isn’t selective or something. But as you originally said: “the authors don’t seem to take an explicit stance on the issue” – we just wanted to share some statistics about our hiring and, at least as evidenced by that first comment of yours, we were somewhat successful in conveying that we didn’t have particularly strong opinions about whether EA jobs are still hard to get.
This post was intended to provide some statistics about our hiring, because we were collecting them for internal purposes anyway so I figured we might as well publish. We threw in the Ashby thing at the end because it was an easily accessible data point, but to be honest I kind of regret doing that – I’m not sure the comparison was useful for many people, and it caused confusion.
It sounds to me like you think Ashby is selective: “the Ashby benchmark (which itself likely captures selective jobs).”
Re: offer rate vs hire rate, CEA’s applicants are likely applying to other EA jobs they’d also be dedicated to. CEA may well be more attractive than other EA employers, but I don’t think that’s a given and I’m not sure of the magnitude of any difference there might be. Bigger picture, as I mentioned earlier I think any individual metric is problematic and that we should look at a variety of metrics and see what story they collectively tell.
Re: your meta point, the thing I find confusing is that you “didn’t have particularly strong opinions about whether EA jobs are still hard to get.” There’s a bunch of data, and every data point (CEA’s absolute offer rates at each stage, CEA vs. Ashby at each stage, and CEA vs. other benchmarks like McKinsey and Harvard) supports the idea that EA jobs are hard to get. So I don’t really understand why you present a lot of data that all points the same way, yet remain unconvinced by the conclusion they lead to.
Similarly, I find it confusing that you still seem to endorse the claim that “CEA might be slightly more selective than Ashby’s customers, but it does not seem like the difference is large.” CEA has lower offer rates and lower hire rates at each stage of the process. And in almost every case, the difference is quite large (at least 2x). Even in the one comparison where the difference isn’t huge (hire rates at the person ops/onsite stage), it is still a moderate magnitude (Ashby’s rate is 40% higher than CEA’s) despite the fact that CEA required passing 3 screens to get to that stage vs. 2 for Ashby. I think a more reasonable interpretation of that data would be “It’s very likely that CEA is much more selective than Ashby’s customers, though it’s possible the magnitude of this difference is only moderate (and Ashby is not a perfect reference point.)”
I think I’m largely like “bruh, literally zero of our product manager finalist candidates had ever had the title “product manager” before, how could we possibly be more selective than Ashby?”[1]
Some other data points:
When I reach out to people who seem like good fits, they often decline to apply, meaning that they don’t even get into the data set evaluated here
When I asked some people who are well-connected to PMs to pass on the job to others they know, they declined to do so because they thought the PMs they knew would be so unlikely to want it it wasn’t worth even asking
I acknowledge that, if you rely 100% on the data set presented here, maybe you will come to a different conclusion, but I really just don’t think the data set presented here is that compelling.
As mentioned, our candidates are impressive in other ways, and maybe they are more impressive than the average Ashby candidate overall, but I just don’t think we have the evidence to confidently say that.
It sounds like there are two, separate things going on:
Jobs at CEA are very hard to get, even for candidates with impressive resumes overall.
CEA finds it hard to get applicants that have particular desirable qualities like previous experience in the same role.
Hmm, if we are still talking about comparing CEA versus Ashby, I’m not sure this carves reality at the joints: it’s certainly true that people with zero experience have an uphill battle getting hired, but I don’t think CEA is unusual in this regard. (If anything, I would guess that we are more open to people with limited experience.)
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what your point is. Are you saying that my point 1 is misleading because having even any relevant experience can be a big boost for an applicant’s chances to getting hired by CEA, and any relevant experience isn’t a high bar?
Yeah, job experience seems like a major difference between CEA and Ashby. I’d guess that salary could be quite different too (which might be why the CEA role doesn’t seem interesting to experienced PMs).
It sounds like one of the reasons why EA jobs are hard to get (at least for EA candidates) is because EA candidates (typically young people with great academic credentials and strong understanding of EA but relatively little job experience) lack the job experience some roles require. To me this suggests that advising (explicitly or implicitly) young EAs that the most impactful thing they can do is direct work could be counterproductive, and that it might be better to emphasize building career capital.