Of our top rated plan changes, only 25% involve people working at EA orgs
For what it’s worth, given how few EA orgs there are in relation to the number of highly dedicated EAs and how large the world outside of EA is (e.g. in terms of institutions/orgs that work in important areas or are reasonably good at teaching important skills), 25% actually strikes me as a high figure. Even if this was right, there might be good reasons for the figure being that high, e.g. it’s natural and doesn’t necessarily reflect any mistake that 80K knows more about which careers at EA orgs are high-impact, can do a better job at finding people for them etc. However, I would be surprised if as the EA movement becomes more mature the optimal proportion was as high.
(I didn’t read your comment as explicitly agreeing or disagreeing with anything in the above paragraph, just wanted to share my intuitive reaction.)
Thank you for your comments here, they’ve helped me understand 80K’s current thinking on the issue raised by the OP.
Thanks for the thoughts, Max. As you suggest in your parenthetical, we aren’t saying that 25% of the community ought to be working at EA orgs. The distribution of the plan changes we cause is also affected by things like our network being strongest within EA. That figure is also calculated from a fairly small number of our highest impact plan changes so it could easily change a lot over time.
Personally, I agree with your take that the optimal percentage of the community working at EA orgs is less than 25%.
For what it’s worth, given how few EA orgs there are in relation to the number of highly dedicated EAs and how large the world outside of EA is (e.g. in terms of institutions/orgs that work in important areas or are reasonably good at teaching important skills), 25% actually strikes me as a high figure. Even if this was right, there might be good reasons for the figure being that high, e.g. it’s natural and doesn’t necessarily reflect any mistake that 80K knows more about which careers at EA orgs are high-impact, can do a better job at finding people for them etc. However, I would be surprised if as the EA movement becomes more mature the optimal proportion was as high.
(I didn’t read your comment as explicitly agreeing or disagreeing with anything in the above paragraph, just wanted to share my intuitive reaction.)
Thank you for your comments here, they’ve helped me understand 80K’s current thinking on the issue raised by the OP.
Thanks for the thoughts, Max. As you suggest in your parenthetical, we aren’t saying that 25% of the community ought to be working at EA orgs. The distribution of the plan changes we cause is also affected by things like our network being strongest within EA. That figure is also calculated from a fairly small number of our highest impact plan changes so it could easily change a lot over time.
Personally, I agree with your take that the optimal percentage of the community working at EA orgs is less than 25%.