Thanks for writing this up Lizka! I agree with most of it, including most of the ways I’d like us to be different.
Flagging some disagreements:
- I feel like “smooth working together on projects” is pretty good on average: I agree with the example you give as a mostly-failed collab, though I think it was ultimately OK in that it resulted in your ITN post. But I think that there have been a lot of productive co-authored papers (I think most of our pieces are co-authored, and most of those collabs gave gone well.)
- I also feel like “give each other lots of feedback” is generally pretty good: weekly pretty detailed feedback between managers, weekly commenting on work-in-progress drafts, 360 feedback every retreat. I think we should add in a monthly 360 though, I’ve been meaning to do that for a while. In fact, I’d maybe emphasize that if people don’t want a fair amount of feedback, it might not be a great fit.
+1 to your other criticisms though, and I hope that this hiring round can help us bring in even more perspectives!
Other things I’d emphasize:
Impact focus: We have a culture of discussing research prioritization, and we all care about our work having impact. I think this is contestable and could be bad for some people: if you think you do your best work in a purely curiosity-driven way, Forethought might not be ideal.
Also, Stefan Torges recently joined to help make sure that research papers lead to action, e.g. by engaging with AI companies to make sure they introduce mitigations, and developing policy ideas. I hope that this makes it easier for researchers to focus on research, while also making sure that our research leads to some real difference. (To be clear, we’re early-days figuring this out, and we might not be able to find a way to get this to work.)
+1 to just really enjoying working with this set of people, too!
Also, Fin and Mia just put out a podcast about Mia’s take on what it’s like to work at Forethought, in case people want another personal perspective!
Thanks for writing this up Lizka! I agree with most of it, including most of the ways I’d like us to be different.
Flagging some disagreements:
- I feel like “smooth working together on projects” is pretty good on average: I agree with the example you give as a mostly-failed collab, though I think it was ultimately OK in that it resulted in your ITN post. But I think that there have been a lot of productive co-authored papers (I think most of our pieces are co-authored, and most of those collabs gave gone well.)
- I also feel like “give each other lots of feedback” is generally pretty good: weekly pretty detailed feedback between managers, weekly commenting on work-in-progress drafts, 360 feedback every retreat. I think we should add in a monthly 360 though, I’ve been meaning to do that for a while. In fact, I’d maybe emphasize that if people don’t want a fair amount of feedback, it might not be a great fit.
+1 to your other criticisms though, and I hope that this hiring round can help us bring in even more perspectives!
Other things I’d emphasize:
Impact focus: We have a culture of discussing research prioritization, and we all care about our work having impact. I think this is contestable and could be bad for some people: if you think you do your best work in a purely curiosity-driven way, Forethought might not be ideal.
Also, Stefan Torges recently joined to help make sure that research papers lead to action, e.g. by engaging with AI companies to make sure they introduce mitigations, and developing policy ideas. I hope that this makes it easier for researchers to focus on research, while also making sure that our research leads to some real difference. (To be clear, we’re early-days figuring this out, and we might not be able to find a way to get this to work.)
+1 to just really enjoying working with this set of people, too!
Also, Fin and Mia just put out a podcast about Mia’s take on what it’s like to work at Forethought, in case people want another personal perspective!