Aspiring EA from Netherlands (Indian by birth)
agent18
Karma: 162
I would think this somehow led to or was a “prime factor” in getting an EA job.
Thanks for the wonderful article. I assume many of the claims in the article (e.g., ‘actions suggested in getting a degree in EA, helping to get into CE’) are based on some hiring round that you did some data analysis on and concluded. Do you have a link to such an analysis? Or is it just based on the 15 people who joined the incubation program the last time? (in which case I would think you wrote from your experience what these 15 people had done to get into CE)
You suggest in “possible actions section” that doing courses like the ones by J-PAL could be very useful. I was considering doing them, but when I did a quick check on LinkedIn I didn’t quite find anyone who has done these courses currently in your incubation program. Can you please let me know based on what you are suggesting these particular courses as a good initiative to get into CE?
In CE we give people a lot of points for listing an online course on their applications.
Does this apply to any online course (e.g., Data Science Specialization by Coursera) ? How many points are we talking about (5%, 20%, or...)
Is this only about getting as far as the interview?
For instance, both an advising programme aimed at undergraduates
Small Clarification: It doesn’t seem to look like it is aimed at undergraduates (alone) (as shown below). I acknowledge you didn’t say “alone”, but it feels like it when I read it.
We now offer career mentoring to recent graduates and students at a variety of university groups… --- EASCM ‘About’
Can you please let us now when the latest survey coming out?
P.S
Very much appreciate the effort to give examples for many of your claims. Thanks. For example (in the spirit of the game of concrete thinking)
Many of our interviews are also exploratory or of general interest (e.g. Bryan Caplan on the value of education, or David Chalmers on philosophy of mind).
May I ask why you think these are good? Do you know anyone who did it and got “ahead” in their career or?
Thanks.
Now I get what you were trying to say, I think. So you are saying you look at the ratio of “percentage of fundraising in latest job ads” vs “percentage of fundraising in current jobs”. That sounds like a smart proxy. Really interesting.
Thanks.
TL;DR
I think we might be on the same page.
I think it is worthwhile to note that in your latest article in the abstract you make a few claims such as: “EAs are struggling to fill fundraising and operations roles”. But you also think it is important and have dedicated a whole article to a bunch of similar claims on bottleneck, showing why you think there is “weak evidence” and explain what the “weak evidence” is.
If you are saying you will make representative statements but provide the evidence you have for it, then this discussion is moot (rendered unimportant by recent events). For me evidence gives a way to understand how “struggling” EAAs are and quickly test it.
Claims: Representatives for
mostcertain purposes seems to be more useful than specificity/concreteness.Example:
If, via some research, you have the ability to either 1) make claims about TC across a movement or range or orgs, with moderate confidence or 2) make claims about TC in one or two orgs, with higher confidence, an individual might opt for (2), as they can focus on orgs they’re more interested in. But 80k/AAC would opt for (1), because the advice is useful to a larger number of people
Discussion
This doesn’t look like an example that satisfies the claim. Atleast I am unable to see how it is “useful”. Plus there is another claim in the explanation that this type of advice will be useful for a larger number of people. Instead, can you show me one actual “representatives-statement” that satisfies “being more useful” than its “concreteness” alternative. In the previous reply to you I believe I clarify with one example how “concreteness” overpowers “representatives” in being “useful”, when people read it.
Given that the ideal distribution of roles and applicants and how this compares to the current situation is only really one consideration among several important considerations that affect career decisions (i.e. it affects your comparative advantage), maybe a high level of precision isn’t that important?
And I don’t get what you mean by “ideal situation and current situation is an important consideration for career decisions”.
Are you trying to say that looking at one example might not be useful as it is somehow not precise? and that we should be rather happy with general statements? Do you have an example to show what you mean?
Thanks.
In our “spot-check” [note, this is forthcoming research, which will likely be released within a week] of current roles and advertised roles at 27 animal advocacy nonprofits, fundraising was the skillset that was most notably overrepresented in animal advocacy job adverts (appearing to be important in 17% of identified job ads) relative to the number of current roles in the movement (appearing to be important in 10% of current roles);
I find this very hard to understand. My understanding is that 17% of “identified job ads” was related to fundraising. I don’t get the next part where you say talk about 10% of the current roles.
this may imply that these roles are unusually hard to fill and that fundraising expertise is undersupplied in the community, relative to its needs. As discussed in our blog post on the spot-check, however, this research provides only very weak evidence on the question of what the movement’s greatest bottlenecks are.
I get it that fundraising is “over-represented” in animal advocacy jobs with 17% of job ads talking about it, but what are the percentages for the other skills? Without that I think it is hard to say if 17% is high or not right? or Am I mistaken?
There is evidence from a 2013 report that senior fundraisers are difficult to hire in US nonprofits generally. This makes it seem more likely that animal advocacy nonprofits face the same difficulty.
Very interesting report (especially the sample size of 2000 non-profits). Looking at the sample it looks like only 1% of all the 2000 odd organizations was from “philanthropy, volunteerism and Grantmaking”. And highest was human services, educational institutions and arts, culture, humanities. I think it can really skew the results. Your thoughts?
The same report found evidence that smaller nonprofits may struggle to attract the most experienced fundraisers. Given that many animal advocacy organisations have small budgets, this provides another reason to expect that animal advocacy organizations will struggle to hire fundraisers, though this is only very weak evidence that this is a bottleneck for the movement.
Claims: Smaller nonprofit have fewer
struggle to findmost experienced fundraisersEvidence:
DDs with no experience based on salaries
8% > 50k$
23% < 50k$
This above evidence is confusing me to verify the claim. As it directly doesn’t associate with small non profits but through some association in salary. But the following seems to be causing less confusion.
prospective donor research
24% have no experience for DDs in general
32% have no experience for DDs in small
32.25% have no experience for DDs in non-small (back calculating)Securing gifts
26% have no experience for DDs in general
38% have no experience for DDs in small
25% have no experience for DDs in non-small (back-calculating)I am concerned now by the wording “struggling”. This doesn’t seem to be too bad. Smaller nonprofits seem to have fewer people of experienced staff. But are they “struggling”? I am not sure. And as a result this seems like weak evidence for bottleneck claims. Agree. Am I mistaken?
Hi Jamie,
Thank You for your comment.
Isn’t TC in the movement just the aggregation of TC in relevant orgs and actors?
Yes it seems to be. All I wanted was to avoid a level of abstraction. “AI strategy is TC in DR” vs “FHI is TC in DR”. I really feel confused thinking about the former. The later is so concrete. I can test it. I can go in depth in that ONE EXAMPLE. The former is too broad. I find it easier to think in concrete examples.
There’s a tradeoff between specificity/concreteness and representatives/unreliability, and for most purposes, the latter seems more useful to me?
Interesting! Would you be able to give me a real example to satisfy your claim? I claim that concreteness seems useful to me and if I get an example I hold on to it for dear life and test all claims atleast against that one example.
Claim: Concreteness seems useful.
Example: Consider: “Many community members should seek positions in government, academia, and other existing institutions.”
I am lost. What is “MANY”? What does a “position in government” even look like. All this until I saw this beautiful example: “DoD’s new Joint AI Center alone is apparently looking to hire up to 200 people.”. I understand finally what many and position in government is.
Animal Advocacy Careers will be offering one-to-one advising soon. Before it is officially launched, people can sign up to express their interest here.
That’s great. I subscribed already. Thank You very much Jamie.
Thank You for acknowledging this post. I very much appreciate your reply.
We’ve been trying to do a better job communicating our uncertainty in the new key ideas series, for instance by releasing: advice on how to read our advice
I really wish you can put more of your evidence out there instead of sentences that are a summary of the evidence you have. “Another bottleneck to progress on GPR might be operations staff” (GPR Key-ideas). Is it a bottleneck or is it not? I don’t know what to make of “might be”. In this case if you presented your evidence that helps conclude this, say in a footnote, I think it will be more useful. People can then draw the conclusion for themselves.
To be specific, I think it’s longtermist organisations that are most talent constrained. Global health and factory farming organisations are much more constrained by funding relatively speaking (e.g. GiveWell top recommended charities could absorb ~$100m). I think this explains why organisations like TLYCS, Charity Science and Charity Entrepreneurship say they’re more funding constrained (and also to some extent Rethink priorities, which does a significant fraction of its work in this area).
I am glad you clarify about your position that you are focused on longtermism TC. I only know of two cases where longtermism positions are TC. Disentanglement research as informed by Carrick Flynn in Sep 2017 and AI Policy in US in Jan 2019 article). It still stands that Open Phil in GR seems to be not TC. (“The pool of available talent is strong, … more than a hundred applicants had very strong resumes… but … (to) deploy this base of available talent is weak”)
I think what helps is to keep the TC debate focused on to specific cases. And this can be done with providing evidence as done in AI Policy in US.
Even within longtermist and meta organisations, not every organisation is mainly skill-constrained, so you can find counterexamples, such as new organisations without much funding. This may also explain the difference between the average survey respondents and Rethink Priorities’ view.
Claims: Average Survey respondents feel they are TC more than RP because they have less funding needs than RP (and is “new”).
Example: Open Phil is an average survey respondent (I presume). Open Phil has funding. Open Phil does not seem to feel TC in GR though.
It looks like the example does not satisfy the claim. So now I don’t really know what you are talking about. I don’t have one example of an org and a position that is skill-constrained in research in GPR. I keep hearing you saying that “research is the biggest need right now” (key-ideas post) but when I look in Open Phil it doesn’t seem to be so. They are unable to absorb more researchers. So what exactly are you talking about?
You might wonder why I am quoting the same Open Phil example like a parrot. That is because that is one of the few hiring rounds available. And trying to ask companies like FHI or Open Phil etc., for more info on this or dollars moved by researcher or about replaceability does not seem to produce results unfortunately.
It doesn’t seem to me that looking at whether lots of people applied to a job tells us much about how talent constrained an organization is.
The definition for TC is that an org is unable to find “skilled people” despite hiring actively. I agree that number of people applied is not a measure for TC. But the number of people in the last round (after 4 other rounds) seems to suggest something regarding if orgs are able to find skilled people or not. Even if that is not the case --> When you look at what Open Phil says, I can’t imagine that they are TC in GR based on the numbers of people who they thought had good resumes. In fact it seems like a bad idea to push for research at Open Phil (GPR) in GR considering replaceability atleast. And the more I talk to people like Peter Hurford (about replaceability) the more I feel like there is less point in being a GR.
Some successful applicants might have still been much better than others, or the organisations might have preferred to hire even more than they were able to.
About “successful applicants might have been still much better” (due to the potential log-normal distribution of candidates ability), I would also like one example for a case where this is true. I don’t think that is the case with Open Phil in GR based on their hiring round.
Aaron also raised this point as well. Yes that is definitely a possibility that people would still be hired but the organization would continue to be TC. Seems like a reasonable hypothesis but still needs evidence (one example at least) to support it I think. Nevertheless, I don’t think that is the case with Open Phil in GR based on their hiring round.
Something else I think is relevant to the question of whether our top problem areas are talent constrained is that I think many community members should seek positions in government, academia and other existing institutions. These roles are all ‘talent constrained’, in the sense that hundreds of people could take these positions without the community needing to gain any additional funding. In particular, we think there is room for a significant number of people to take AI policy careers, as argued here.
AI policy careers in the US seems to match the definition of TC. “80,000 Hours has attended, speakers have lamented the government’s lack of expertise on AI, and noted the substantial demand for such expertise within government. For example, DoD’s new Joint AI Center alone is apparently looking to hire up to 200 people.”. I didn’t know this before. This is so clear for me now, that I have an example for what you mean with “significant number of people”. I wish the same was available for other top problem areas.
Thanks for this.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I very much appreciate it. I would really appreciate more evidence displayed for claims and less generalization with 80khours blogs.
P.S
If you already know many opportunities are high-impact, I expect that you have looked at the value contributed by several people, and factored things like replaceability etc., before you came to a decision. Why not just publish it? Asking companies doesn’t seem practical and no one seems to be giving out such information. One author even suggested that only if I am writing an academic paper he would be able to help otherwise he didn’t find time for it.
[TLDR: I don’t think that anyone can give you the examples relevant for you.
I don’t need examples “relevant to me”. I just wanted to know what sort of impact people are making say in Open Phil CE or other EAs considering relevant factors such as replaceability in fields like GR, AI SSP, and management positions. Sorry that was not clear.
I think 80K is actually saying it is better for most people to do direct work (including but not limited to neglected roles at EA orgs) than ETG.
This is a claim what 80khours makes. Do you have ONE example for this claim?
The preference for roles outside of EA makes sense to me, because, while an EA org is likely to find a few good top candidates they consider value-aligned, acting in the wider world using EA principles is a much more reliable (and even stronger) counterfactual.
This is similar to how earning to give is more of a reliable counterfactual than working at an EA org, in that you are almost certainly adding 100% extra money in the pot—the candidate who would have gotten your high-paying job would almost certainly not have donated to an effective charity.
In the end, though, the path for you depends on a lot. You must consider your personal fit and your EA comparative advantage. It also depends on how you expect your favored cause areas, funding, and EA as a movement to evolve. I recommend brain dumping and drafting out as much as you can regarding those 5 things to clarify expectations and cruxes! If you can find cruxes, then you can investigate with expert interviews. Reach out to individuals, not orgs.
It looks like “career advice” to me. What I am asking seems to be different. Evidence for claims “working at EA org is better than ETG (for most people)” based on NOW. That’s all.
I don’t know what you mean with cruxes. I guess you mean things that are stopping you from going further. The QUESTION posted is what I wanted more info about. But sadly NO ONE seems to be able answer it.
Regarding direct work options, reach out to individuals in roles that you could see yourself in (within or outside of an EA org). Even if you are stuck with half a dozen possible roles, that is narrowed down enough that you can ask people in those roles:
I reached out to several orgs and people regarding the question above. But most of them aren’t able to provide me any useful info such as amount of dollars moved or replaceability. The only people that answered me are Peter Hurford and Jon Behar. I also wanted to get some info on the fully longtermism projects but I have 0 info.
Maybe I check with Aaron Gertler on how to go about it or try arranging one on ones during the conference in London in a few months.
-If they feel they are making an impact
-What other options they were deciding between and why they chose what they did
-Where they think the field will go and what will it need
-If they think you would be a good fit.
Sounds good in case in case I manage an interview. Thanks.
Now you can compare ETG to what you learned about direct work. You can interview people earning to give in the field you’d work within and people related to philanthropy in the space you’d be donating to. That could look like:
Thanks for outlining how to go about determining the value and comparing different options. I appreciate it. Interviews might be something I would need to go after. I shall see how I can do that. Emailing, pming and posting in ea forums does not seem to help or am missing something.
If you need to further clarify ETG advantage, you can speak to hiring managers or heads of people at EA or non-EA places you’d be excited to work at. Ask them how much better their best candidate tends to be than their second-best candidate.
It appears that people don’t have these numbers and are not interested in them. I didn’t get any useful answer from EAF, Open Phil, FHI, CEA and didn’t get far with this EXACT SAME QUESTION on replaceability.
On the whole, informational interviews are priceless.
You can find all these people using this method or by asking others if they know someone who is doing a certain role.
Here is a recent forum post on how to prepare for informational interviews; (keep in mind you might want to be more formal toward non-EAs). Don’t forget to say thanks and cement the bond afterward. If you can help the person in any small way, you should.
And here are two blurbs from 80k encouraging informational interviews and other types of exploration.
Perfect. I hope EAG can help me out with IIs (informational interviews).
So, long story short, you will need to find those people, examples, and evidence that are relevant to you. I get that it is really not easy… I’m in the middle of it too. But just keep getting things down on paper and things will start to become clearer. Take it bit by bit, and try to get more (not necessarily complete) clarity on one aspect per day.
Good luck to you. Have you tried reaching out to people, what was the response like. Who responded? What did you ask exactly? (Maybe in pm? I can share with you more details of my approach and info, if it helps)
Also, you don’t have to have your path figured out now. If you can narrow it down to 2-3 options, see what next step you could take that would be relevant to both/all paths. If you are at the exact branching point today, then try out a role for a year in a way that should give you pretty good career capital for the other option(s). Then switch to try out another role in a year’s time if it still is not clear. Most likely, a couple of key cruxes will arise while you work.
Well am 29 and want to know if I should go in the direction of a masters (to keep ETG open) or upskill in research at EAOs.
Good luck and feel free to PM
Thank you for the post. Will do.
Very interesting! Can you please cross-post?
I corrected it. Thanks.
Claims that you find to be false? please post evidence as well.
If you find formatting issues please state here:
Do you know of actual TC positions? Can you please cite your source?
A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained
I’m currently trying to transition to effective animal advocacy research, reading more research, offering to review research before publication, applying to internships and positions at the orgs, and studying more economics/stats, one of the bottlenecks discussed here,
Your options sounds solid. I guess your 28 and can thus still get into relatively different quantitative Finance.
But, how did you decide that it is best for you to dedicate your time to AAR? You could be working at GiveWell/Open Phil as a GR, or in OpenAI/MIRI in AI safety research (especially with your CS and Math background), you could also be working in ETG at the FAANG. Also 80khours no where seems to suggest that AAR of all the things are “high-impact-careers” nor does the EA survey say anything about it. In fact the survey talks about GR and AI safety.
And did you account for replaceability and other factors? If so, how did you arrive at these numbers?
I feel that EA orgs have been a bit weak on causal inference (from observational data), which falls under econometrics/stats.
So you hope to apply causal inference in AAR?
Lastly I want to thank you from the heart for taking your time and effot to respond to me. Appreciate it brother.
Charity Entrepreneurship is starting many more EA orgs with their incubation program (incubated charities here). Maybe worth reaching out to them to see what their applicant pool is like?
Good idea. I will contact them as well to see the talent pool. If they still need “high-quality people”, somehow getting better (gaining) in that direction seems like a good opportunity.
I think there are also specific talent bottlenecks, see [1], [2], [3].
Micheal, I have written an article here: http://agent18.github.io/is-ea-bottlenecked-2.html in my unfinished blogspace about [1] and [2]. I really don’t find evidence for their claims of bottlenecks. Or I don’t understand what they are trying to say. For example, GR in GPR is recommended by 80khours in their high-impact-careers post, also in the surveys, also in the separate problem profiles etc… but yet during open phil’s round on there is literally 100s of “good resumes” and “many candidates worthy of positions” but OP could not consume all of them.
Peter Hurford can also be seen talking about the lack of Talent constrian in GR (I think)
Actually, this last one comes from Animal Advocacy Careers, a charity incubated by Charity Entrepreneurship to meet the effective animal advocacy talent bottlenecks.
This I really need to look into. Thanks for that.
Btw, I think you have the wrong link for Carricks.
Thanks. Corrected it. Sorry about that.
Bottom line
I don’t know how people evaluate which career to choose. Many people are redirecting me to posts from 80khours. But I find only claims there. When I ask organizations on value generated replaceability I don’t get any info from them. I think people do a guess at max, falling prey to vague words like Career Capital or possibly primarily focusing on what they are good at or I don’t know.
Anyways… It seems like a dead end to think that I can actually evaluate what I should be doing. Your thoughts?
How did you end up choosing to go to DarwinAI? Why not something else like GR in GPR or FAAANG?
Thanks Michael. As you said, we would need to confirm it from GiveWell. In 2019 they planned to hire 3-5 for new research staffs. It looks like they are physically limiting the growth of GiveWell compared to the available “talent pool” as expressed in Open Phil’s hiring round. Also the priors suggest that GiveWell would like to “grow slowly”: https://blog.givewell.org/2013/08/29/we-cant-simply-buy-capacity/
So I really doubt we should go by the claim of 80k in this regard.
There are many organizations doing research work on different projects, such as GiveWell, OPP, CE, ACE, 80k etc… Why not stand on their shoulders? Instead of doing more research? Or fund researchers specially to work in these organizations (as they already have the way of work sorted)?