tbh this comment section is giving out far more insights than the post itself lol. One could almost believe that CG and most other organizations in the space are far more concerned with playing status games by reminding everyone that their posted job roles got a 0.02% acceptance ratio.
You’ll have a hard time convincing me that the main reason behind extending the application deadline isn’t because they looked at the total number of applications and decided this wouldn’t look good enough as a denominator.
Anyone who’s been through the humiliation ritual of applying to any of these jobs/fellowships knows the game all too well. We keep getting “invitation to apply” emails, we keep reading that “there are not enough people in AI safety!” on forum and social media posts. But when we jump through all these hoops, we’re greeted with “oh there were just too many of you applying!”
And when you press any of these organization heads or recruitment managers about why you’re not getting into their jobs or fellowship programs, they say they’d love to take everyone who was eligible, but they simply don’t have enough funding.
The entire recruitment strategy behind this space is a giant motte-and-bailey approach meant to clown job applicants around.
Getting rejected from a role you’re not qualified for is fine. What’s not fine is every org in this space, whether they’re advertising jobs or fellowships, constantly writing in their job descriptions “if you’re in doubt about your suitability for this role, we encourage you to apply!”
Why though? Why are they encouraging people to waste hours of their lives on applications they were never going to seriously consider? They should just be honest and say: “we expect you to already have put in 1000 hours in AI safety (preferably working with our friends) before we’ll even look at your application.”
Why post minimum desired qualifications that make regular, unimpressive talent think they’ll have a chance? Why not filter them out immediately so they don’t bother clicking on the apply button?
The EA/AI safety application process is humiliating enough for committed “high-impact professionals” as it is. Ultimately, this entire post reads as tone-deaf and insulting to the people who actually bothered applying, knowing full well there was a 99% probability that they’d get rejected anyway.
That being said, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to a hiring manager’s plight in this day and age. Of course I know that the majority of applications they’re getting are AI slop by randos with no exposure or knowledge of the space.
Even so, I strongly doubt that they’re not getting at least 10 qualified and eligible people for each role that they post — and that’s an extremely conservative estimate.
Hell, if you are getting even one qualified person but choosing to leave supposedly critical, world-saving roles open because candidates lack some subjective, nonsensical “fit”, then you aren’t actually talent-constrained… You’re just playing status games.
Could you specify what you mean by “fit for the role”?
Often subjective terms like these are just used to justify arbitrary discrimination (not necessarily of the illegal kind).