An anonymous account for a few long-time EAs to share concerns about community issues in a less filtered way, because we think others may also have similar views.
Some takes might be spicier than average—but we encourage pushback and disagreements.
Grumpy Squid
Karma: 215
Grumpy Squid’s Quick takes
the LTFF and EAIF chairs will step down from their current roles,
Wouldn’t it make sense to find replacements before the chairs step down, to prevent a lack of capacity during the transition period ?
(Not sure if this is the plan, but it sounds like it is from your post)
This is an open call for CEA to be more transparent with its finances and allocation of resources to different projects (historically and currently)
A quick google shows pretty inconsistent reporting metrics and update cadence over the past several years, as well as reporting gaps.
There is no easily available breakdown of funding / budgeting for most years
It seems like CEA staff do share numbers when asked ad-hoc—e.g. see this comment from JP Addison on spending of the Online team. But if someone wants to get a quick overview it would be incredibly time consuming to compute all the numbers
So it’s not that they are entirely transparent, but that they aren’t making this information easy to access, which feels bad / like obfuscation. And I think they are succeeding—I don’t think many people do have the time or inclination to sift through data.
As a key entity in the EA ecosystem (even if the scope changes), it seems good to demonstrate high transparency and data accessibility even if the decisions are not endorsed by the average community member.
Spicier take: I think they aren’t sharing it, in large part, because of optics. This feels like a bad reason not to be transparent. For example, I think right now, given FTX and less funding, the Events team in particular is hesitant to share how much they put into EAG(x)’s in 2022. Their update on spending post didn’t mention specific numbers. My understanding is that most people who requested it were given full travel & lodging subsidies (maybe up to $1500 per person, for thousands of individuals). This could be several million in funding in 2022 alone.