Joseph Lemien

Karma: 2,490

I have work experience in HR and Operations. I read a lot, I enjoy taking online courses, and I do some yoga and some rock climbing. I enjoy learning languages, and I think that I tend to have a fairly international/cross-cultural focus or awareness in my life. I was born and raised in a monolingual household in the US, but I’ve lived most of my adult life outside the US, with about ten years in China, two years in Spain, and less than a year in Brazil.

As far as EA is concerned, I’m fairly cause agnostic/cause neutral. I think that I am a little bit more influenced by virtue ethics and stoicism than the average EA, and I also occasionally find myself thinking about inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in EA. Some parts of the EA community that I’ve observed in-person seem not very welcoming to outsides, or somewhat gatekept. I tend to care quite a bit about how exclusionary or welcoming communities are.

I was told by a friend in EA that I should brag about how many books I read because it is impressive, but I feel uncomfortable being boastful, so here is my clunky attempt to brag about that.

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions are my own, not my employer’s.

Joseph Lemien 14 Apr 2024 14:15 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ABishop’s comment on: ABishop’s Quick takes
I’d also re-focus on effective at what? What is the goal or objective of these free hugs? Once you know that, then you can more easily estimate how effective free hugs are compared to other interventions.

Joseph Lemien 14 Apr 2024 14:14 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ethai’s comment on: a guy named josh’s Quick takes
revealing scores useful to candidates for some other reason not covered by that
Honestly, I hadn’t even thought of encouraging them to apply for future roles. My main thought regarding feedback is to allow them to improve. If you assess my work and then tell me the ways in which it falls short, that allows me to improve. I know that to work on. An example would be something like “Although your project plan covered a lot of the areas we requested, you didn’t explain your reasoning for the assumption you made. You estimated that a [THING] would cost $[AMOUNT], but as the reader I don’t know where you got that number. If you had been transparent about your reasoning, then you would have scored a bit higher.” or “We were looking for something more detailed, and your proposal was fairly vague. It lacked many of the specifics that we had requested in the prompt.”

Joseph Lemien 14 Apr 2024 14:09 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Jamie_Harris’s comment on: a guy named josh’s Quick takes
Regarding “disheartening people,” I once got feedback for a hiring round and the organization shared what scores I got, and even shared scoring info for the other (anonymized) candidates. It was the best and most accurate data I have ever been given as feedback.
I scored very low, much lower than I had expected. Of course I felt sad and frustrated. I wish that I knew more details about their scoring methodology, and part of me says that it was an unfair process because they weren’t clear on what I would be evaluated on. But I draw a analogies to getting rejected from anything else (such as a school application or a romantic partner): it sucks, but you get over it eventually. I felt bad for a day or two, and then the feelings of frustration faded away.

Joseph Lemien 14 Apr 2024 14:04 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: ABishop’s comment on: ABishop’s Quick takes
Using the analogy of hunger, here is one way that I am currently thinking about it: giving a willing stranger a hug is like giving a willing stranger a candy bar; they get some nourishment, but if they are chronically food insecure this won’t solve that longer-term problem. It won’t help them get regular/consistent access to meals that they can afford. So in that sense it is like a band-aid: it is treating the symptom, but it is not addressing the cause.
If someone is suffering from a consistent and pervasive lack of human touch, such as “skinship hunger,” a hug might feel nice for a few seconds, but when the hug is finished that person’s situation (lacking human touch) remains unchanged. I suppose you could create some kind of program in which they spend 60 minutes with a professional cuddler every week, but I honestly don’t see that as being cost competitive if the goal is to get QALYs at the best price.
But if you just want to estimate it then you could put together a simple Fermi estimate: what are the costs to giving free hugs, and what are the benefits, and then figure out how much value do you please on each of those.

Joseph Lemien 13 Apr 2024 19:13 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 2
in reply to: ABishop’s comment on: ABishop’s Quick takes
Haha. Well, I guess I would first ask effective at what? Effective at giving people additional years of healthy & fulfilling life? Effective at creating new friendships? Effective at making people smile?
I haven’t studied it at all, but my hypothesis that it is the kind of intervention that is similar to “awareness building,” but it doesn’t have any call to action (such as a donation). So it is probably effective in giving people a nice experience for a few seconds, and maybe improving their mood for a period of time, but it probably doesn’t have longer-lasting effects. From a cursory glance at Google Scholar, it looks like there hasn’t been much research on free hugs.

Joseph Lemien 13 Apr 2024 19:07 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Jamie_Harris’s comment on: a guy named josh’s Quick takes
Jamie, I’ve been contemplating writing up a couple of informal “case study”-type reports of different hiring practices. My intention/thought process would be to allow EA orgs to learn about how several different orgs do hiring, to highlight some best practices, and generally to allow/encourage organizations to improve their methods. How would you feel about writing up a summary or having a call with me to allow me to understand how you tried giving feedback and what specific aspects caused challenges?

Joseph Lemien 13 Apr 2024 19:04 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: John Salter’s comment on: a guy named josh’s Quick takes
That actually seems like a really strong signal of something important: can people improve, if given a modest amount of guidance/support. I’d certainly be interested in hiring someone who does rather than someone who doesn’t.
But I’m also impressed that you provide feedback to candidates consistently. I’ve always thought that it would be something fairly time-consuming, even if you set up a system to provide feedback in a fairly standardized way. Would you be willing to share a bit about how you/your team does feedback for rejected job applicants?

Joseph Lemien 13 Apr 2024 18:37 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Stephen Clare’s comment on: Stephen Clare’s Shortform
It looks like there are two people who voted disagree with this. I’m curious as to what they disagree with. Do they disagree with the claim that some organizations are “very risk-averse when hiring”? Do they disagree with the claim that “reducing false positives often means raising false negatives”? That this has a causal effect with organisations scale slowly? Or perhaps that “the costs of a bad hire are somewhat bounded”? I would love for people who disagree vote to share information regarding what it is they disagree with.

Joseph Lemien 13 Apr 2024 16:44 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Stephen Clare’s comment on: Stephen Clare’s Shortform
Forgive my rambling. I don’t have much to contribute here, but I generally want to say A)I am glad to see other people thinking about this, and B) I sympathize with the difficulty
The “reducing false positives often means raising false negatives” is one of the core challenges in hiring. Even the researchers who investigate the validity of various methods and criteria in hiring don’t have a great way to deal with it this problem. Theoretically we could randomly hire 50% of the applicants and reject 50% of them, and then look at how the new hires perform compared to the rejects one year later. But this is (of course) infeasible. And of course, so much of what we care about is situationally specific: If John Doe thrives in Organizational Culture A performing Role X, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will thrive in Organizational Culture B performing Role Y.
I do have one suggestion, although it isn’t as good of a suggestion as I would like. Ways to “try out” new staff (such as 6-month contacts, 12-month contracts, internships, part-time engagements, and so on) can let you assess with greater confidence how the person will perform in your organization in that particular role much better than a structured interview, a 2-hour work trial test, or a carefully filled out application form. But if you want to have a conversation with some people that are more expert in this stuff I could probably put you in touch with some Industrial Organizational Psychologists who specialize in selection methods. Maybe a 1-hour consultation session would provide some good directions to explore?
I’ve shared this image^[1] with many people, as I think it is a fairly good description of the issue. I generally think of one of the goals of hiring to be “squeezing” this shape to get as much off the area as possible in the upper right and lower left, and to have as little as possible in the upper left and lower right. We can’t squeeze it infinitely thin, and there is a cost to any squeezing, but that is the general idea.
.
1. ^
  it is from a textbook: Industrial/Organizational Psychology: Understanding the Workplace, Paul E. Levy

Joseph Lemien 12 Apr 2024 14:37 UTC
4 points
5 ∶ 0
in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Dear EA, please be the reason people like me will actually see a better world. Help me make some small stride on extreme poverty where I live—by the end of 2024.
I just want to chime in to say how lovely it is to see a disagreement on the internet that doesn’t degrade. It was very nice to read each of you describe what you believe to be true, cite sources, explain reasoning without exaggerations or ad hominems, consider context and hypothesize about possibilities, and move a step closer to ‘truth.’ Bravo.

Joseph Lemien 11 Apr 2024 13:26 UTC
18 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Amber Dawn’s comment on: Mediocre EAs: career paths and how do they engage with EA?
a lot of the attitudes around career planning in EA sort of assume that you are formidable within a particular, rather narrow mould
This idea is something I’ve contemplated previously, but I really like that you put it into words.
If you will indulge me in rambling/ranting a little, I remember looking at 80k’s guidance on careers in the area of Improving China-Western coordination a few years ago. China is an area that I know a bit about and wanted to make a core of my career.^[1] I was disappointed that most of their recommendations were not realistic for someone who wasn’t an ‘elite.’^[2] I came away with the general impression that the authors didn’t really grasp the realities and challenges involved in a non-Chinese person building a career in China, but in retrospect it could have simply been written with Ivy League grads in mind in which case I was not the target audience. Many of the options listed that struck me as unavailable/unrealistic would be much more feasible if I had an undergraduate degree from Princeton or Yale or Stanford. So as a person who already had a decent amount of China-relevant knowledge and experience, I basically came away understanding that “there isn’t any way for me to contribute to this area” and that I would have to have some sort of an in with a professional network in order to contribute professionally.
1. ^
  China was the main focus of my bachelor’s degree, which included learning the language. I had lived in Beijing for about eight years at that point.
2. ^
  Examples of these include recommendations to work as a foreign journalist (which is very competitive and prestigious in China), apply for top scholarships for special master’s degrees in China (one scholarship require applicants to be younger than 29, the other prefers candidates younger than 25), work at a think tank, work for the Ford Foundation, work for the Gates Foundation, work at top Chinese companies, and so on.

Joseph Lemien 6 Apr 2024 23:38 UTC
2 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Looking for recs: books/essays on risk management
Try this textbook: Fundamentals of Risk Management: Understanding, Evaluating and Implementing Effective Risk Management. I haven’t read it yet, but it is on my to-read list.

Joseph Lemien 5 Apr 2024 13:10 UTC
28 points
7 ∶ 0
on: Considering pledging but haven’t? Help us understand!
Hi. I don’t think my explanation would take 45 minutes to explore, but I can share the basics of my thought process: I’d feel pretty dumb if I donate a few thousand dollars, and then a year later I don’t have enough money to pay for basic necessities. I’ve never had both A) a feeling of financial stability, and B) the confidence that such stability would continue in the future. Thus, I’ve wanted to build up a ‘nest egg’ for myself so that I won’t starve or be homeless.
A is pretty easy to explain and understand. That covers times when I’ve been employed on short-term contracts, or when life has been in flux because I was moving from one place to another, or simply when I earned money that wasn’t enough to cover both my basics and my financial goals. B is simply times when I’ve had a good job, I’ve known it wouldn’t last forever, and I’ve known that I would eventually need my savings to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. One doesn’t know how long it will take to find new employment. If it takes two weeks that isn’t a big issue, but if it takes months and months that is something I want to be financially prepared for.
If I had a skillset that was highly in-demand in the job market or if I had tenure at a famous university, then I wouldn’t be as concerned about income and supporting myself financially. As much as I admire the Oxford professors who donate a large chunk of their income each year, being tenured means more-or-less guaranteed income, making the decision to donate relatively low risk. If I had a big chunk of guaranteed income, I would certainly donate. Or if I had a life more like some of the earn to give folks I’ve read about, then I would do the same (attending a well-known and well-reputed school, studying a field that gives good career prospects, meeting a life partner relatively early in life and sharing expenses, living near a supportive family, earning a strong salary for many years, having family and network in a place with plenty of professional opportunities, living in the same city for the whole career and thus building a long-lasting network of professional contacts, working for well-known and well-reputed companies, etc.). But through a combination of circumstances external to me (such as where I grew up and what fields I was introduced to early on) and of my own choices (such as being drawn to fields that tend to not earn much or be highly respected), I don’t have those resources and that stability.
EDIT: My current perspective feels a bit extreme or outrageous, but I’d like to save up and have enough money so that I am financially stable/secure/independent, and then donate. But if I had some kind of foreknowledge that I would always be able to secure employment within a month and the employment would always be at least moderately enjoyable and pay me at decently good amounts, then I would probably be comfortable to start donating now.

Joseph Lemien 2 Apr 2024 16:46 UTC
32 points
5 ∶ 0
on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
One of the best experiences I’ve had at a conference was when I went out to dinner with three people that I had never met before. Seeing the popularity of matching systems like Donut in Slack workspaces, I wonder if something analogous could be useful for conferences. I’m imagining a system in which you sign up for a timeslot (breakfast, lunch, or dinner), and are put into a group with between two and four other people. You are assigned a location/restaurant that is within walking distance of the conference venue, so the administrative work of figuring out where to go is more-or-less handled for you. I’m no sociologist, but I think that having a small group is better for conversation than a large group, and better than a two-person group. An MVP version of this could perhaps just be a Google Sheet with some RANDBETWEEN formulas.
The topics of conversation were pretty much what you would expect for people attending an EA conference: we spoke about interpersonal relationships, careers, moral philosophy, miscellaneous interests, general life advice, and so on. None of us were taking any notes. None of us sent any follow up emails. We weren’t seeking advice on projects. We were simply eating dinner and conversing.
When I claim this was one of the best experiences, I don’t mean “best” in the sense of “most impactful,” but rather as as 1) fairly enjoyable/comfortable, 2) distinct from the talks and the one-on-ones (which often tend to blur together in memory), and 3) I felt like I was actually interacting with people rather than engaging in “the EA game.”^[1] I think that third aspect felt like the most important for me.
Of course, if could simply be that this particular group of individuals just happened to mesh well, and that this specific situation it isn’t something which can be easily replicated.
1. ^
  “The EA game” is very poorly conceptualized on my part. I apologize for the sloppiness of it, but I’ll emphasize that this is a loose concept that I’ve just started thinking about, rather than something more rigorous. I think of it as something along the lines of “trying to extract value or trying to produce value.” Exploring job opportunities, sensing if someone is open to a collaboration of some type, getting advice on career plans, picking someone’s brain on their area of expertise, getting intel on new funders and grants, and so on. It is a certain type of professional and para-professional networking. You have your game face on, because there is some outcome that is dependent on your actions and on how people perceive you. This is in contrast to something like interacting without an agenda, or being authentic and present.

Announcing new org: 90,000 Hours (April Fools’ post)

Joseph Lemien1 Apr 2024 12:39 UTC

9 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

Joseph Lemien 30 Mar 2024 15:24 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ivan Burduk’s comment on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
For what it is worth, I’d want the bar for expertise to be a lot higher than a few months of work experience. I can’t really think of any common career (setting aside highly specialized fields with lots of training, such as astronaut) in which a few months of work experience make someone an expert. Maybe Areas of Expertise (multiple years work experience)? It is tricky, because there are so many edge cases, and maybe someone had read all the research on [AREA] and is incredibly knowledge without having ever worked in that area.

Joseph Lemien 29 Mar 2024 17:21 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Joseph Lemien’s Shortform
Some questions cause me to become totally perplexed. I’ve been asked these (or variations of these) by a handful people in the EA community. These are not difficulties or confusions that require PhD-level research to explain, but instead I think they represent a sort of communication gap/challenge/disconnect and differing assumptions.
Note that this fuzzy musings on communication gaps, and on differing assumptions of what is normal. In a very broad sense you could think of this as an extension of the maturing/broadining of perspectives that we all do when we realize “the way I’m used to things isn’t the way everybody does things.”^[1] This is musings and meanderings rather than well-thought out conclusions, so don’t take any of this too seriously.
It isn’t quite an issue inferential distance, but it seems to be a vaguely similar communication error. Questions like this are surprising to me since they seem somewhat self evident, or obvious (which maybe speaks to my own difficulty in communicating well). The questions I’m thinking of are questions like
- why is it important to use data and evidence for decision-making?
- why do you like ice cream?
- why don’t you want to do [non-standard thing]?
The use of data/evidence is something that I have difficulty justifying off the top of my head, simply because it strikes me as so incredibly obvious. I would probably respond “would it be better if we referenced animal entrails or the shapes of the clouds to make decisions?” But if pressed I would probably compare decisions made using data and decisions made without data, and see which tends to turn out better, using that as justification.^[2] It would feel really weird to have to justify use of data though, like needing to justify why I prefer a 10% chance of pain to a 50% chance of pain; one of them strikes me as obviously preferably.
I like ice cream because it tastes good. While we could dive deep into the chemistry of taste and the evolutionary biology of human preferences, what me like ice cream tasty is simply the fact that I get pleasure/enjoyment from eating it. It is an end in itself: I’m not eating the ice cream as part of a plan toward some larger goal; I enjoy it, and that is all there is to it.
Asking me why I don’t want to do something has confused me on more than one occasion in the past. I’ve always thought that absence of an action doesn’t require justification, and rather that taking an action requires justification. The generic form of this is someone suggesting an activity that is expensive and unenjoyable to me, and expressing some level of surprise or concern when I decline.^[3] The times people have asked me “why don’t you want to pay money to do [thing that you probably won’t find fun]” or “why don’t you want to join us in [expensive activity that you really didn’t enjoy last time you joined us],” they haven’t really been satisfied with me simply saying “I don’t like doing that kind of thing. It isn’t much fun for me.”^[4]
1. ^
  My most stark memory of this was when I made hot chocolate, and an adult man said something along the lines of “Oh my god, you are putting water in your hot chocolate instead of milk?” as if this was something outrageous. A more internet-friendly version would be the silliness surrounding pineapple on pizza: it really doesn’t matter that other people have mundane preferences different than yours. It is mostly just reflexive in-group/out-group dynamics.
2. ^
  If I want to eat ice cream, should should I consider the distance, price, and quality of two different shops and base my decision on that, or should I just flip a coin to decide which ice cream shop to go to? To me, the answer is as obvious as the answer to “is astrology predictive?”
3. ^
  If you don’t drink alcohol, you probably get this a lot; people have often assumed I have some specific religious reason. I’m guessing that people who don’t engage in other common practices also get similar responses.
4. ^
  Of course, the examples I’m choosing share here tell you something about my own preferences. For a person that inherently enjoys sitting in a bar, spending money to drink alcohol, and having shouted conversations over loud music, it is quite unusual for someone to day “no thanks, I wouldn’t enjoy that.” But I’ve tried to enough bars and parties, and I’ve discovered that sitting around with a bunch of people I barely know having shallow/forgettable conversations usually isn’t really my thing. The topics of conversation that people often want to talk about didn’t really have much overlap with things that I would be interested in talking about, and the levels of performative behaviors and the affectations aren’t something that I enjoy very much. So it is no surprise that I enjoy “grown up”
  dinner parties/cocktail parties more than “college kid” parties with loud music. (Of course, if I had loads of money to spare, a high level of beauty and charisma, and a group of friends that regularly hung out in bars, then my preferences would probably be quite different.)

Joseph Lemien 17 Mar 2024 1:32 UTC
21 points
9 ∶ 0
in reply to: Lorenzo Buonanno’s comment on: Why I worry about about EA leadership, explained through two completely made-up LinkedIn profiles
Lorenzo, I want to applaud you for actually gathering some data. As I was reading this post I thought to myself “this is provable, we could just do a low-fidelity, quick-and-dirty test by looking at some LinkedIn profiles of anyone with a job title of something like Manager or Director at a sample of EA orgs.” And lo and behold, the first comment I see if a beautifully done, quick gathering of data. Bravo!

Joseph Lemien 14 Mar 2024 23:43 UTC
11 points
5 ∶ 2
on: Critique of the notion that impact follows a power-law distribution
I’m not sure about the factual/epistemic aspects of it, but there is at least some element here that seems at least somewhat accurate.
It has always struck me as a bit odd to glorify an individual for accomplishing X or donating Y, when they are only able to do that because of the support they have received from others. To be trivially simplistic: could I have done any of the so-called impressive things that I have done without support from a wide away of sources (stable childhood home, accessible public schools of decent quality, rule of law, guidance from mentors and friends, etc.). Especially in the context of EA, in which so many of us are so incredibly privileged and fortunate (even if we are only comparing within our own countries). So many people in EA come from wealthy families^[1], attended prestigious schools, and earn far more than the median income for their country.
I sometimes look at people that I view as successful within a particular scope and I wonder “if my parents could have afforded tutors for me would I have ended up more like him?” or “if someone had introduced me to [topic] at age 13 would I have ended up a computer engineer?” or “If my family had lived in and had connections to the [whatever] industry in [some city] would that have affected my life path for the better?” I think it isn’t healthy or reasonable to spend too much time indulging in these kinds of hypotheticals. But within the context of attributing the source of impact I think that there is some sense to it.
Rather than saying “Bob wrote a best-selling book” we should probably say that a team of marketers, copy editors, writing coaches, and other people combined efforts to produce the book, and Bob gets most of the credit.^[2] Perhaps more things in life should have credits the way a movie does, listing all of the people that contributed directly to the effort.
1. ^
  I don’t have any data to suggest that the percent of people in EA that come from wealthy families in higher than the percent of non-EAs that come from wealthy families; this is a rough (and untested) hypothesis. I’d be fascinated to see a histogram of EAs by family income from ages 0-18, or something similar.
2. ^
  It kind of makes sense if Bob did most of the work that he should get most of the credit.

Joseph Lemien 14 Mar 2024 23:22 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Sarah Weiler’s comment on: Critique of the notion that impact follows a power-law distribution
It seems that you are gesturing toward the supporting roles that enabled or allowed Alec to save those lives. I find it both true (in this hypothetical scenario) that those lives were saved because of Alec’s choices, and also that Alex’s choices are in turn dependent on other things. This seems to echo some aspects of the ideas of dependent origination. If we really want to give “credit,” then maybe we would have to use something vaguely analogous to exponential smoothing: Alec get’s 80% of the credit, and the person before that gets 80%^2 of the credit, the person before that gets 80%^3 of the credit, etc.
Also vaguely related, the book The Innovation Delusion has a section relating to this idea of giving credit, describing it as a “cult of the inventor:”
Edison—widely celebrated as the inventor of the lightbulb, among many other things—is a good example. Edison did not toil alone in his Menlo Park laboratory; rather, he employed a staff of several dozen men who worked as machinists, ran experiments, researched patents, sketched designs, and kept careful records in notebooks. Teams of Irish and African American servants maintained their homes and boardinghouses. Menlo Park also had a boardinghouse for the workers, where Mrs. Sarah Jordan, her daughter Ida, and a domestic servant named Kate Williams cooked for the inventors and provided a clean and comfortable dwelling. But you won’t see any of those people in the iconic images of Edison posing with his lightbulb.

Joseph Lemien

An­nounc­ing new org: 90,000 Hours (April Fools’ post)

Announcing new org: 90,000 Hours (April Fools’ post)