Engineer by education, I discovered the EA world through the 80,000 Hours book in 2023 and went all in: Pledge, volunteering for EA France, where I manage the translation of the 80,000 Hours guide and organize an event with Peter Singer, and now by shifting my career from industrial engineer to founder of an effective giving initiative.
Romain Barbeđ¸
Karma: 246
RoÂmain Barbeâs Quick takes
Hello Richard, thanks for raising this point.
I was thinking that this process changes little for applicants, and weâve actually tried to design the process with their experience in mind.
First, a general note on the process itself (happy to have feedback on this too): the full process takes around 6 hours across 4 steps: a written application (30 min), practical exercises (1h30), a coworking session (1h30), and a final interview (1h). Only 15% of applicants pass step 2, so most people invest no more than 2 hours before getting a clear answer. Our rejection emails include specific feedback on each exercise, which we hope makes the time feel less wasted regardless of outcome. We also tried to design the exercises to be intellectually engaging, connected to real effective giving work, and useful for candidates to assess their own fit for this kind of role.
On the specific concern about opening multiple roles: from an applicantâs perspective, we donât think this changes much, and having four broad roles rather than two narrow ones may offer more people the opportunity to find a role that fits them, and could reduce exclusion based on specific backgrounds.
When we open any hiring process, even for a single role, there are two reasons we reject someone: either no one passed the bar and no one was hired, or someone else was judged better suited to our mission.
The role a candidate applies for should not change how they are judged. We try to run the process this way. If you are not hired because someone outperformed you, it shouldnât matter whether that person applied for the exact same role or a different one. And in our case, the role titles are not even fully fixed: they will be adapted to the person we hire. Someone better than you might end up in a role that is a blend of two or three of the ones we listed.
For candidates who reach the final round and are ultimately not selected, I will tell them specifically where they underperformed: on the task exercises, on conscientiousness, on value alignment, or on the interview, depending on what the key determining factors were.
The asymmetry of effort in hiring is real, but we donât think opening four roles makes it meaningfully worse. Happy to push back!
Mieux DonÂner is hiring: why we opened 4 roles to fill 2 positions
Thanks for the post! Even though your career is probably your highest leverage for impact, Iâd add that these positions are well paid (or even extremely well paid compared to standard non-profit jobs), which allows you to donate significantly to effective charities. Even if youâre assigned to lower-impact units in the first few years, you can still have a substantial impact through your donations. Additionally, and worth noting, this career path is also accessible to people in well-paid careers who are not ready to take a significant salary cut.
Thank you for taking the time to write this up. This kind of post is incredibly valuable, and people should feel encouraged to share their operational experiences. Wishing both Hive and Sentient Futures to thrive!
Hello Lorenzo!
The counterfactual impact of a pledge follows GWWCâs recommendations for pledge partners; we havenât evaluated it ourselves, but yes itâs closer to 0.2.
The â0.64â figure doesnât refer to pledges but to donations. Itâs much higher than GWWCâs, but lower than Ayuda Efectivaâs (in Spain), which can be explained by the larger number of actors in the English-speaking ecosystem compared to the French or Spanish ones.
For donations, you could say:
â50% /â 64% of the money donated was the result of Mieux Donnerâs active outreach and influence.â
StrateÂgies for proÂmotÂing givÂing pledges
ReflectÂing on One Year of Mieux DonÂner: LaunchÂing the French EffecÂtive GivÂing Initiative
Has this concept been attempted in the past, especially considering that it could be a for-profit venture (e.g., a company taking a 5% commission)? If it has been tried and failed, what were the reasons for its failure? If it hasnât been attempted, what are the barriers preventing it from being pursued?
I find this project promising and Iâm quite enthusiastic about it, but a part of me wonders why it hasnât been done already. We donât need to specifically promote effective charities for this project to succeed, what are the reasons this hasnât been done successfully in the past?
Youâre shifting your resources, but should you change your branding?
Focusing on new articles and research about AGI is one thing, but choosing to brand yourselves as an AI-focused career organisation is another.
Personal story (causal thinking): I first discovered the EA principles while researching how to do good in my career, where, aside from 80k, all the well-ranked websites were non-impact focused. If the website had been specifically about AI or existential risk careers, Iâm quite sure I wouldâve skipped it and spent years not discovering EA principles. But by discovering those principles and diving deeper into the content, I eventually saw existential risk as a top priority. Last year, the biggest chunk of my donations went to AI. I also managed the translation of your guide into French, and now, through Mieux Donner (the French effective giving initiative I co-founded), weâll likely raise donations to fund several AI positions.Trade-off (statistical thinking): How many people might be deterred from engaging with EA and this AGI topic because of AI branding? How many people are not working in AI because your homepage, About Us and menu bar mention other cause areas? (Especially considering your next career guide will still be multi-cause, and the information shouldnât have time to become outdated given the AGI timeline you mentioned.)
Your focus seems well thought out, but my guess regarding the branding is that you shouldnât change it.
By shifting to a narrow AI focus, you risk reducing by 13.5% the source of effective do-gooders (including donors!) is one negative consequence. However, I can also think of other potential downsides:
Damage to EAâs reputation: This could feed into TESCREAL critics and prevent presenting EA principles to many potential supporters.
Potential lost opportunities: Even for your own organisation, focusing solely on AGI could cause you to lose out on backlinks, partnerships, and references that bring a steady flow of people.
As I read through your post, Iâm still uncertain about what you plan with your branding. However, staying as a nonprofit that helps people use their careers to solve the worldâs most pressing problems, while focusing the majority of resources on AGI but maintaining low-hanging fruits in other areas, seems to me to have a more positive impact than shifting your branding entirely.
So please, donât mess up the communicationâit could have a net-negative effect on all the cause areas.
Is the School for Moral Ambitionâs Tax Fairness Fellowship a good example of EA principles in action?
The fellowship places professionals inside tax justice organisations working on taxing the ultra-wealthy. Their Tobacco Free Future Fellowship has apparently been evaluated in terms of DALYs (internal analysis) and found to be competitive with GiveWellâs top charities. I suppose a similar evaluation would be even harder to run for the tax fairness programme. I would appreciate multiple short intuitions, low bar to answer!