tomrowlands

Karma: 50

tomrowlands Apr 15, 2025, 1:45 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Why experienced professionals fail to land high-impact roles (FBB #5)
The good news is that it’s possible to level up your context pretty fast. Based on what professionals have told me, the community is also really open and helpful, so you can have a lot of support if you know where and what to ask.

A slight qualifier here is that getting to the level of context required for some jobs—especially senior ones that experienced professionals might be applying to—can take (sometimes much) longer, so it’s important to have realistic expectations there. For instance, if you want to work in AI safety, and have a background (e.g. quantitative finance, venture capital) that could give you great skills to be a grantmaker, you’ll likely still need to know more than just the high-level concepts and the landscape of organisations working on it; you might need to know the strengths and weaknesses of different theories of change, and have a sense of the wider funding landscape.
That said, I want to commend this as a really helpful article, Gergő! The suggestions above would still be helpful in the scenario I outline. And FWIW, I’d love to see more experienced professionals in EA, and in AIS in particular.

Caveat: speaking personally here, rather than for my employer Open Phil.

tomrowlands Nov 24, 2023, 2:37 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Quintin Pope’s comment on: Open Philanthropy is hiring for multiple roles across our Global Catastrophic Risks teams
Hi Quintin,
Thanks very much for flagging this, and sorry for the inconvenience.

We’ve just been testing the form, and can’t replicate the error you’re getting. If you’re at least able to see the form fields, and want to apply, you’re welcome to put your answers in a document and send it to jobs@openphilanthropy.org—we can then manually add the application for you.

Also happy to go into more details on the error and your setup if that’s helpful—feel free to DM me.
Thanks again for your help—much appreciated!

tomrowlands Feb 24, 2023, 1:21 AM
2 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Wil Perkins’s comment on: EA is too New & Important to Schism
Thanks Wil. I can agree with that.

tomrowlands Feb 23, 2023, 7:16 PM
−12 points
1 ∶ 4
in reply to: Wil Perkins’s comment on: EA is too New & Important to Schism
Please see my other comment for why I disagree with this comment (and also downvoted it, as I want to see fewer comments like this).
I’m also sick of the referencing Scott Alexander—without any explanatory comment for how the article relates to the point in question—as some sort of knockdown argument.

tomrowlands Feb 23, 2023, 7:06 PM
−1 points
3 ∶ 5
in reply to: Wil Perkins’s comment on: EA is too New & Important to Schism
Hi Wil,
My comment here was about Geoffrey Miller’s comment, rather than your original post as a whole (albeit I separately took issue with your use of “relatively petty...”), so I’m not sure I follow where you’re going here.
FWIW, if you’re referring to recently-come-to-light examples of sexual harassment and racism when you say “it’s more a lack of competence...”, then I would disagree with your characterisation. I think by saying that the likes of Owen Cotton-Barratt and Nick Bostrom aren’t “malicious sociopaths”, and that they didn’t do it ‘intentionally’ you fail to acknowledge the harm they’ve done. It’s a similar line of argument to your original post when you compare the harm done with “the survival of the human race”. I think it’s missing the point, it’s insensitive, and implies that they’re not soooo bad.
I also worry when the initial reaction to someone’s misdeeds is “let’s make sure we don’t punish them too harshly, or we’ll alienate them”, rather than “this is really wrong, and our first priority should be to make sure it doesn’t happen again”. My initial response isn’t to shed a tear for the damage to the career of the person who did the wrong thing.
I disagree with your framing this as “attacking” the people that have done wrong. If anything, it’s the people on the end of the sexual harassment that have been attacked.
I find it distasteful when people point to things like “EA has done a lot of good” or “EA has saved a lot of lives” in the context of revelations of sexual harassment etc. While it might be factually correct, I think it gives the sense that people think it’s OK to do horrible personal things as long as you donate enough to Givewell (I very much disagree).
And one final point: I don’t think “the old guard of EA” is the right frame (although I’m somewhat biased as I was involved in EA in 2011-12). I don’t believe the majority of wrongdoers are from this group, nor do I believe the majority of this group are wrongdoers.
So no, that framing does not make sense to me.

tomrowlands Feb 23, 2023, 6:17 PM
17 points
7 ∶ 3
on: EA is too New & Important to Schism
We are playing for the future, for the survival of the human race. We can’t afford to let relatively petty squabbles divide us too much!
I think this is the sort of reasoning that has a) possibly contributed to some of the recent damaging behaviour by EAs and b) almost certainly contributed to the failure to take that behaviour seriously enough.
Everything is “relatively petty” when compared to the survival of the human race, but I don’t think that’s the relevant comparison here.

tomrowlands Feb 23, 2023, 5:41 PM
7 points
11 ∶ 6
in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: EA is too New & Important to Schism
I’m grateful for this comment, because it’s an exemplar of the kind of comment that makes me feel most disappointed by the EA community.
It’s bad enough that influential EAs have caused a lot of damage to other individuals, and to the good work that might be done by the community. But it’s really upsetting that a lot of the community (at least as exemplified by the comments on the forum; I know this isn’t fully representative) doesn’t seem to take it seriously enough. We’re talking about really horrible examples of racism and sexual harassment here, not ‘woke activism’ gone too far. It hurts people directly, it repels others from the community, and it also makes it harder to further important causes.
It’s also couched in the terms of ‘rationalism’ and academic integrity (“let me try to steel-man a possible counter-argument...”), rather than just coming out and saying what it is. I don’t think you’re (merely) trying to make a hypothetical argument. Similarly the “I hope EAs see what’s [really]* happening here, and understand the clear and present dangers...” sounds alarmist to me.
*I included the [really], because it seems to me like the author of the comment is trying to lend weight to their argument by implying they are revealing something most people would otherwise miss.

tomrowlands Jan 20, 2023, 5:07 PM
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Habiba Banu’s comment on: FLI FAQ on the rejected grant proposal controversy
Agree. Should have added those to my own comment, but felt like I’d already spent too much time on it!

tomrowlands Jan 20, 2023, 2:20 PM
8 points
2 ∶ 11
on: FLI FAQ on the rejected grant proposal controversy
I appreciate there are reasonable differences of opinion here (and the downside of drawing attention to a deeply unpleasant publication), but I personally would think better of an organisation that made this FAQ more visible from their homepage. It’s hard to find unless you have the link, or search for terms you know will be in there.

tomrowlands Jan 20, 2023, 2:15 PM
32 points
11 ∶ 2
in reply to: RobBensinger’s comment on: FLI FAQ on the rejected grant proposal controversy
I upvoted this, but disagreed. I think the timeline would be better if it included:
November 2022: FLI inform Nya Dagbladet Foundation (NDF) that they will not be funding them
15 December 2022: FLI learn of media interest in the story
I therefore don’t think it’s “absurd” to have expected FLI to have repudiated NDF sooner. You could argue that by apologising for their mistake before the media interest does more harm than good by drawing attention to it (and by association, to NDF), but once they became aware of the media attention, I think they should have issued something more like their current statement.
I also agreed with the thrust of titotal’s comment that their first statement was woefully inadequate (it was more like “nothing to see here” than “oh damn, we seriously considered supporting an odious publication and we’re sorry”). I don’t think lack of time gets them off the hook here, given they should have expected Expo to publish at some point.
I don’t think anyone owes an apology for expecting FLI to do better than this.
(Note: I appreciate Max Tegmark was dealing with a personal tragedy (for which, my condolences) at the time of it becoming ‘a thing’ on the EA Forum, so I of course wouldn’t expect him to be making quick-but-considered replies to everything posted on here at that time. But I think there’s a difference between that and the speed of the proper statement.)
***
FWIW I also had a different interpretation of Shakeel’s 9:18pm comment than what you write here:
“Jan 13, 9:18pm: Shakeel follows up, repeating that he sees no reason why FLI wouldn’t have already made a public statement, and raises the possibility that FLI has maybe done sinister questionably-legal things and that’s why they haven’t spoken up.”
Shakeel said “Jason’s comment has made me realise there might be something else going on here, though; if that is the case then that would make the silence make more sense.” → this seemed to me that Shakeel was trying to to be charitable, and understand the reasons FLI hadn’t replied quicker.
Only a subtle difference, but wanted to point that out.

tomrowlands Dec 5, 2022, 8:46 PM
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Is Headhunting within EA Appropriate?
Thanks for this post, Dan. I work in headhunting for EA orgs, so please read these comments with that in mind!
- I’d echo Ozzie’s comment on transparency, and I’d want orgs to push back on me if they think what I’m doing is overstepping the mark into something like ‘aggressive persuasion’.
- (Naturally) I don’t see my role like that, and whilst I wouldn’t claim that I perfectly calculate the global impact of every potential job switch when considering reaching out to someone, nor is it a simple case of following a short-term financial incentive. Even from a purely selfish headhunter’s perspective, I don’t think a strategy of heavy convincing in order to fill a role would be productive in anything but the very short term.
- I certainly consider the downsides for the potential losing employer if that employer’s an EA or adjacent org. This is especially so if they haven’t been there long, and/or would be making a sideways move rather than advancing their career.
- That said, I wouldn’t want to rule out approaching employees of EA or adjacent orgs, to include extolling the virtues of the hiring org as I understand them. That sort of ‘convincing’ seems legitimate to me. As Habryka points out, people are capable of considering offers and incentives hiring organisations and headhunters might have, and host orgs are capable of counter-convincing.
- So it seems to me that the key issue is what counts as legitimate or otherwise—obviously deception is wrong, but I’m not sure it’s easy to draw the line between ‘providing information’ and ‘convincing’. Do you have specific suggestions? I want to make sure I get this right, so would be keen to discuss with you—my email is tom@activesearch.org.
- FWIW, I agree that it’s better to hire from outside of EA where possible, and I’m especially excited about bringing more mid-career talent into the community from ‘outside’. What makes this difficult is that hiring managers often want to see evidence of ‘value alignment’ or ‘cultural fit’, one proxy for which is often ‘working at an EA/adjacent org’. EA-specific knowledge can also be helpful in a lot of roles. People already connected to this space are also much likelier to understand and be motivated to work on the weird causes that EA orgs pursue.
Thanks again for your post, and I look forward to hearing from you if you’d like to discuss further.

tomrowlands Sep 7, 2022, 7:20 AM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelStJules’s comment on: Why I view effective giving as complementary to direct work
Also Huel

tomrowlands Jul 13, 2022, 6:13 PM
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: EA Tours of Service
There seem to be some similarities here with how generalist careers go within the UK Civil Service^[1].
There, you typically do 2-4 years in a role before moving onto something which is usually unrelated, at least in theme if not in role. For instance, in the FCDO, you might go from 3 years working on trade with India, to a new post working on Brazil’s internal politics, before going to work on human rights at the UN. Sometimes people also go from working in policy roles, to comms, to HR etc., but that seems less relevant here. Some stay in a particular thematic area for much longer, or go back to things they’ve previously worked on—but that’s the exception, particularly early in careers.
My sense is it’s fairly popular amongst staff because you get to try out lots of things, meet more people, learn more (at least more broadly), move if you don’t like a job/team, potentially travel etc. But there are some fairly obvious costs that might also apply to the Tours of Service described above:
1. You lose subject-matter expertise. That’s more obvious if it’s ‘India trade policy’, but in the above jobs, this could be something like ‘knowledge of the office contract’ for the Office Manager role, or more general knowledge about CEA internal systems.
2. You lose (other) productivity benefits of working in the same team for a while, like adapting to others’ working styles, better communication etc
3. You lose institutional knowledge e.g. ‘we tried this before and it was a disaster for reason x’
4. You lose the (more vague) value of having spent a lot of time thinking about problems related to the specific job—connected to 1-3, but slightly different
5. You start again with relationships—external as well as internal ones
6. You have other costs for onboarding staff, doing handovers to new staff etc.
7. Some staff find it personally disruptive, so it’s not good for their motivation.
Chris Kerr highlights some of the benefits, and includes helpful ways of making it work. You could also take my points 1-7 and see related benefits to each of them. And it sounds like it’s also been useful in attracting staff that wouldn’t otherwise have taken the job. So I don’t mean to be positive or negative overall about EA Tours of Service. I think some of it depends on the employees, and the circumstances of the organisation/team at the time. But I wanted to highlight some of the potential downsides too, based on my somewhat-related experience. Hope that’s helpful!
[In case it’s not obvious, I’m not talking about the ‘concrete outcomes’ bit of this model—that seems like it should be the default for most roles anyway, especially within EA.]
1. ^
  I’m mostly not talking about specialist roles, like lawyers, for example—though they also move between thematic areas quite a bit.