Vaidehi Agarwalla

Karma: 7,091

I help lead Product at Momentum, and care about making funding for high impact causes more robust & diversified. I live in the Bay Area, advise Asia-based community builders and run Pineapple Operations. I previously worked in consulting, recruiting and marketing, with a BA in Sociology and focused on social movements. (A little on my journey to EA)

I’m always keen to hear feedback through any means. Here’s an anonymous way to share: admonymous.co/vaidehiagarwalla

Unless otherwise stated, I always write in a personal capacity.

/’vɛðehi/ or VEH-the-hee

Some posts I’ve written and particuarly like:

Advice I frequently give:

When in doubt, apply*
What Ops in EA is like
If you’re running a retreat, nail the vibes and venue
Add randomness to your conferences

Vaidehi Agarwalla 13 Feb 2024 3:53 UTC
4 points
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on: Things to check about a job or internship
Strong +1 to all of the above—I’ve observed this a lot especially with ops roles.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 6 Jan 2024 11:16 UTC
12 points
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in reply to: lilly’s comment on: Introducing GiveHealth: a giving Pledge for healthcare workers (and a call for volunteers)
+1 I think it’s worth trying to push for a 10% pledge and see what kind of traction you get. Also curious if you’ve spoken to OFTW about their experience with the 1% pledge and churn rates etc.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 5 Jan 2024 20:10 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: Malaria vaccines: how confident are we?
Thanks Nick that’s helpful!

Vaidehi Agarwalla 5 Jan 2024 7:16 UTC
4 points
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on: Malaria vaccines: how confident are we?
How long do the effects of the vaccine last / how was this incorporated into your estimates?

My naive guess is that this should make vaccines more cost effective on the time scale of years (since you won’t need to re-vaccinate people), but maybe it’s already incorporated into the efficacy estimate?

Vaidehi Agarwalla 7 Dec 2023 18:35 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Kaleem’s comment on: Kaleem’s Shortform
I’d love to know more about what the people you’ve spoken to have said—e.g. what kinds of accountability or transparency are they looking for?

Vaidehi Agarwalla 26 Nov 2023 19:55 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Quick takes
I’m not sure (my active intro cb days were ~2019), but I think it is possibly still in the intro syllabus ? You could add a disclaimer at the top.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 26 Nov 2023 15:42 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Quick takes
I’m not on LW very often, how frequently do you see these emojis being used?

From a UX perspective, I agree with Akash—it seems like there are way too many options and my prior is that people wouldn’t use >80% of them.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 26 Nov 2023 15:35 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Quick takes
I think this might be a good top level post—would be keen for you more people to see and discuss this point

Vaidehi Agarwalla 21 Nov 2023 23:26 UTC
4 points
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on: The EA Animal Welfare Fund (Once Again) Has Significant Room For More Funding
Is AWF considering hiring a fundraiser to help fill this funding gap?

Vaidehi Agarwalla 21 Nov 2023 23:04 UTC
8 points
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on: Impactful Animal Advocacy: Building Community Infrastructure
Thanks for this! A few questions:
1. Of the 100 strategic pairings you did, how would you break down the impact / what was the outcome of the pairings?
2. how do you think the AI for animals group will benefit animals? E.g. what kind of concrete outcomes do you expect to see?
3. do you have a user survey or feedback on the relative value of the different services you provide? How do you prioritize between different initiatives?

Apply to Spring 2024 policy internships (we can help)

Elika4 Oct 2023 14:45 UTC

26 points

2 comments1 min readEA link

Vaidehi Agarwalla 24 Sep 2023 20:03 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: RyanCarey’s comment on: Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers
These are all great points. I was planning to add this into the main post, but I don’t think it ended up in the final draft—so thanks for raising this!

Vaidehi Agarwalla 23 Sep 2023 21:05 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Vaidehi Agarwalla’s comment on: vaidehi_agarwalla’s Shortform
Update: It’s posted! https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SWfwmqnCPid8PuTBo/monetary-and-social-incentives-in-longtermist-careers

Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers

Vaidehi Agarwalla23 Sep 2023 21:03 UTC

140 points

5 comments6 min readEA link

Vaidehi Agarwalla 22 Sep 2023 5:51 UTC
18 points
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in reply to: Thomas Kwa’s comment on: There should be more AI safety orgs
“Less than half of this round of MATS scholars were funded for independent research.”

-> Its not clear to me what exactly the bar for independent research should be. It seems like it’s not a great fit for a lot of people, and I expect it to be incredibly hard to do it well as a relatively junior person. So it doesn’t have to be a bad thing that some MATS scholars didn’t get funding.

Also, I don’t necessarily think that orgs being unable to hire is in and of itself a sign of a funding bottleneck. I think you’d first need to make the case that these organisations are crossing a certain impact threshold.

(I do believe AIS lacks diversify of funders and agree with your overall point).

Vaidehi Agarwalla 21 Sep 2023 13:49 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: Guy Raveh’s comment on: Announcing the Meta Coordination Forum 2023
My understanding is that the main reason people wouldn’t want to publicize their involvement is to minimize reputation risk(most likely because of FTX). For those doing direct work it could hurt their ability to engage with non-EA actors. I think this is a pretty compelling reason not to publicize your involvement.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 17 Sep 2023 0:15 UTC
4 points
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on: vaidehi_agarwalla’s Shortform
I was going to post something for careers week but it was delayed for various reasons (including the mandatory last minute rewrite). I plan to post it in the next couple of weeks.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 10 Sep 2023 22:55 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: David M’s comment on: Announcing the Meta Coordination Forum 2023
Ah yes thanks! Meant to delete this.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 9 Sep 2023 22:07 UTC
15 points
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on: Say sorry to the people who you (accidentally) ghosted at EAG
An easier approach might be to mention on your Swapcard profile that you may not be able to respond to everyone who reaches out before the conference.

Vaidehi Agarwalla 9 Sep 2023 19:56 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: David_Moss’s comment on: vaidehi_agarwalla’s Shortform
There are people who I would consider “EA” who I wouldn’t consider a “community member” (e.g. if they were not engaging much with other people in the community professionally or socially), but I’d be surprised if they label themselves “EA” (maybe they want to keep their identity small, or don’t like being associated with the EA community).
I think there’s actually one class of people I’ve forgotten—which is “EA professionals”—someone who might professionally collaborate or even work at an EA-aligned organization, but doesn’t see themselves as part of the community. So they would treat an EAG as a purely professional conference (vs. a community event).

Vaidehi Agarwalla

Ap­ply to Spring 2024 policy in­tern­ships (we can help)

Mone­tary and so­cial in­cen­tives in longter­mist careers

Apply to Spring 2024 policy internships (we can help)

Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers