A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained

agent18

A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained

agent18

17 min readMar 23, 2020

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Benjamin_Todd

I’m really sad to hear how upset you are with 80,000 Hours and how you feel it has made it harder rather than easier to find a role in which you can have impact.

It’s a real challenge for us to decide whether to share our views or not publish them until we’re more certain and clear. We hope that by getting more information out there, it will let people make better decisions, but unfortunately we’re going to continue to be uncertain and unable to explain all our evidence, and our views will change over time. It’s useful to hear your feedback that we might be getting the tradeoff wrong. We’ve been trying to do a better job communicating our uncertainty in the new key ideas series, for instance by releasing: advice on how to read our advice

Thank you for collecting together all this specific information about different organisations in EA. The question of whether the issues we focus on are ‘talent constrained’ or not (though I prefer not to use this term), is a complicated one. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a full response here, though I do hope to write about it more in the future.

I do just want to clarify that I do still believe that certain skill bottlenecks are very pressing in effective altruism. Here are a couple of additional points:

To be specific, I think it’s longtermist organisations that are most talent constrained. Global health and factory farming organisations are much more constrained by funding relatively speaking (e.g. GiveWell top recommended charities could absorb ~$100m). I think this explains why organisations like TLYCS, Charity Science and Charity Entrepreneurship say they’re more funding constrained (and also to some extent Rethink priorities, which does a significant fraction of its work in this area).
Even within longtermist and meta organisations, not *every* organisation is mainly skill-constrained, so you can find counterexamples, such as new organisations without much funding. This may also explain the difference between the average survey respondents and Rethink Priorities’ view.
It doesn’t seem to me that looking at whether lots of people applied to a job tells us much about how talent constrained an organisation is. Some successful applicants might have still been much better than others, or the organisations might have preferred to hire even more than they were able to.
Something else I think is relevant to the question of whether our top problem areas are talent constrained is that I think many community members should seek positions in government, academia and other existing institutions. These roles are all ‘talent constrained’, in the sense that hundreds of people could take these positions without the community needing to gain any additional funding. In particular, we think there is room for a significant number of people to take AI policy careers, as argued here.

There’s a lot more I’d like to say about all of these topics. I hope that gives at least a little more sense of how I’m thinking about this. Unfortunately, I’ve been focusing on responding to covid-19 so won’t be able to respond to questions. I want to reiterate though how sad it is to hear that someone has found our advice so unhelpful, not just because of the negative effect on you, but also on those you’re working to help. Thank you for taking the time to tell us, and I hope that we can continue to improve not only our advice, but also the clarity with which we express our degree of certainty in it and evidence for it.

agent18

Thank You for acknowledging this post. I very much appreciate your reply.

We've been trying to do a better job communicating our uncertainty in the new key ideas series, for instance by releasing: advice on how to read our advice

I really wish you can put more of your evidence out there instead of sentences that are a summary of the evidence you have. "Another bottleneck to progress on GPR might be operations staff" (GPR Key-ideas). Is it a bottleneck or is it not? I don't know what to make of "might be". In this case if you presented your evidence that helps conclude this, say in a footnote, I think it will be more useful. People can then draw the conclusion for themselves.

To be specific, I think it's longtermist organisations that are most talent constrained. Global health and factory farming organisations are much more constrained by funding relatively speaking (e.g. GiveWell top recommended charities could absorb ~$100m). I think this explains why organisations like TLYCS, Charity Science and Charity Entrepreneurship say they're more funding constrained (and also to some extent Rethink priorities, which does a significant fraction of its work in this area).

I am glad you clarify about your position that you are focused on longtermism TC. I only know of two cases where longtermism positions are TC. Disentanglement research as informed by Carrick Flynn in Sep 2017 and AI Policy in US in Jan 2019 article). It still stands that Open Phil in GR seems to be not TC. ("The pool of available talent is strong, ... more than a hundred applicants had very strong resumes... but ... (to) deploy this base of available talent is weak")

I think what helps is to keep the TC debate focused on to specific cases. And this can be done with providing evidence as done in AI Policy in US.

Even within longtermist and meta organisations, not every organisation is mainly skill-constrained, so you can find counterexamples, such as new organisations without much funding. This may also explain the difference between the average survey respondents and Rethink Priorities' view.

Claims: Average Survey respondents feel they are TC more than RP because they have less funding needs than RP (and is "new").

Example: Open Phil is an average survey respondent (I presume). Open Phil has funding. Open Phil does not seem to feel TC in GR though.

It looks like the example does not satisfy the claim. So now I don't really know what you are talking about. I don't have one example of an org and a position that is skill-constrained in research in GPR. I keep hearing you saying that "research is the biggest need right now" (key-ideas post) but when I look in Open Phil it doesn't seem to be so. They are unable to absorb more researchers. So what exactly are you talking about?

You might wonder why I am quoting the same Open Phil example like a parrot. That is because that is one of the few hiring rounds available. And trying to ask companies like FHI or Open Phil etc., for more info on this or dollars moved by researcher or about replaceability does not seem to produce results unfortunately.

It doesn't seem to me that looking at whether lots of people applied to a job tells us much about how talent constrained an organization is.

The definition for TC is that an org is unable to find "skilled people" despite hiring actively. I agree that number of people applied is not a measure for TC. But the number of people in the last round (after 4 other rounds) seems to suggest something regarding if orgs are able to find skilled people or not. Even if that is not the case --> When you look at what Open Phil says, I can't imagine that they are TC in GR based on the numbers of people who they thought had good resumes. In fact it seems like a bad idea to push for research at Open Phil (GPR) in GR considering replaceability atleast. And the more I talk to people like Peter Hurford (about replaceability) the more I feel like there is less point in being a GR.

Some successful applicants might have still been much better than others, or the organisations might have preferred to hire even more than they were able to.

About "successful applicants might have been still much better" (due to the potential log-normal distribution of candidates ability), I would also like one example for a case where this is true. I don't think that is the case with Open Phil in GR based on their hiring round.

Aaron also raised this point as well. Yes that is definitely a possibility that people would still be hired but the organization would continue to be TC. Seems like a reasonable hypothesis but still needs evidence (one example at least) to support it I think. Nevertheless, I don't think that is the case with Open Phil in GR based on their hiring round.

Something else I think is relevant to the question of whether our top problem areas are talent constrained is that I think many community members should seek positions in government, academia and other existing institutions. These roles are all 'talent constrained', in the sense that hundreds of people could take these positions without the community needing to gain any additional funding. In particular, we think there is room for a significant number of people to take AI policy careers, as argued here.

AI policy careers in the US seems to match the definition of TC. "80,000 Hours has attended, speakers have lamented the government’s lack of expertise on AI, and noted the substantial demand for such expertise within government. For example, DoD’s new Joint AI Center alone is apparently looking to hire up to 200 people.". I didn't know this before. This is so clear for me now, that I have an example for what you mean with "significant number of people". I wish the same was available for other top problem areas.

Thanks for this.

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I very much appreciate it. I would really appreciate more evidence displayed for claims and less generalization with 80khours blogs.

P.S

If you already know many opportunities are high-impact, I expect that you have looked at the value contributed by several people, and factored things like replaceability etc., before you came to a decision. Why not just publish it? Asking companies doesn't seem practical and no one seems to be giving out such information. One author even suggested that only if I am writing an academic paper he would be able to help otherwise he didn't find time for it.

Jamie_Harris

Thanks for the reminder of the EA Leaders Forum survey -- I'd forgotten about that and was relying on the 2018 80k findings. A couple of minor comments/questions:

In this post, discussions are focused on Orgs that are TC and not Causes that are TC. When I read that AI strategy is TC with the lack of "Disentanglement Research" (DR), I don't know what to do about it. But if I know FHI and many other orgs are TC in DR, then I could potentially upskill in DR, and close the talent gap. So looking at causes for me, is less helpful, less concrete and is not what I have set out to understand.

Isn't TC in the movement just the aggregation of TC in relevant orgs and actors? There's a tradeoff between specificity/concreteness and representativeness/generalisability, and for most purposes, the latter seems more useful to me?

I didn't know of any other sources doing this sort of research and coaching for people

Animal Advocacy Careers will be offering one-to-one advising soon. Before it is officially launched, people can sign up to express their interest here.

agent18

Hi Jamie,

Thank You for your comment.

Isn't TC in the movement just the aggregation of TC in relevant orgs and actors?

Yes it seems to be. All I wanted was to avoid a level of abstraction. "AI strategy is TC in DR" vs "FHI is TC in DR". I really feel confused thinking about the former. The later is so concrete. I can test it. I can go in depth in that ONE EXAMPLE. The former is too broad. I find it easier to think in concrete examples.

There's a tradeoff between specificity/concreteness and representatives/unreliability, and for most purposes, the latter seems more useful to me?

Interesting! Would you be able to give me a real example to satisfy your claim? I claim that concreteness seems useful to me and if I get an example I hold on to it for dear life and test all claims atleast against that one example.

Claim: Concreteness seems useful.

Example: Consider: "Many community members should seek positions in government, academia, and other existing institutions."

I am lost. What is "MANY"? What does a "position in government" even look like. All this until I saw this beautiful example: "DoD’s new Joint AI Center alone is apparently looking to hire up to 200 people.". I understand finally what many and position in government is.

Animal Advocacy Careers will be offering one-to-one advising soon. Before it is officially launched, people can sign up to express their interest here.

That's great. I subscribed already. Thank You very much Jamie.

Jamie_Harris

<<Would you be able to give me a real example to satisfy your claim?>>

The difference here is probably whether an individual or an organisation (80k, AAC) is evaluating TC.

If, via some research, you have the ability to either 1) make claims about TC across a movement or range or orgs, with moderate confidence or 2) make claims about TC in one or two orgs, with higher confidence, an individual might opt for (2), as they can focus on orgs they're more interested in. But 80k/AAC would opt for (1), because the advice is useful to a larger number of people?

<<I am lost. What is "MANY"? What does a "position in government" even look like.>> Given that the ideal distribution of roles and applicants and how this compares to the current situation is only really one consideration among several important considerations that affect career decisions (i.e. it affects your comparative advantage), maybe a high level of precision isn't that important?

agent18

TL;DR

I think we might be on the same page.

I think it is worthwhile to note that in your latest article in the abstract you make a few claims such as: "EAs are struggling to fill fundraising and operations roles". But you also think it is important and have dedicated a whole article to a bunch of similar claims on bottleneck, showing why you think there is "weak evidence" and explain what the "weak evidence" is.

If you are saying you will make representative statements but provide the evidence you have for it, then this discussion is moot (rendered unimportant by recent events). For me evidence gives a way to understand how "struggling" EAAs are and quickly test it.

Claims: Representatives for ~~most~~ certain purposes seems to be more useful than specificity/concreteness.

Example:

If, via some research, you have the ability to either 1) make claims about TC across a movement or range or orgs, with moderate confidence or 2) make claims about TC in one or two orgs, with higher confidence, an individual might opt for (2), as they can focus on orgs they're more interested in. But 80k/AAC would opt for (1), because the advice is useful to a larger number of people

Discussion

This doesn't look like an example that satisfies the claim. Atleast I am unable to see how it is "useful". Plus there is another claim in the explanation that this type of advice will be useful for a larger number of people. Instead, can you show me one actual "representatives-statement" that satisfies "being more useful" than its "concreteness" alternative. In the previous reply to you I believe I clarify with one example how "concreteness" overpowers "representatives" in being "useful", when people read it.

Given that the ideal distribution of roles and applicants and how this compares to the current situation is only really one consideration among several important considerations that affect career decisions (i.e. it affects your comparative advantage), maybe a high level of precision isn't that important?

And I don't get what you mean by "ideal situation and current situation is an important consideration for career decisions".

Are you trying to say that looking at one example might not be useful as it is somehow not precise? and that we should be rather happy with general statements? Do you have an example to show what you mean?

Thanks.

Aaron Gertler 🔸

Slight correction: I spent somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes engaging with this post.

agent18

I corrected it. Thanks.

agent18

Claims that you find to be false? please post evidence as well.

agent18

If you find formatting issues please state here:

agent18

Do you know of actual TC positions? Can you please cite your source?

Jamie_Harris

I'm currently doing some research for Animal Advocacy Careers on specific skill types in animal advocacy that will be posted in forthcoming "skills profiles." An example from my draft report on fundraising roles is below. Feedback very welcome! (Obviously this is an unusual case in that its a talent constraint directly relating to funding constraints.)

In our short initial survey and interviews with 12 CEO’s and hiring professionals from 9 of the “top” or “standout” charities currently or formerly recommended by Animal Charity Evaluators, 5 respondents selected “fundraising experience” as one of up to 6 skills (out of 25 options) that their organisation most needed; this was the second most frequently selected option, after “management.”
2 out of 10 respondents to the same survey mentioned fundraising roles as being “the hardest to fill.”
In our “spot-check” [note, this is forthcoming research, which will likely be released within a week] of current roles and advertised roles at 27 animal advocacy nonprofits, fundraising was the skillset that was most notably overrepresented in animal advocacy job adverts (appearing to be important in 17% of identified job ads) relative to the number of current roles in the movement (appearing to be important in 10% of current roles); this may imply that these roles are unusually hard to fill and that fundraising expertise is undersupplied in the community, relative to its needs. As discussed in our blog post on the spot-check, however, this research provides only very weak evidence on the question of what the movement’s greatest bottlenecks are.
There is evidence from a 2013 report that senior fundraisers are difficult to hire in US nonprofits generally. This makes it seem more likely that animal advocacy nonprofits face the same difficulty.
The same report found evidence that smaller nonprofits may struggle to attract the most experienced fundraisers. Given that many animal advocacy organisations have small budgets, this provides another reason to expect that animal advocacy organisations will struggle to hire fundraisers, though this is only very weak evidence that this is a bottleneck for the movement.

jasonk

This is interesting and I look forward to reading more.

A more negative reading of this information would suggest that the issue may not be lack of fundraising skill within the organizations but rather that many of the interviewed ACE selected charities don't get the funding they want because most people, or the donors the charities care about, don't agree with ACE's or the CEOs' self-assessments that the charities are worth funding. That is, these folks may not donate for reasons having to do with the organizations not because of lack of relationship building, marketing, etc.

It's a different sort of concern and suggests a different line of research inquiry, but may be worth keeping in the back of one's mind.

Jamie_Harris

Thanks for the input! If the above bullet points were evidence of funding constraints, then this "more negative reading" would be a plausible alternative explanation. But I'm not following how the above bullet points could be read in this way. Apologies if I'm missing something.

Are you thinking this applies to all 5 of the above bullet points? Or specific bullet points within that group?

agent18

In our "spot-check" [note, this is forthcoming research, which will likely be released within a week] of current roles and advertised roles at 27 animal advocacy nonprofits, fundraising was the skillset that was most notably overrepresented in animal advocacy job adverts (appearing to be important in 17% of identified job ads) relative to the number of current roles in the movement (appearing to be important in 10% of current roles);

I find this very hard to understand. My understanding is that 17% of "identified job ads" was related to fundraising. I don't get the next part where you say talk about 10% of the current roles.

this may imply that these roles are unusually hard to fill and that fundraising expertise is undersupplied in the community, relative to its needs. As discussed in our blog post on the spot-check, however, this research provides only very weak evidence on the question of what the movement's greatest bottlenecks are.

I get it that fundraising is "over-represented" in animal advocacy jobs with 17% of job ads talking about it, but what are the percentages for the other skills? Without that I think it is hard to say if 17% is high or not right? or Am I mistaken?

There is evidence from a 2013 report that senior fundraisers are difficult to hire in US nonprofits generally. This makes it seem more likely that animal advocacy nonprofits face the same difficulty.

Very interesting report (especially the sample size of 2000 non-profits). Looking at the sample it looks like only 1% of all the 2000 odd organizations was from "philanthropy, volunteerism and Grantmaking". And highest was human services, educational institutions and arts, culture, humanities. I think it can really skew the results. Your thoughts?

The same report found evidence that smaller nonprofits may struggle to attract the most experienced fundraisers. Given that many animal advocacy organisations have small budgets, this provides another reason to expect that animal advocacy organizations will struggle to hire fundraisers, though this is only very weak evidence that this is a bottleneck for the movement.

Claims: Smaller nonprofit have fewer ~~struggle to find~~ most experienced fundraisers

Evidence:

DDs with no experience based on salaries

8% > 50k$

23% < 50k$

This above evidence is confusing me to verify the claim. As it directly doesn't associate with small non profits but through some association in salary. But the following seems to be causing less confusion.

prospective donor research

24% have no experience for DDs in general
32% have no experience for DDs in small
32.25% have no experience for DDs in non-small (back calculating)

Securing gifts

26% have no experience for DDs in general
38% have no experience for DDs in small
25% have no experience for DDs in non-small (back-calculating)

I am concerned now by the wording "struggling". This doesn't seem to be too bad. Smaller nonprofits seem to have fewer people of experienced staff. But are they "struggling"? I am not sure. And as a result this seems like weak evidence for bottleneck claims. Agree. Am I mistaken?

Jamie_Harris

I find this very hard to understand.

This is useful feedback. I might need to work on the wording.

Without that I think it is hard to say if 17% is high or not right?

I don't think I agree with that -- I think the important consideration is the number of identified advertised roles of a particular type relative to the number of identified currently filled roles of the same type. Not the number of advertised roles of type A relative to advertised roles of type B. But FWIW the full report is now published.

this seems like weak evidence for bottleneck claims

I agree its weak evidence; I think it's the weakest of the 5 bullet points above. I find weak evidence useful.

agent18

Now I get what you were trying to say, I think. So you are saying you look at the ratio of "percentage of fundraising in latest job ads" vs "percentage of fundraising in current jobs". That sounds like a smart proxy. Really interesting.

Thanks.

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agent18

Thank You for acknowledging this post. I very much appreciate your reply.

We've been trying to do a better job communicating our uncertainty in the new key ideas series, for instance by releasing: advice on how to read our advice

To be specific, I think it's longtermist organisations that are most talent constrained. Global health and factory farming organisations are much more constrained by funding relatively speaking (e.g. GiveWell top recommended charities could absorb ~$100m). I think this explains why organisations like TLYCS, Charity Science and Charity Entrepreneurship say they're more funding constrained (and also to some extent Rethink priorities, which does a significant fraction of its work in this area).

I think what helps is to keep the TC debate focused on to specific cases. And this can be done with providing evidence as done in AI Policy in US.

Even within longtermist and meta organisations, not every organisation is mainly skill-constrained, so you can find counterexamples, such as new organisations without much funding. This may also explain the difference between the average survey respondents and Rethink Priorities' view.

Claims: Average Survey respondents feel they are TC more than RP because they have less funding needs than RP (and is "new").

Example: Open Phil is an average survey respondent (I presume). Open Phil has funding. Open Phil does not seem to feel TC in GR though.

It doesn't seem to me that looking at whether lots of people applied to a job tells us much about how talent constrained an organization is.

Some successful applicants might have still been much better than others, or the organisations might have preferred to hire even more than they were able to.

Something else I think is relevant to the question of whether our top problem areas are talent constrained is that I think many community members should seek positions in government, academia and other existing institutions. These roles are all 'talent constrained', in the sense that hundreds of people could take these positions without the community needing to gain any additional funding. In particular, we think there is room for a significant number of people to take AI policy careers, as argued here.

Thanks for this.

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. I very much appreciate it. I would really appreciate more evidence displayed for claims and less generalization with 80khours blogs.

P.S

I approched with questions on DS and they informed me that they don't give advice over email. I applied for coaching and didn't make the cut. What I asked?
- Do I gain sufficient skills to migrate to Direct work (say analyst in GiveWell) having worked in Management consulting (M.C) for 5 years?
This is in case things don't seem to work out towards becoming a partner.
- Are there examples of high impact direct workers who came from M.C?
I would like to scan their profile to get a feel of what is possible. ↩︎
EAF seems to offer career coaching here.

EAF's operations analyst is also doing coaching here. ↩︎
If 80k on the other hand suggested that TC included everything that made it hard (such as hiring bottleneck) to find people with specific skillsets then TC is such a misnomer. Joel from EA forum puts it well:

I could be mistaken, but it would seem odd to say you’re “funding constrained” but can’t use more funding at the moment. Whereas we are saying orgs are “talent constrained” but can’t make use of available talent... I feel a “talent bottleneck” implies an insufficient supply of talent/applicants, which doesn’t seem to be the case. I guess it’s more that there’s insufficient talent actually working on the problems, but it’s not a matter of supply, so it’s more of a “hiring bottleneck” or an “organizational capacity bottleneck”.---Joel EA Forum

↩︎
2018 survey includes:

80,000 Hours (3), AI Impacts (1), Animal Charity Evaluators (2), Center for Applied Rationality (2), Centre for Effective Altruism (2), Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (1), Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI (1), Charity Science: Health (1), DeepMind (1), Foundational Research Institute (2), Future of Humanity Institute (2), GiveWell (1), Global Priorities Institute (2), LessWrong (1), Machine Intelligence Research Institute (1), Open Philanthropy Project (4), OpenAI (1), Rethink Charity (2), Sentience Institute (1), SparkWave (1), and Other (5)

↩︎
Funding Constrained

1 = how much things cost is never a practical limiting factor for you; 5 = you are considering shrinking to avoid running out of money

Talent constrained

1 = you could hire many outstanding candidates who want to work at your org if you chose that approach, or had the capacity to absorb them, or had the money; 5 = you can't get any of the people you need to grow, or you are losing the good people you have

↩︎
80k about GPR: "To make this happen, perhaps the biggest need right now is to find more researchers able to make progress on the key questions of the field. There is already enough funding available to hire more people if they could demonstrate potential in the area (though there’s a greater need for funding than with AI safety)"

"Another bottleneck to progress on global priorities research might be operations staff, as discussed earlier, so that’s another option to consider if you want to work on this issue." ↩︎
These positions are both our own assessment and backed up by results of our surveys of community leaders about talent constraints, skill needs and key bottlenecks."

↩︎
What skills are the organizations most short of?

↩︎
There are several talents listed in the surveys which I don't understand. I don't have any examples for what they could mean. For example, "Communications other than marketing and movement building", "high level knowledge and enthusiasm about effective altruism" and "broad general knowledge about many relevant topics". Some of the other "talents" mentioned seem too generalized. When I think of "one-on-one social skills", it could be referring to anything like policy people talking to politicians, or Career Counselors convincing people to change their career path, or even people in the frontline of fundraising. If the surveyors wanted to inform the community that frontline fundraisers are required with "good social skills" (whatever that means), then exactly that in the survey seems much more beneficial than what they have currently done. Contrast this to talents such as GR or Operations. It is clear what these mean. For GR I can think of researchers at Open Phil or GiveWell. For operations I think of Tara from FHI. ↩︎
... following list for SF area: 80khours (SF, Oxford), GiveWell (San Francisco), Open Philanthropy project (San Franscisco), 80khours (Oxford and SF), OpenAI (SF), MIRI (Berkeley), Center for Applied Rationality (Berkeley), AI Impact (Berkeley), Animal Charity Evaluator (Berkeley without any office space), Animal Equality (US UK),

The following for UK area: Center for Study of Existential Risk (Oxford), Future of Humanity Institute (Oxford, UK), Global Priorities Institute (Oxford), Sentience Institute (London), Giving What We Can (Oxford), Founders Pledge (London), Centre for Effective Altruism (Oxford). Against Malaria Foundation (St. Albans UK), Sightsavers (U.K), Founders Pledge (London).

The following for other areas: Evidence Action (Washington DC), Helen Keller International (Washington D.C), Give Directly (NYC), Poverty Action Lab (Cambridge, MA, US), Good Food Institute (Washington D.C, US), Center for Global Development (Washington D.C, US).

So for the EA community it looks like the clustering does happen in UK (Oxford, London) and San Francisco area. These regions are the only regions that host the annual EA conferences, not surprisingly.

↩︎
2012: They seem to be suggesting here while talking about doctors, aid workers, campaigners, "That’s because careers that are normally thought to be ethical tend to be extremely competitive. That means that if you don’t take the job, someone else will take your place."

2014: They went on to suggest that replaceability might not be as important as you might think. In 2017 they seem to continue to promote that idea in "Working at effective altruist organizations".

In 2019 article on "how replaceable are top candidates in large hiring rounds", they seem to suggest that it depends on the type of distribution of the candidates (log normal or normal). ↩︎
Claim: "If you get involved in the community, and prove your interest and general competence, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to find a role regardless of your qualifications and experience."

Example: EA applicant from EA forum.

He applied to 20 jobs. He didn't get a single job, neither did his friends--with the characteristics as above-- get jobs. His profile seems to match the one in the claim.

Note: The claim says "decent chance" and not "for sure" though. I give them that. Although many people seem interpret it differently. ↩︎
Links of posts where people were completely misinformed about how competitive the EA world is (look in the comments as well):
↩︎ ↩︎
I am not a big fan of these broad terminologies as they don't allow ME to act on them. For example, "Best ways to gain Career Capital (CC) are: Work at a growing organisation that has a reputation for high performance; Getting a graduate degree; Working in Tech sector; Taking a data science job; Working in think tanks; Making "good connections", Having runway etc... " Literally everything under the sun.

I am unable to act on it. I could in theory pursue everything. I don't know how to compare which has higher CC and lower CC. The definition says: "CC puts you in a better position to make a difference in the future, including skills, connections, credentials and runway." When I work in Data Science in a FAANG job do I have higher CC compared to when I work on a computer science degree? I don't know.

Economists routinely measure the impact of high-school dropout vs high-school diploma vs some years of college but dropout vs undergrad degree vs grad degree, in different fields, using the variable "median weekly earnings" or "lifetime earnings". So when someone says, "you need a degree to get ahead in life", I can imagine what they mean $470 weekly wage increase. Whereas when someone says, "Computer Science PhD is good CC", I am lost. Contrast that to saying "Best ways to gain CC is by looking at earnings". Then I could look at median earnings for Data Science Faang job vs Phd in computer science in say top 20 university (based on my capability) and get ahead in life. ↩︎
"If you get involved in the community, and prove your interest and general competence, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to find a role regardless of your qualifications and experience." --- 80k

This seems to imply to me that people like EA applicant should have gotten a job. But he didn't. I think examples would be much better to understand what they mean. What does decent chance mean? ↩︎

	2017	2017 (EA)	2018	2018 (EA)	2019	2019 (EA)
1	GR	G&P	Oper.	G&P	GR	G&P
2	Good Calib.	Good Calib.	Mngment	Oper.	Oper.	Mngment
3	Mngment	Mngment	GR	ML/AI	Mngment	GPR
4	Off. mngers	ML/AI	ML/AI	Mngment	ML	Founding
5	Oper.	Movt. build	GPR	GPR	Econ/math	Soc. Skill
6	Math	GR	Founder	GR	HighEA*	ML/AI
7	ML/AI	Oper.	Soc. skill	Founding	GPR	Movt. Build

A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained

A naive analysis on if EA is Talent constrained

Introduction

Definitions

Why I think EA is TC

Where is the EA specifically TC

The Evidence

Conclusion

Final message

Footnotes