(I didn't read all the comments so someone else might have said this already)

I think this post is admirable for trying to persuasively correct a mistake you see people making — but I end up disagreeing because of equivocation between end factory farming and end factory farming within our lifetimes.

I think the goal is to end factory farming, & my sense is most of the harms you're worried about only accrue when people have an unrealistic sense of how likely that is overall (not guaranteed) & how soon that might happen (maybe not for a very long time, or perhaps ever).

See some (limited) discussion of this in 80k's new factory farming article which I was reading earlier today by coincidence.

Thanks for writing this Zach! The broad strokes of the dynamics here are not news to me (I work at 80k which is a project of EV) but lots of the detail was novel and feels good to know.

By my count, animal welfare is 100x more neglected than global health (Edit: global development, not global health — my mistake). I'm unsure how much bigger it is in scale (given that making trades between humans and animals is hard) — but I'd guess it's very very much larger in scale.

I'm not on the podcast team but just quickly jumping in to say we do release highlights on the 80k After Hours feed! Not sure if they're planning one for this episode but it'd be a good candidate, I agree!

Edit: sorry, we actually release highlights episodes for every main feed episode — my bad for the misinfo!

Hey Emily, I'm sorry to hear you've had trouble figuring out how your broad skill set fits in.

For the roles I'm hiring for right now, specific experience is less relevant than evidence of the most important skills for the role. Copying directly from the job description for the Head of Marketing role, for example:

• A strong interest in effective altruism, longtermism, and/or having a big, positive impact in the world — ideally with experience in applying EA principles in real-world decisions
• Strong judgement; the ability to consider complex strategic questions evenhandedly, communicate them clearly, and get others on board

(This is just the first two from a longer list!)

When I'm evaluating candidates, I expect these traits to show up in various different ways at different stages of the application. To give some sense, here's what I've written in some of my own documents about how those two traits will show up in the initial application form:

• Excitement about the role; they seem EA / longtermist (or say that they are).
  Mention interest in EA on the application form (with evidence).
• Their answers seem thoughtful. Clear communication; lucid, easy-to-engage-with writing.

Does that help give you a sense of the kinds of things I'm looking for that aren't specific experience?

I'm not sure if this really answers your question, but I hope it's helpful & let me know if there's anything else I could share!

Hi Pranshul,

Thanks for your comment, and I'm really glad to hear you'd be excited about working at 80k!

I think being a new high school graduate is not a dealbreaker for us / doesn't directly rule you out, so you'd be very welcome to put in an application on our website!

However, for full transparency's sake, I do think I should say that I'd guess it will be a fairly significant downside compared to candidates with more experience, and I'd be somewhat surprised if ended up hiring someone with no prior work experience or tertiary education.

Hey Batur,

Thanks for your detailed & thoughtful questions!

I'll answer in order:

1. For the rounds I'm running, I'll reach out to candidates we're moving forward with either just before or shortly after applications close on the 18th and 25th August.

2. I haven't yet confirmed precisely what all the stages of the application will look like — it'll probably depend on the applications I get, and might vary a bit from person to person. But to give you a sense, for the last hiring round I ran, we had the initial application (3 substantive questions), then a paid 4 hour work test (doing work similar to what you'd do in the role), then a 30min-1hr interview, then a 3-day in-person work trial (which was also paid, where we could do so legally).

3. I hope to be able to make offers for the roles I'm hiring for by mid-late September, but it might take longer or shorter than that (depending in part on scheduling for the trial).

4. Hiring rounds are run by individual hiring managers, and a hiring committee of (usually) 3 people. We do coordinate somewhat (such as by doing this post together!) and if candidates are applying to multiple rounds, we might share details of their application with one another. However, the rounds are mostly quite independent, and e.g. it's possible we could offer multiple positions to the same person (& it'd be up to the candidate to decide between them). There is an organisation-wide people ops function, but they're low on capacity at the moment, so this round is mostly being run by the individual teams we're hiring to.

5. Teams at 80k are quite independent, but do have some interaction, and it varies quite a bit by team. For example, the marketing team goes to fortnightly web team meetings and weekly web team standups; plus, our work is often completed in collaboration with team leads whose product we are advertising!

6. The current marketing team is myself and Nik Mastroddi (so, it's two right now). We'd most like to be able to hire both a new head of marketing and a new marketer, but that might not be possible, so the final team size will depend on how many hires we make and for which roles.

7. The short-term vision for the team is...hiring! (while maintaining our current channels.) The medium-term vision should be set by whoever is head of marketing, so I can't say for sure what they would decide. If we don't hire a new head and I stay in the role, I would likely recommend keeping the team at a size of 3, or perhaps 2 or 4.

8. I'll leave the two questions about advising to Huon! :)

Hey Vincent! Thanks for your question :)

I think that there are lots of diffuse and hard-to-directly-measure benefits of having employees work from our London office. The main one that I'm especially excited about is the person in this role absorbing — and contributing to — our team culture, which I think is really helpful for keeping us as an organisation aimed at producing the most impactful outcomes.

I'm somewhat unsure this is the right attitude overall, and we are open to remote applicants (& many of the applications we've gotten so far are from remote candidates).

Thanks so much for your questions! I'll answer them in order:

For me, the precise wording of your CV is not at all important. I mostly look at CVs to get a sense of the candidate’s prior experience, so if you wanted to highlight parts of your work experience which seemed relevant, that’d be cool, but it doesn’t seem necessary.

In general, titles at 80k are very much up for negotiation, with a couple of constraints:

1. We have some words that we use in titles which refer to specific groups, such as ‘director’ or ‘head of’ — and you can’t use them if you’re not a director or a programme lead!
2. We generally want the title to give a reasonable impression about the kind of work done in the role (so, the head of video couldn’t have the title ‘head of podcast’ or something).

The salary formula has lots of inputs, so it’s not easy to say ‘you’d be paid £x more per year of experience.’ However, to give you a sense, for the ‘marketer’ role, someone with no relevant prior experience would be offered approximately £58,000 per year; someone with four years of relevant prior experience would be offered approximately £65,000 per year; and someone with ten years of relevant prior experience would be offered approximately £76,000 per year.

Here's another anonymous question I got:

How do you like people to approach their CVs? (Particularly in terms of successful candidates, or even just what gets people through to the next round at least)
e.g. Using the same words as you did in the JD, or different ones? With the I did X by doing Y which led to Z impact formula? And does the latter have to be numbers
Also, is the Head of Video title negotiable?
Lastly, how does the salary scale work e.g. 1y of exp vs 10 years

I'll respond in a comment!