As of now, this comment has 13 disagree votes. I'd be interested to hear the reasoning behind those. Is this a disagreement with my claim that "It is very basic professionalism to not hit on, flirt with, or ask out colleagues," or is this a disagreeing with some other aspect of my comment?

EDIT: I made my comment in the context of a small organization, and I now see that my previous comment is over-reaching. The context of flirting with a colleague at a company of 10,000 and and multiple offices/locations is of course very different that flirting with a colleague at a non-profit of only a few dozen people. I still claim that people should not be flirting or hitting on colleagues within a small team, where you see the same people at work every day. But I do understand that the context is different if there is a person that is employed by the same employer and you won't have any projects with that person, or you won't interact with that person as a part of your normal work. I also suspect that I simply have different norms/standards regarding professionalism than many of the commenters here.

Riley also discussed asking me out twice while we were colleagues, once through text and again at a CEA retreat.

In addition to what was written about you and shared, I am shocked that the culture and norms at CEA allowed asking out colleagues. It is very basic professionalism to not hit on, flirt with, or ask out colleagues.

I'm so sorry that you had to endure this, Frances. No one should have such deeply personal information shared non-consensually. I wish that this hadn't happened to you.

MATS is hiring for two roles on the program team. MATS will have more than a dozen employees at EAG San Francisco 2026, so feel free to come talk to use if you are interested in joining the team.

• Program Systems Associate: Build and maintain MATS' internal infrastructure, including databases, data collection forms, and integrations. Refactor legacy systems and collaborate across teams to improve infrastructure and establish best practices. Create ambitious, shared infrastructure for the AI safety talent ecosystem. Requires strong database design skills and a product mindset; software engineering or LLM-assisted coding proficiency preferred.
• Program Talent Manager: Own MATS' full applicant process across 3+ high-volume cycles per year (100+ fellows, 50+ mentors per cohort). Interface with mentors at Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and other organizations to understand talent needs. Design applications, coordinate evaluations, manage reviewers, and prepare applicant shortlists. Develop outreach strategy to attract top talent. Requires strong judgment in evaluating technical/policy candidates and excellent project/stakeholder management; recruiting or structured evaluation experience preferred.

I've seen so many scenarios in which EA folks reinvent wheels that are already very well-established in the broader professional world, or in which people rely on networks of EAs for advice rather than asking a subject matter expert. I've mostly seen this in relation to hiring because that is an area that I've seen internal processes for a few different EA organizations.

More broadly and more informally I've seen people failed to train new managers and fail to adopt project management practices (or to even be aware that they exist). One person mentioned to me that the Project Management Institute sounded fake. I have the vague impression that a lot of people understand project management to be something like "putting tasks in a list and then ticking them off," and simply aren't aware of earned value management, risk management, quality control, and other major areas.

This is vague and handwavy, but it does seem to resonate with a general tendency toward insularity: rather than ask a consultant with many years of experience who is an expert in an area, EAs seem to be happy to ask a friend who has two years of work experience and who did a thing once fairly well.

I'm curious how easy or hard it is to set up some drop shipping. A few items (t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, caps) with a few choices of designs might be feasible, much like the Shrimp Welfare Project Shop, or the DFTBA shop.

A semi-regular reminder that anybody who wants to join EA (or EA adjacent) online book clubs, I'm your guy.

Copying from a previous post:

I run some online book clubs, some of which are explicitly EA and some of which are EA-adjacent: one on China as it relates to EA, one on professional development for EAs, and one on animal rights/welfare/advocacy. I don't like self-promoting, but I figure I should post this at least once on the EA Forum so that people can find it if they search for "book club" or "reading group." Details, including links for joining each of the book clubs, are in this Google Doc.

I want to emphasize that this isn't funded through an organization, I'm not trying to get emails to put on a newsletter, and I'm not selling an online course or push people to buy a product. This is literally just online book clubs: we vote on books and have video chats to talk about books.

Would you be willing/able to share a bit more detail or context about this? I'm somewhat interested, but there isn't enough information here for me to feel comfortable to step forward and raise my hand.

If you want, I'd be happy to have a conversation, give you feedback, review your resume, etc. I've been involved in hiring for quite a few years, including at multiple EA organizations. I also know from personal experience how rough it is to send out many, many applications without success.