Related question: How often do you run a public open hiring round and end up hiring someone already on your radar, who would have been part of your closed hiring round as well? 

Not saying this is always bad, the public hiring round might still have been worthwhile in expectation, I'm just curious how often these things happen. Probably various a lot between roles & orgs. 

I also wonder whether we could do some kind of standardized test once a year on things that EA orgs uniquely care about, like reasoning transparency or understanding of EA, and then various EA orgs could use that for their hiring. 

If requires some initial coordination & investment, but after that it could save both orgs and applicants quite some time and money. 

Strongly upvoted, thanks!  

I've heard this many times, and I feel like some orgs might indeed overdo it with work tests. I'd be curious how much more info recruiters get from 4-8h work test, compared to 1-2h + a (short) interview, and maybe allowing people to submit an existing work sample or so. 

With that many views (800k as of now), it might be worth looking into starting non-English sister channels as well. 

Youtube science channel Kurzgesagt, for example, has a very large German and Spanish channel as well (2m subscribers each, ~10% of the 24m of the English channel). We (aisafety.berlin) would be happy to help with German, if you ever want to prioritize that, though Spanish, Hindi, and maybe Mandarin seem more important. 

>800k views as of now (4 days in), very impressive! 

Side note: I appreciate that you actually sought out critiques with your bounty offer and took the time to respond and elaborate on your thinking here, thanks! 

Great work! 

Have you considered translating it in other major languages, especially those with large existing EA communities like German, French or Spanish, or EA potential? 

A draft translation could be made with AI, and then EA communicators with high context (such as the EA Germany / EA Spain & LatAm organizers) could give feedback and adapt it to culture-specific norms. Once everyone is happy, small flag icons could link to the translation. 

Advantages: 
- The non-English EA content & communities would be a lot more accessible, and we might counterfactually reach more non-English speakers (e.g. older people who could be donors, senior policy-makers, ...)
- Non-English versions would be better. Even orgs like EA Germany who seem to have spent significant time updating their website don't have the capacity to build someone as professional as CEA does (for comparison, here's the German website: https://effektiveraltruismus.de/)
- Generally, more connections between the English & non-English versions, so everyone can find what they're looking for easily. Currently, effectivealtruism.org does not seem to the German version at all, and on the German website (effektiveraltruismus.de), the English flag icon at the top right does not link effectivealtruism.org either. 

Costs: 
- Mainly time costs by EA communicators (CEA, EA Germany, ...). Any other costs I missed?

Note that I'm not saying that the EA Germany website is a duplicate, it's not, just the "intro to EA" part could maybe be better connected. 



 

If at some point you're seriously considering downsizing the EA forum team or even shutting it down, maybe consider running a (simple) crowdfunding campaign for the EA forum among users, both to get funding and to get a better sense of how much users value having a value-aligned forum (optimizing for quality, usefulness & user happiness) instead of only a subreddit. 

My sense is that quite a lot of users value it quite a lot (just based on how much time people seem to spend on the forum), but I don't have data on it. 

Agree! 

To add to your point: Some EAs have told me in private that they struggle with various forms of online addiction (mostly Youtube, Facebook, but also Reddit, Linkedin etc), and it's hard for them to find a balance between getting the content they want but not spending too much time on it. 

I feel like the EA forum makes it a lot easier for users to find that balance compared to reddit etc, and I wouldn't be surprised if that counterfactually leads to many more hours spent on important EA work. 

It's hard to measure that as most people are hesitant to comment about this publicly or don't have a good sense of how much time they 'waste' on Reddit etc. If anyone here wants more data, an anonymous poll or mini survey could help. 

Yep, he occasionally shared memes in that group but left it a while ago.