Reflection on my time as a Visiting Fellow at Rethink Priorities this summer
I was a Visiting Fellow at Rethink Priorities this summer. They’re hiring right now, and I have lots of thoughts on my time there, so I figured that I’d share some. I had some misconceptions coming in, and I think I would have benefited from a post like this, so I’m guessing other people might, too. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write anything in depth for now, so a shortform will have to do.
Fair warning: this shortform is quite personal and one-sided. In particular, when I tried to think of downsides to highlight to make this post fair, few came to mind, so the post is very upsides-heavy. (Linch’s recent post has a lot more on possible negatives about working at RP.) Another disclaimer: I changed in various ways during the summer, including in terms of my preferences and priorities. I think this is good, but there’s also a good chance of some bias (I’m happy with how working at RP went because working at RP transformed me into the kind of person who’s happy with that sort of work, etc.). (See additional disclaimer at the bottom.)
First, some vague background on me, in case it’s relevant:
* I finished my BA this May with a double major in mathematics and comparative literature.
* I had done some undergraduate math research, had taught in a variety of contexts, and had worked at Canada/USA Mathcamp, but did not have a lot of proper non-Academia work experience.
* I was introduced to EA in 2019.
Working at RP was not what I had expected (it seems likely that my expectations were skewed).
One example of this was how my supervisor (Linch) held me accountable. Accountability existed in such a way that helped me focus on goals (“milestones”) rather than making me feel guilty about falling behind. (Perhaps I had read too much about bad workplaces and poor incentive structures, but I was quite surprised and extremely happy about this fact.) This was a really helpful transition for me from the university context, where I often had to complete large projects with less built-in support. For instance, I would have big papers due as midterms (or final exams that accounted for 40% of a course grade), and I would often procrastinate on these because they were big, hard to break down, and potentially unpleasant to work on. (I got really good at writing a 15-page draft overnight.)
In contrast, at Rethink, Linch would help me break down a project into steps (“do 3 hours of reading on X subject,” “reach out to X person,” “write a rough draft of brainstormed ideas in a long list and share it for feedback,” etc.), and we would set deadlines for those. Accomplishing each milestone felt really good, and kept me motivated to continue with the project. If I was behind the schedule, he would help me reprioritize and think through the bottlenecks, and I would move forward. (Unless I’m mistaken, managers at RP had taken a management course in order to make sure that these structures worked well — I don’t know how much that helped because I can’t guess at the counterfactual, but from my point of view, they did seem quite prepared to manage us.)
Another surprise: Rethink actively helped me meet many (really cool) people (both when they did things like give feedback, and through socials or 1-1’s). I went from ~10 university EA friends to ~25 people I knew I could go to for resources or help. I had not done much EA-related work before the internship (e.g. my first EA Forum post was due to RP), but I never felt judged or less respected for that. Everyone I interacted with seemed genuinely invested in helping me grow. They sent me relevant links, introduced me to cool new people, and celebrated my successes.
I also learned a lot and developed entirely new interests. My supervisor was Linch, so it might be unsurprising that I became quite interested in forecasting and related topics. Beyond this, however, I found the work really exciting, and explored a variety of topics. I read a bunch of economics papers and discovered that the field was actually really interesting (this might not be a surprise to others, but it was to me!). I also got to fine-tune my understanding of and opinions on a number of questions in EA and longtermism. I developed better work (or research) habits, gained some confidence, and began to understand myself better.
Here’s what I come up with when I try to think of negatives:
* I struggled to some extent with the virtual setting (e.g. due to tech or internet issues). Protip: if you find yourself with a slow computer, fix that situation asap.
* There might have been too much freedom for me— I probably spent too long choosing and narrowing my next project topics. Still, this wasn’t purely negative; I think I ended up learning a lot during the exploratory interludes (where I went on deep-dives into things like x-risks from great power conflict, but they did not help me produce outputs). As far as I know, this issue is less relevant for more senior positions, and a number of more concrete projects are more straightforwardly available now. (It also seems likely that I could have mitigated this by realizing it would be an issue right away.)
* I would occasionally fall behind and become stressed about that. A few tasks became ugh fields. As the summer progressed, I think I got better about immediately telling Linch when I noticed myself feeling guilty or unhappy about a project, and this helped a lot.
* Opportunity cost. I don’t know exactly what I would have done during the summer if not RP, but it’s always possible it would have been better.
Obviously, if I were restarting the summer, I would do some things differently. I might focus on producing outputs faster. I might be more active in trying to meet people. I would probably organize my daily routine differently. But some of the things I list here are precisely changes in my preferences or priorities that result from working at RP. :)
I don’t know if anyone will have questions, but feel free to ask questions if you do have any. But I should note that I might not be able to answer many, as I’m quite low on free time (I just started a new job).
Note: nobody pressured me to write this shortform, although Linch & some other people at RP did know I was doing it and were happy for it. For convenience, here’s a link to RP’s hiring page.