Hi EA Forum,
I'm Holden Karnofsky I'm here to answer any questions about jobs at Open Philanthropy. I'll be here today from 9:30am to 12:30pm Pacific time (with some breaks) and will likely respond to comments later on as well.
We'd hate to miss out on strong applicants because of misconceptions about the roles, so I hope people will ask whatever is on their mind, on topics from office environment to day-to-day work to the likely long-term trajectory of the role. I think Open Philanthropy jobs are among the best possible ways for effective altruists to have impact, and I hope anyone who could imagine performing well in these jobs will at least consider applying!
Please post different questions as separate comments, for discussion threading.
Looking forward to it!
Added 12:32pm Pacific time: This concludes the "official" portion of the AMA, but feel free to post more questions; we may respond to them later on!
The role does include all three of those things, and I think all three things are well served by the job qualifications listed in the posting. A common thread is that all involve trying to deliver an informative, well-calibrated answer to an action-relevant question, largely via discussion with knowledgeable parties and critical assessment of evidence and arguments.
In general, we have a list of the projects that we consider most important to complete, and we look for good matches between high-ranked projects and employees who seem well suited to them. I expect that most entry-level Research Analysts will try their hand at both cause prioritization and grant investigation work, and we'll develop a picture of what they're best at that we can then use to assign them more of one or the other (or something else, such as the work listed at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/get-involved/jobs/analyst-specializing-potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence) over time.
Thanks Holden!