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!
I'm graduating from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) with an Honors History degree this year. This gave me a nonstandard amount of experience with literature reviews and research for an undergraduate student. However, I've seen that OpenPhil generally prefers its candidates to have non-humanities majors.
1) Is the latter claim true?
2) In general, how does OpenPhil rate research experience that is not in the field(s) currently being explored?
Thanks for the question - I have wondered the same, as I also studied History at undergraduate level.
A slight detour from your question, but maybe of interest. There is currently is no community / FB group for people with backgrounds or research interests in History within EA that I know of. There have been quite a few times when discussions around the usefulness of historical studies has come up and it might be good to share ideas and collaborate.
I don't have time to try and coordinate this at the moment, but it seems like trying to establish some sort o... (read more)