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!
If someone was looking to work for OPP would an honours* or masters program be more beneficial than an undergraduate degree?
Are there particular questions or areas that could be worked on for a research project in honours/masters that are particularly helpful directly or develop the right kinds of skills for OPP? (especially in economics, philosophy or cognitive science)
("Honours" in Australia is a 1 year research/coursework program)
Completion of an honours or masters program provides us with a bit more evidence about an applicant's capabilities than an undergraduate degree does, but both are less informative to us than the applicant's performance on the various work samples that are part of our application process.
Because our roles are so "generalist," there are few domains that are especially relevant, though microeconomics and statistics are two unusually broadly relevant fields. In general, we find that those with a STEM background do especially well at the kind of work ... (read more)