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!
Thanks Holden and Luke for answering so many questions <3
Thinking in terms of broad generalisations/approximations - if you had to draw a graph depicting the value provided to OP by a new research analyst over time, what kind of shape would this graph have?
Or to ask the question in a different way: Are your efforts to hire for new OP roles motivated more by a desire to make better grants in the next couple of years, or by an intention to have a strong team in place several years from now which does high quality work in the future?
Responding to your second formulation of the question, the answer is "more the latter than the former." We intend to invest heavily in training and mentoring new hires, and we hope that research analysts will end up being long-term core contributors at Open Phil — as research analysts, as grant investigators, and as high-level managers, among other roles — or, in some cases, in important roles that require similar skills outside Open Phil.