There are many EA organizations and they often work on pretty similar things. It can be hard for someone to get a real sense of the pros and cons of different organizations and jobs if they haven’t been in the EA movement for a long time, or if they are not highly connected to people who are ingrained in the movement.
Thankfully, the world outside of EA has a solution for this issue. Glassdoor is a widely used website that gives a lot of information about the pros and cons of different organizations through company reviews. Submissions can be anonymous, and many of the larger EA organizations already have profiles and some reviews.
In general, I think using review services is a good thing to do. It gives people a better sense of whether a workplace is good or bad, and brings some accountability to organizations. This seems equally important within the context of Effective Altruism; often EAs apply for a number of EA jobs and in many cases get multiple offers. When considering which organizations to work for (or even who to apply to in the first place), we ideally want people to be as knowledgeable as possible of the desirable and undesirable attributes of each of the different options. The impact of an EA working in an organization that is the right fit is potentially very high, yet finding this kind of information is difficult. It therefore seems that it would be very high value for people to submit reviews of EA organizations they have previously worked in.
Possible pros
- Matching: Allows EAs to find better matches when considering workplaces, leading to less turnover and general frustration when applying for/working at jobs.
- Accountability: Creates a higher level of accountability for EA workplaces, who could be motivated by the knowledge that they likely will get reviews.
- Hidden factors: In-depth reviews can provide a more detailed picture of an organization’s culture than can be obtained from a job ad (e.g. team cohesion, how decisions are made etc.)
- Knowledge gaps: Balances out the knowledge gap between EAs who have been involved in the movement for a long time vs relative newcomers.
- Gives employees another way to voice if something was negative or challenging about the organization.
Possible cons
- Gaming the system: There is probably some risk of an organization seeing this post and strongly encouraging current employees to give them positive reviews to increase their ability to hire.
- I think an ideal social norm would be only reviewing an organization after you are no longer working with them and thus can review the full experience. Similarly, I would be skeptical if this post got sent to some ex-employees but not others.
- Incentivizing becoming a ‘charity for employees’: Ideally EA charities should be creating large amounts of impact and focusing on maximizing that, not employee satisfaction. Knowing that an organization will be reviewed on Glassdoor might push them toward maximizing employee happiness over impact (in situations where the two are not correlated).
- I think the best way to alleviate this concern is for EA reviewers to try to take impact into account as well. A review like “This organization had great benefits but was not really self-critical” is highly informative and prevents the focus being purely on employee welfare.
- Reviews of EA organizations could make the EA movement look bad or otherwise cause reputational damage.
- Glassdoor is already in common use across industries, so I think this is unlikely. I posit that utilizing a system of reviews will identify and eliminate poor organizational behaviors earlier.
- Glassdoor is already in common use across industries, so I think this is unlikely. I posit that utilizing a system of reviews will identify and eliminate poor organizational behaviors earlier.
In conclusion: I think it would be highly impactful for EAs to leave thoughtful reviews on a public platform, with special consideration to impact-related factors.
Out of curiosity, I looked up a list of EA-related organizations and checked their Glassdoor reviews:
Infrastructure
Animal Charity Evaluators (ACE)- 2.6 (2 reviews)
Charity Entrepreneurship- 5.0 (1 reviews )
Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA)- 4.1 (10 reviews)
Founders Pledge- 4.8 (8 reviews)
GiveWell- 4.5 (6 reviews)
Open Philanthropy Project- 5.0 ( 3 reviews)
Rethink Charity- 5.0 (1 review)
The Life You Can Save (TLYCS)- 4.6 (3 reviews)
Animal Advocacy
Albert Schweitzer Foundation- 4.0 ( 1 review)
Anima International- 4.0 ( 1 review)
Faunalytics- 5.0 (1 review)
The Good Food Institute- 4.9 (41 reviews)
The Humane League- 4.0 (35 reviews)
Wild Animal Initiative- 5.0 (1 review)
Global Health and Poverty
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)- 4.1 (206 reviews)
END Fund (deworming programme)- 2.3 (8 reviews)
Evidence Action (Deworm the World Initiative programme)- 3.9 (84 reviews)
GiveDirectly- 4.5(57 reviews)
Helen Keller International (Vitamin A supplementation programme) - 3.8 (71 reviews)
IDInsight- 4.2 (78 reviews)
Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)- 3.9 (228 reviews)
Malaria Consortium- 4.1 (36 reviews)
New Incentives- 4.1 (3 reviews)
Sightsavers (deworming programme)- 4.7 (89 reviews)
Suvita- 3.1 (2 reviews)
Far Future
Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)- 4.6 (2 reviews)
________________________________________
No reviews:
Infrastructure
80,000 Hours
Animal Advocacy Careers
Ayuda Efectiva
Doebem
Donational
Effective Altruism Foundation (EAF)
Effective Giving UK/Netherlands
Effektiv-Spenden.org
Generation Pledge
GiEffektivt.No
Giving Multiplier.org-
Giving What We Can (GWWC)
Global Priorities Institute (GPI)
High Impact Athletes
Let's Fund
One for the World
Raising for Effective Giving (REG)
Rethink Priorities
SoGive
Animal Advocacy
Animal Ask
Animal Ethics
Aquatic Life Institute
Credence Institute
Farmed Animal Funders
Fish Welfare Initiative
Global Health and Poverty
Against Malaria Foundation (AMF)
Canopie
Family Empowerment Media (FEM)
Fortify Health
Happier Lives Institute (HLI)
Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP)
Policy Entrepreneurship Network
SCI Foundation
Far Future
Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED)
All-Party Parliamentary Group for Future Generations
Alpenglow
Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI)
Centre for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI)
Centre on Long-term Risk (CLR)
Centre for the Study of Existential Risks (CSER)
Future of Humanity Institute (FHI)
Future of Life Institute (FLI)
Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI)
Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI)
Projekt Framtid
Sentience Institute
The Centre for Election Science (CES)
The Forethought Foundation for Global Priorities Research
Other
Centre for Applied Rationality (CFAR)
Centre for Enabling EA Learning and Research (CEEALAR)
Giving Green
High Impact Careers in Government (HIPE)
Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering (OPIS)
Our World in Data
Qualia Research Institute (QRI)
Sentience Politics
SparkWave
The Legal Priorities Project
WANBAM
My only concern with Glassdoor is that their review removal policy is unclear. They have removed mine and my friend's reviews of a nonprofit we worked for. The reviews were nonoffensive, but they were negative, as the experience working for the org was quite bad, and equally, the org was not creating any significant impact. So both things combined made it not a very friendly workspace.
It's not clear to me why the reviews were removed, but I spotted that there is an option to report a review. So I wonder if an org can also game the system by encouraging multiple people to report negative reviews.
I also worry that people with negative experiences are more inclined to leave reviews. So, e.g. an org can have one negative review and zero positive because satisfied employees didn't feel motivated to post (didn't have the urgency to warn others).
So I wonder if there is a healthy way to encourage reviews in general. Probably this post is one since it does not come directly from an employer.
I agree with the rule that this kind of reviews would be beneficial. If I had read my former employer's reviews now, I would not have gone to work with them (I would avoid months of ineffective work in hostile conditions and burnout). Thanks to the org having a sufficient number of reviews on Glassdor now, you can see the inefficiencies at work mentioned, the lack of impact-focus, and not great treatment of employees, which would be a significant warning for me.
Again, positive reviews, talking about hard work, impact focus, kind colleagues (that, at the moment, I would leave for CE if I was leaving the org) would probably encourage me to apply because I care for impact but I also care about working with intelligent and kind people in an ambitious, startup work environment.
Nice solution.
In a similar vein, I'd like to see more people asking "Can anyone DM me a quick review of [EA org] as a place to work / service provider?"
I don't think this is such a good idea for job reviews, given that you will not be anonymous. When I left a bad workplace for a year or more I was scared to say anything negative about them publically. Glassdoor allows anonymity - which has its good and bad sides. But DM - I can see people who are positive about the workplace messaging you, but not the people that have some criticism at hand. We should not even do that, because we don't know how are you connected to our previous employee, and maybe whatever we share with you - like a warning - will be later used for litigation? I just feel like DMs will only bias a person in the positive direction, not giving a broader view from multiple perspectives?
Just a thought.
I feel like being worried about litigation for being honest in a DM would put that org in the bottom 5% (1%?). It does seem useful to have strategies that add signal for most cases. Though it does seem useful to know that in the worst orgs people might not speak openly.
I've been informed that non-disparagement clauses are more common than I believed. Those clauses might be a reason that someone would feel bound to keep their mouth shut. I still think that it would be hard to have non-disparagement clauses with all of an org's ex employees, but you might be missing out of the views of the most disgruntled 1% of employees across a wider swath of orgs.
I think that sending something generic like "I'm not optimistic about [org] impact", or even a very neutral review, can give some information without a significant litigation risk.
I would also consider an extremely positive review a useful signal, especially by ex-employees or ex-volunteers.
I think I would personally find it much more informative than a glassdoor review, after hearing a lot of very negative stories about Glassdoor (including yours).
Thanks for sharing! This strikes me as a good idea.
I am considering applying to a few organisations. I hadn't realised that there is a better way to get information about working at them than by talking to former or current employees.
Reading reviews would be much more efficient. I wonder if having a link directory of all reviews (of working at) EA organisation is a worthwhile small project for someone - maybe it could be in the wiki.
Maybe worth having people at the organisation who are happy to chat about their role listed also (related to Holly's point below).
This implies that a nontrivial fraction of employees would leave, which seems true of some EA orgs and not others (and I think the difference is non-random for pretty obvious reasons).
Yeah, I expect employees who leave to be a pretty biased sample, and the bias to have different strengths depending on the org.
Now, maybe that bias is weaker than the bias to try to make your own org look good. I'd be more optimistic about a central group sending a survey to a sample of employees and telling them to take it seriously for the benefit of the world. Probably reduces much of the bias of a CEO sending out a link in slack and asking everyone to review.
Thank you for highlighting the potential benefits of utilizing review services like Glass Door within the Effective Altruism (EA) movement. The points you raise regarding matching, accountability, hidden factors, and knowledge gaps are indeed significant. By providing detailed reviews of EA organizations, individuals can make more informed decisions about their career choices, leading to better workplace matches and potentially reducing turnover and frustration.
While there are some valid concerns, such as the possibility of gaming the system and the risk of organizations prioritizing employee satisfaction over impact, I believe that encouraging reviewers to consider both aspects can help maintain a balance. Reviews that encompass a holistic perspective, including benefits and organizational self-criticism, can provide valuable insights for potential employees.
Regarding reputational damage to the EA movement, it is unlikely that reviews of EA organizations on Glassdoor would have a negative impact. Glassdoor is widely used across various industries, and leveraging this platform can actually help identify and address poor organizational behaviors earlier, ultimately benefiting the movement as a whole.