I’m really sorry you’re feeling this way!

I wanted to add my personal perspective. I joined CEA in September, after a career in journalism. One of the things I was most delighted by when I joined was just how good the work-life balance was — so, so much better than in any other job I’ve had. I didn’t feel any obligation to work evenings or weekends, and indeed was actively encouraged not to (my boss, Max, didn’t have Slack on his phone and left his work laptop at the office when he went home — which set a really good example for the rest of us). I also really liked the flexibility to build my work schedule around my preferences — I much prefer starting work a bit later and working later at night, or taking time off during the week and making up for it at the weekend, and I was able to do that here. I think those first couple months at CEA were the best and healthiest work time I’ve had.

Then… FTX collapsed, and everything got awful. My experience here was not representative of the average, but me and some others were working a horrific amount — there was a period of a couple weeks where I was doing ~18 hour days, 7 days a week. That wasn’t fun. My motivations here were a real mix — there was an endless mountain of stuff that needed doing, and I felt like I had to help do it both because it was my responsibility, because of my job, and also because I thought it was important for the world, because I care about EA. I did think about quitting back then, and I think people would have understood if I had; but I didn’t because I felt it was worth sticking around.

But as bad as that period was, I don’t think it’s at all representative of most people’s experience, or even my experience most of the time — in December/January/February things were a lot better, though I was still working a lot. I’m hoping that we get back to the September state though, and March has been promising so far. I just bring up the November period because it would feel disingenuous not to.

Even through the horrific crisis period, I’ve felt extremely supported by CEA. Caitlin, our head of people ops, actively encouraged me to drop down to four days a week for a while, which was a very good idea (my pay remained the same); she also pushed me to take a proper holiday as soon as I was able to (I’m taking next week off, and plan to be completely work-offline). When I’ve had similarly stressful periods in other, non-EA jobs, I received ~no support.

All of which is to say: in my experience, work-life balance has been very good at CEA, and even in the worst-imaginable periods, people have been looking out for me.

Hi! I've been working full time in operations at EA orgs for 6 years (3.5 years at the Center on Long-Term Risk and 2.5 at the Legal Priorities Project). I rarely ever work past 6 pm and ~never on weekends, and have had colleagues with similar boundaries. Everyone I've worked with has been extremely respectful of those boundaries.

When deciding whether to take a job, I think it's possible to tell your potential employer something like "I'm willing to work X hours per week, I'm not willing to do Y, etc. Do you still want to hire me?" And let them decide. Similarly, I think recruiters should always share the worst parts about the job before hiring someone (more on this here). And if they don't, you can always ask.

Good luck!

Thanks for your question, seems like a good discussion to have here!

To give some background on my role: I work at 80,000 Hours as head of 1on1 (which means managing a team of 7 people working on a few different products) and I’m a grant manager for the EA Infrastructure Fund. Right now 80,000 Hours’ CEO has been seconded to EV, so I’m pitching in with some misc 80k things like running this year’s funding round.

I’ve definitely had times of feeling the problem you describe acutely. I think the drive to help people, and to do so as much as we can, can make it feel like all your time should go to it. And then being surrounded by likeminded people who are ambitiously trying to do good makes it feel like even if you’re switching off, others might need something from you.

Right now, I feel pretty good about where I’m at. I have pretty explicit ‘on’ and ‘off’ times. My ‘on’ times are on the long side. I definitely work more than 40 hours a week. But that works for me - I used to work long hours as a grad student too. I’ve had roles where I worked fewer hours not because there was less to do but because I found the work less enjoyable and so wanted to curtail my hours. Whereas now I feel energised to work longer hours. One thing that really helps me is having colleagues who understand the importance of people both working the hours they endorse, and knowing they can get away from everything while they’re not working.

A few general thoughts on this that you might find helpful:

• I’ve actually found that in some ways working at an EA org allows for more switching off than when I was volunteering. As a student volunteer, it was hard to have designated times for doing EA things, and they felt more important than my studies. So I was less in the frame of mind of figuring out how to switch off from them. Whereas it’s more natural to need time properly away from your actual job.
• I’ve generally found it easier to switch off from roles that are more junior in whatever organisation I’m in. That means working somewhere as an employee can work better than being a community builder, even though the latter sounds more flexible. The reason is that as a junior person in an organisation, there’s always someone else who can handle questions etc while you’re away, unlike if you’re the leader of your local group.
• Having particular norms can also make a difference: for example 80k has a clear expectation that Signal rather than email/slack is used for urgent communications (and it’s only used for urgent communications), and also that everyone notes on the calendar and also on slack if they’re going on holiday. That means that while I’m away I don’t feel I need to check slack or email - I know that everyone knows I’m away and that they’ll signal me if there’s anything urgent.
• I try to bear in mind when managing people the importance of work life balance, and also that that looks different for different people. I don’t expect them to work the same hours I do, and have directs who do a wide variety of hours. I aim to have a sense of which hours they work and their communication preferences. Eg some people are happy to get emails etc whenever I want to send them knowing they don’t have to look at them, others would prefer only getting messages during their working hours. With email it’s easy to schedule messages to go out at times people will be fine getting them, with slack I try to pay attention to when I send them. I try to keep a rough track of how much time off each of my directs is taking and whether that’s the amount they endorse, and if it isn’t to prompt them to book holiday.   

Hey! Cristina here. I work as a Special Projects Coordinator (which is an ops role) at Rethink Priorities providing ops services to internal and external new projects. I'm not only not required to be on call all the time (unless I'm providing events support on the ground in which case I'm asked to take time off afterwards to balance that off), it's in fact discouraged at RP, my team (Special Projects) and more specifically with my manager.

I work as a project manager for property projects in the US for EV Ops. The nature of my work (dealing with construction contractors, furniture installers etc) means that I often have to work before 9am or after 5pm, as well as on weekends (and generally be willing to take calls at anytime of the week without notice). In general I've worked more than 40 hours a week for the past year, but at no point have I felt like that was expected of me (and on multiple occasions my manager asked me to stop working more than I need to and to take more time off/rest more). My observation of work culture within EV orgs is that people are super encouraging of colleagues taking time off and that most people do take time off in a regular and healthy way.

My impression is that if people work on weekends or after hours, it's often because they want to - I personally find it very exciting and gratifying to be able to contribute to other EA projects in my free time and interact with so many altruistic, like-minded people! I have rarely heard of this being a hard expectation though.

If anything, the EA community is more encouraging of people taking time off and taking care of their mental health because we want people to have more impact in the long-run rather than have burnout and basically 0 impact after that.

Lastly, my sense is this depends heavily on the role. As a charity entrepreneur, you might need to work longer hours especially in the beginning, but there are plenty of "normal jobs" out there where time is tracked and overtime is the exception, not the rule. :)

P. S. : Reach out to me if you want to chat about this or would like some support. ❤️

Hi! As background, I work at CEA's as their Head of People Operations. I've been with CEA about six years.

First, I'm sorry you are currently having this experience. Second, I want to echo other people's sentiments that there are roles and managers within EA orgs where the expectations not be the stressful "on call all the time" setup.

My aim for everyone who works at CEA is that they have a work structure that's sustainable for them, where sustainability means "starts each week feeling energized" not "is able to physically continue doing this." I can't claim that we always meeting this goal for all staff, of course, but it's certainly the aim. Different people need different work setups to thrive and I think a minority of people can sustainably work in the "always on call" mode you describe. I try to support all of our teams in helping people figure out what structure will be ideal, and I'm much more frequently in the position of encouraging people to take more time off, be more protective of their weekends, etc. than the reverse. Many people at CEA have strict work-life boundaries as you describe. I am personally protective of my evenings and weekends.

I think Alfredo's advice of being clear with prospective employers about what you are and aren't willing to do is great. I'd generally respond positively to someone communicating clearly about that in a job interview.

Hi, sorry to hear about your experience.

I've had several EA roles, mostly community-building: Co-founder (Giving What We Can: Oxford), Director of Community (Giving What We Can), Executive Director (The Life You Can Save), Logistics Manager (CEA), Communications Officer (LEAN, Rethink Charity), Strategy Director (EA London), Personal Assistant (various), Founder (Pineapple Operations).

As far as I can remember, the only times I've worked more than full-time are when I've decided to take on different roles simultaneously or when I've been my own boss. I don't recall feeling constantly on-call in any role except when I've run retreats, and I don't recall feeling pressure from others to work more than full-time or to be constantly on-call.

I hope that being able to point to some of the answers here helps you establish healthier boundaries going forwards.

Hi, sorry to hear about your experience! I work in a research/project management-type role. My workload fluctuates a huge amount by week, and I do typically work long hours, but even when I have a particularly heavy week, it hardly ever feels like I'm "on call." Within a week, I can largely organize my work as I see fit and I believe this is mostly true for my colleagues in similar roles; the only time we behave as if we are on call is for major deadlines. I occasionally take meetings at weird times due to international partnerships, but always with plenty of advance notice.

And actually, when it comes to ops roles, our head of ops is very encouraging of people protecting their vacation time. I give her a ton of credit for being thoughtful and intentional about how to develop a healthy culture around working hours/protected time, especially given that we're an international organization spread out across time zones. Of course it mattered that she's one of the co-founders and could lay out reasonable expectations--ie, she wasn't going to always be on call, and wouldn't expect anyone else to.

I think unquestionably certain roles are more demanding in hours, responsiveness, or both, but that should be made clear in job descriptions or interviews, and hopefully allow you to make an informed decision--eg, one former colleague was hired for a comms role explicitly described as involving "rapid response," so you can predict that would put you more on call than other roles at the same org.  

So basically, my sense is that:
a) roles in ops & events management will have more "fires to put out" than other roles in the same organization, but also 
b) ops will have more "fires" at some organizations than others, and
c) if someone at a high enough level cares, they can just lay out norms, and that will shape org culture.