All of Lee McC's Comments + Replies

Thanks post this post! Seeing how many global challenges are in a sense alignment problems also brought me on board with understanding AI Safety. Climate change and social media are good touchstones for what I think of as social/political alignment issues.

I don't know if this is exactly correct (so someone help me if I'm off base) but I find the AI alignment issue especially mentally complex to wrap my head around because it doesn't seem like we have good solutions yet at almost any level of technical or social/political alignment. Here's how I think of th... (read more)

Thanks for writing this up, and as someone who is on the margins of Quaker culture in the Philadelphia area (a central hub of Quakerism in the US), I thought this was interesting to look at. I think that EA ideas and Quaker values do have some amount of modern overlap which would be potentially useful to look at further. 

I have a comment on nonviolence: 

You write: "They were non-violent, considered, calm but principled. They had beliefs that were well constructed, well founded and considered - and beliefs they held strongly to, but never violentl... (read more)

I agree.  In my advice giving, especially to college students and recent grads, I lean the same way. I find that people can develop a sense of the aptitudes they align with through experiences in a variety of realms (through non EA-related activities, clubs, jobs, school work), which increases the opportunities for data input and experimentation. 

Thank you for this article, Pia! 

I agree that as EA grows, I believe there will be an increase in demand for recruiters (in-house to organizations, and external in different niches/cause areas). And I also have observed that there are not many people with prior experience in recruiting within the EA ecosystem, but many people could have the skills and aptitudes that could make them a good recruiter. 

Recruiting is also a relatively flexible career, with opportunities in many sectors all around the world! 

I hope that people who are hiring for ... (read more)

I am working on setting up an EA recruiting agency, and through dozens of conversations with people in the last month, I can confirm that there is a wide variety of opportunities and needs!  
To add and expand on some listed, I made some bullet points below. These ideas aren’t deeply considered yet but point to some possible opportunities from what I’ve been hearing.

HR/ Hiring Support for Organizations 
   * Helping new and rapidly growing orgs improve their hiring.
   * Resources for designing work tests, interview questions, s... (read more)

On the topic of "Some factors in how people influence each other" 

I've seen the word "rank" used to help talk about perceived power in other spaces. Saying "they have rank" means that their voice or perspective is given more weight and credence, which may have nothing to do with a person's title and everything to do with the "factors in how people influence each other". 

The short-hand of "rank" can help explain the "shifting sands" experience of people changing status over time. Rank can be held through the transitions of switching jobs and is al... (read more)

I'm Lee and one of the people who is now working on this project. If you come across this post and are have thoughts or ideas about hiring in EA, reach out to me (calendly link is on my bio). 

I'm looking to connect with people who: 

-Have experience hiring within EA 

-Have wishes or suggestions for ways you think EA orgs could do hiring better

-Have been a personal assistant

-Have hired or attempted to hire a personal assistant

-Have outside experience with hiring best practices that you think should be implemented more often

I can't talk to too many people right now, so don't hesitate to connect! 

Thanks for this post! I am actively working on improving hiring for EA, especially to support longtermist projects, and appreciate this summary of some key best practices. 

I’m currently focusing particularly on roles that are more common, such as personal assistants, where there is a high probability of replicability of the hiring process. The challenge is more on the end of “it is easy for us to find people to do the job”, where there is a strong need for filtering. This might be able to be simplified (in some ways you mention, like strong parameters... (read more)

Check out Pineapple Operations list for part time and virtual PAs: 

 https://pineappleoperations.org