All of SofiaBalderson's Comments + Replies

What We Owe to Shrimp +1 !! In case Will needs a title for his next book:) 

One for the Shrimp is one of my favourites!! 

I love "The Shrimp You Can Save". We need a new book from Peter Singer!! 

thanks a lot for reading and your encouragement Brennan! This helps to get out the bubble for a bit and listen to how the work looks from the outside. 

Thanks a lot for this! Do you know if there is an updated version of this? 

Really great to see you are doing this! Thank you!

Hey Vaidehi, thanks a lot for reading and your questions:)

1. Of the 100 strategic pairings you did, how would you break down the impact / what was the outcome of the pairings?

We have only started doing strategic connections actively in August and have a follow-up time after three months of connections, so we don’t know the outcome for the majority yet. We have a system set up that notes down the input (resource provided, short or long consultation, funding, warm introduction or others) and output (tool adopted, meaningful or impactful connection, project c... (read more)

Hey Julia and Ozzie, thanks a lot for writing this! I enjoyed reading it and agree with your points, nice to see the gaps highlighted, hopefully it will lead to more people considering and starting these projects! I actually used the gap approach to start Impactful Animal Advocacy, and we now have a very active Slack space which the readers of this forum (interested in animal advocacy) are welcome to join. The main purpose is coordination and knowledge sharing in animal advocacy, and we also have a regular newsletter among other programmes like resource da... (read more)

Thanks for reading Jessica and glad it resonated with you! I used to feel quite isolated at the beginning but I've been sharing my experience with other entrepreneurs and it has helped a lot to feel like my experience has been "normal" and others are going through similar stuff:) 
Anything in particular do you think resonated with you, or any experience sounds different?

Thanks for reading Luke and thank you for the kind words 😊

Thanks a lot Corentin for reading and wow new org - exciting!!! 

thanks for reading Simon and thanks for keeping us entrepreneurs mentally and physically healthy:) 

Thanks a lot for writing this Lizka! I especially appreciate the "what you find hard" section. We really need more transparency about what successful people struggle with so that others, especially people who are just starting out, don't feel bad for having a bad day (or a week, month, etc.). I also believe it's valuable for other Forum users to see what happens behind the scenes, as many online products look like they "just happen" while many hours and people's energy go into them! 
As an additional benefit, if any org decides to hire for a Content Specialist this post can be very useful! 

So excited for this!
I will post two things:
1. Writing about my job: Co-founder of a new charity
2. What I wish I knew when I started out in animal advocacy

Thank you!
 

Many thanks Jamie. This is very useful! How I wish though AI didn’t make things up 😂😂 it’s so keen to please us!

Hey Tristan, thanks for this! Glad you’ve found the posts useful:)

1. To your point about references: ideally references should be just a tick box exercise of fact checking and should testify to your character and ability to do great work. Which means that all your good references should do for all future jobs (keep in mind that most employers want two most recent places of work). Some organisations still ask questions about your ability to do that particular job which I don’t agree with as all jobs are different. To help with that I’d advise to cultivate re

Thanks a lot for reading and for your comment Tristan! I’ve described a couple of techniques here and I think the majority can certainly be done even if you haven’t got the experience. The wishlist works well for people who already know a bit about what they like doing and have some experience of doing something, that’s true. One thing you could do is start building your wishlist. Maybe you could put what work you enjoyed at university/school, any particular projects that you found fun, and what you definitely didn’t enjoy. The purpose of the wishlist is not just to get attention but also get input into what roles might be suitable, and that’s relevant to you especially because you’re starting out.

Hey Nathan, here is some more info on the first workshop: 

How bias can prevent you from hiring the best candidate:

A poorly written job description can put off diverse candidates.

A lack of universal criteria can lead to the best candidates being overlooked due to bias.

Lack of provision for inclusion during test task can miss out on some of the best performers

A process that's not inclusive can lead to candidates dropping off

And many more!

​

We can't afford to be biased when hiring, especially considering our movement's limited resources.

​

Together we... (read more)

Thanks Nathan that's a great idea, we may publish something like this:) 

Thanks a lot HIP for this great initiative, if any of the grantees affected would like to do work in animal advocacy in particular please email us to see if we can advise on next steps at [sofia at animaladvocacycareers.org] or via PM on the forum.

Thanks a lot Michel, a great addition to the post!

This is so exciting! I’m really happy that OP is investing in this. Very much looking forward to seeing all the translated content and the new community members that it will bring ☺️ Thanks so much for your work on this.

That makes sense, thanks. I wonder if the results they got were also influenced by some other practices, for example already looking in a place where there was less diversity, or advertising the job in a way that put a lot of more diverse candidates off, such as not including salary in the JD.

Hey Richard, thanks a lot for reading and for your valuable comment. 
Interesting note about the DEI vs equality of opportunity point, I haven't thought about it.

I still think that we should continue in-person conferences, all I'm saying is that we need to improve the quality of online conferences and also help people to travel to offline conferences and events more easily (this is not just an EA issue, all industries who host offline events have this problem due to COVID visa application delays - we don't know how long they will last).

I'm grateful tha... (read more)

Hey Matti, thanks so much for reading and for your kind comment. Glad you enjoyed it!

Many thanks for reading and spotting this Kaleem, corrected! 

Hey Jeff, many thanks for reading and for your comment. That's very interesting and it's the first time I'm hearing about this. Do you know which orgs? 

Hey Guy, thanks for reading and for your comment. RP indeed have a lot of these practices (to my best knowledge). At the moment they are one of the exceptions though. I think that it's great that we have orgs who implement this and I'm looking forward to seeing some research and case studies on this.

Hey Nuno, thanks so much for reading and providing your thoughts on my suggestions in such depth - I enjoyed reading them and I really appreciate it! It brings a lot of value to the post as it provides multiple ways of thinking about these suggestions.

I think that your point about trade-offs for these things is very valid. The reason I wrote this post was that I felt that projects like these almost never make it to the top of the weighted factor models and other decision-making tools because their long-term value can be potentially underestimated, and that's why I propose that we do more research. 

Hey Charles, thanks for reading and for your comment - I appreciate it. I totally agree with you that EA is based on people realising their privilege. This is why I'm in EA. Perhaps I should have been clear when I argued this. This conclusion comes from the previous two premises:

P1: It’s hard to get EA jobs, most EA jobs accept unpaid volunteers and some don’t pay a living wage. 

P2: It’s hard to get involved in the movement generally due to locations of EA Hubs and conferences mostly being in the Western countries.

(added) and 

P3: Multiple EA orga... (read more)

Hey, many thanks for your comment, I'm very pleased you found the blog useful :) I'm writing another one based on my most recent job search which I'll link here soon!

As to your question, I think you should absolutely mention that you're an EA, but I would probably not say "I am an EA" but do it by linking to your forum posts, or any EA courses you've done, events/retreats you've been to, any EA jobs you had. In your skills section, you can highlight the skills that EAs value, or just use some EA language and style of writing in all of your CV.

I am a huge f... (read more)

This is so cool. Thanks so much for running this and sharing your data and experience. I hope you continue and there'll be more such activities in EA in the future. Keep up the good work!! I'm not sure how we can measure this, but I wonder if there is a way to track the participants' journeys in EA (maybe via case studies?) to see how participating in this contest led them to more opportunities in EA or not.

Thanks for this, I think you’re spot on about the roles not always being attractive. I’ve heard about a senior person not applying for senior EA ops jobs because they involved managing the CEO’s inbox or because they didn’t have someone who’d do more mundane tasks but the org was already too big for just one person to handle everything.

This is a very valuable post. Thanks a lot to both for writing this up! Looking forward to seeing some of these megaprojects happening in the future!

Hey Evan, thanks a lot for the feedback, I'm glad it's been useful! Interviews are tough to get right, but it is possible :) Good luck!

Yes to Swapcard all year round!! People didn’t reply to my messages from Sunday evening, but I guess it’s solvable as most people have their emails there.

Thanks a lot for this post and sorry to hear you’ve burnt out. I had something similar at my first EAG and my solution for this conference was to space meetings out over 4 days and also not go to any after parties or dinners + have short days (like finishing at 3-4 if you have back to back meetings). This EAG was much better, and I think I’ll have even fewer meetings next time as my voice took a bit of a battering 🤣 I think there is a lot of pressure to have meetings as I thought: “what if they wouldn’t want to meet online later”. In hindsight, if they d... (read more)

Thanks a lot Vaidehi! Hope to meet you at the next EAG!!

I agree with your comment and love the story! Re your welfaretarian argument,  how do you measure the happiness of the animals if you didn’t grow them yourself?  Also, can a life be happy if you are ultimately killed before your time has come?  I’m not judging, just curious about this concept as I haven’t heard of this. 

Amazing news and great that it's so available! I was recommending this at the AAC careers fair, and not only to people wanting to start an org, but also to people who want to understand what makes an impactful charity! Also copying my Goodreads review here: 

I got recommended this book as I'm starting a charity soon and it exceed my expectations. This book covers pretty much everything you'll need in the first couple of years and suggests further resources for the future (if you'd like to delve even deeper into each topic). Each chapter is very compreh... (read more)

Hey Akash,  thanks so much for reading and also for your thoughts. I love that you connected the "helping" bit with EA principles - I don't think I thought of that!  So this is a really valuable point. After all, we are trying to make an impact with our jobs and by applying for a job, we are trying to solve a problem for the organisation and the cause area in general. Also many thanks for sharing this with your network, I hope it will help more people!

I agree with you about transparency, we definitely shouldn't say anything that's not true about ... (read more)

I remember when Karolina messaged me about a year ago inviting me to apply to CE and Shimp Welfare was the first charity idea I saw and I was like "Whaaaaat I'm not doing that. What's next, bacteria welfare?" And now I'm going to be leading a charity working on insect welfare. The irony lol.

On a serious note, the sheer numbers, the welfare and practices facts, and especially the neglectedness of the invertebrates really brought me around. I really think you folks are working on some pretty important stuff, not only making an impact for the shrimps but also... (read more)

Yes, we definitely need more portals like this! I think a lot of charities would love to have more volunteer requests from skilled professionals but the platforms like the AAC ones are not very well publicised (if they exist at all).

Hey Cristina, thanks a lot for your kind comment - I really appreciate it! I too wish someone held my hand through my first job application experience, I didn't know any of this haha. Unfortunately, I had to learn all of this through mistakes, so I hope people reading this will avoid some of them! I  also hope that more people will get the support they need, peer support groups are a very good idea! We should suggest it to AAC or 80,000 Hours!

Hey Miranda, thanks for reading - I'm so pleased you found it useful. I too agree that we need more info on how to actually get jobs, as it's a science in itself and it's not currently taught at schools and unis as much as it should be. So unless you have relatives/friends who are really good at this and willing to help you, you are at a disadvantage. So good that your friend help you though and that you asked! Some people just wing it, thinking that it's a tick-box exercise while it's a lot more than that.

Hey Animal Ask team and Amy, thanks a lot for the blog, really insightful! 

I thought of a super time-consuming way of evaluating impact: have the team do their own research and then do the same research yourself and compare results. Maybe if you do this on a relatively small project, you will see the objective difference in results. Of course, you still have counterfactuals to deal with as you will eventually go with only a couple of intervention choices.

Also in my own consultancy work, I've found that it takes years sometimes to track results, so I g... (read more)