How much pressure do you feel against externally expressing views which do not conform to those of your manager or organisation?

By Vasco Grilo🔸 @ 2024-02-10T09:05 (+60)

Context

Saulius commented that he was told off by Rethink Priorities’ management because he:

Wrote the sentence “I don’t think that EAs should fund many WAW [wild animal welfare] researchers since I don’t think that WAW is a very promising cause area” in an email to OpenPhil [context]

Feel free to check the thread for more context.

Questions

To better understand how common experiences like Saulius’ are, you can fill this form to answer the following questions:

All questions are optional, so you can remain anonymous. That being said, the more you share, the easier it will be to identify you. To minimise selection bias, I encourage you to answer at least the 1st question. You are also welcome to share your responses below as answers to this post.

Feel free to check the submitted responses. You can update your own by submitting the form again.

For reference, you do not need to read the rest of the post to answer the questions.

My thoughts on transparency

Here are my thoughts on transparency:

My experience

I am a research associate at Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED), for which I work as a contractor. I have publicly expressed views which do not conform to those of my organisation nor manager. My sense is that both ALLFED and my manager would have preferred it if I had not:

I felt mild pressure to conform, which I guess came from status quo bias. “A preference for the maintenance of one’s current or previous state of affairs, or a preference to not undertake any action to change this current or previous state”. It is unusual for people to be critical of the work of their organisations. By doing so, I perceived myself as going against the external and internal status quo.

My guess is that the median monthly active user of the EA Forum would not have done any of the above conditional on having my object-level views, but their personality and takes on transparency. However:

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Anonymous Person 1, Anonymous Person 2, Anonymous Person 3, Anonymous Person 4, Anonymous Person 5, Farrah Dingal, Oliver Habryka, Pedro Amaral Grilo, Saulius Ĺ imÄŤikas and Sonia Cassidy for feedback on the draft[3]. Thanks to ChatGPT 4 and Pedro for feedback on whether I should publish the post.

  1. ^

     I think the “not” in this sentence was mistakenly included.

  2. ^

     I actually have a hard time coming up with examples where I thought an organisation had better not be discussing something in public. However, feel free to point to examples you are aware of.

  3. ^

     Names ordered alphabetically.


Kirsten @ 2024-02-10T20:34 (+15)

As a government employee, I have a duty to speak candidly internally and not to share restricted information externally. I suspect most organisations have weaker but similar norms about the difference between how you speak to colleagues and externals.

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T21:32 (+3)

Thanks for sharing, Kirsten!

Kirsten @ 2024-02-10T22:42 (+2)

Sorry, did this always say externally? Maybe I just need better reading comprehension!

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T22:47 (+2)

I have not changed the text since I posted.

Kirsten @ 2024-02-10T22:48 (+4)

Okay, sorry for misreading, the poll makes much more sense now! I've edited the first part of my comment at it doesn't make much sense

Derek Shiller @ 2024-02-10T14:04 (+13)

There is some nuance to the case that seems to get overlooked in the poll. I feel completely free to express opinions in a personal capacity that might be at odds with my employer, but I also feel that there are some things it would be inappropriate to say while carrying out my job without running it by them first. It seems like you're interested in the latter feeling, but the poll is naturally interpreted as addressing the former.

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T20:11 (+2)

Thanks for commenting, Derek!

It seems like you're interested in the latter feeling, but the poll is naturally interpreted as addressing the former.

I think both the types of pressure you mention are interesting. Feel free to elaborate on your experience in the answer to the question "What is your experience?".

Jeroen De Ryck @ 2024-02-10T09:23 (+9)

Small question: Do you want anyone to fill in the form or only people working for EA related organisations?

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T13:00 (+3)

Thanks for asking, Jeroen! From my perspective, everyone is welcome to fill the form. Then people can specify the name of their organisation, just whether it is aligned with effective altruism or not, or none of these.

Sonia_Cassidy @ 2024-02-10T16:13 (+8)

Thank you, Vasco, for this, and also for the way you went about this. 

Transparent discussions around any issue are important to have and generally helpful, especially when motivated by truth-seeking and creating a better world.

It is something to be generally encouraged and not to limit or curtail. 

As you have yourself discovered, we are quite willing to engage in such conversations at ALLFED (on both personal and organisational level). You have suffered no repercussions for voicing not-quite-aligned opinions and, indeed, stimulated a whole bunch of healthy debates.

It is good to acknowledge that such conversations are rarely easy and usually uncomfortable. But the ability to gracefully engage in the difficult and the uncomfortable is in itself something to aspire to and in itself something of a measure of personal and organisational maturity.

In such conversations, a lot depends on the organisations’ - and one’s managers’ - willingness and ability to listen and to be disagreed with, and a lot also depends on the manner in which such issues are brought up. 

Speaking on behalf of ALLFED and with regard to this particular post, we appreciated the heads-up and not being surprised by it. This simple (?) act of care and courtesy can now, in turn, further facilitate conversations, and help build trust in everyone’s good will, and also in our collective ability and competence to have difficult conversations (on whatever subject). 

Personally - and here comes my “personal opinion” piece - I think that periodic shake-ups to any status quo are generally healthy and necessary for growth. I appreciate your courage to pursue your truth, especially taken your awareness that this is not “how things normally are done.” 

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T20:05 (+6)

Thanks, Sonia, I appreciate the way you handled the situation too!

Jason @ 2024-02-10T14:14 (+7)

One thing I think missing from the form IMO -- there can be many forms of pressure. Those include pressure not to expressing views that dont align with the organization's, pressure not to express controversial views, and pressure not to express one's own personal views in domain-related fields at all.

You seem to be mainly focused on the first type, but the second and the third types often cause or imply the first. I suspect that what to do about a reluctance will differ on whether it is fundamentally of the first, second, or third types. But if I filled out the survey, I don't think the results would convey that my non-EA org doesn't really want personal commentary on job-relevant issues at all (whether it diverges from the party line or not).

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T20:14 (+2)

Nice points, Jason!

But if I filled out the survey, I don't think the results would convey that my non-EA org doesn't really want personal commentary on job-relevant issues at all (whether it diverges from the party line or not).

Feel free to elaborate on your experience in the answer to the question "What is your experience?".

JuanGarcia @ 2024-02-10T20:08 (+2)

I incorrectly posted something as answer

Vasco Grilo @ 2024-02-10T20:24 (+3)

Thanks for commenting, Juan! I think it would be better to share that as a comment instead of an answer.