Hi, I'm Holden Karnofsky. AMA about jobs at Open Philanthropy

A few things that come to mind:

1. The work is challenging, and not everyone is able to perform at a high enough level to see the career progression they want.

2. The culture tends toward direct communication. People are expected to be open with criticism, both of people they manage and of people who manage them. This can be uncomfortable for some people (though we try hard to create a supportive and constructive context).

3. The work is often solitary, consisting of reading/writing/analysis and one-on-one checkins rather than large-group collaboration. It's possible that this will change for some roles in the future (e.g. it's possible that we'll want more large-group collaboration as our cause prioritization team grows), but we're not sure of that.

The role does include all three of those things, and I think all three things are well served by the job qualifications listed in the posting. A common thread is that all involve trying to deliver an informative, well-calibrated answer to an action-relevant question, largely via discussion with knowledgeable parties and critical assessment of evidence and arguments.

In general, we have a list of the projects that we consider most important to complete, and we look for good matches between high-ranked projects and employees who seem well suited to them. I expect that most entry-level Research Analysts will try their hand at both cause prioritization and grant investigation work, and we'll develop a picture of what they're best at that we can then use to assign them more of one or the other (or something else, such as the work listed at https://www.openphilanthropy.org/get-involved/jobs/analyst-specializing-potential-risks-advanced-artificial-intelligence) over time.

There will probably be similar roles in the future, though I can't guarantee that. To become a better candidate, one can accomplish objectively impressive things (especially if they're relevant to effective altruism); create public content that gives a sense for how they think (e.g., a blog); or get to know people in the effective altruism community to increase the odds that one gets a positive & meaningful referral.

Responding to your second formulation of the question, the answer is "more the latter than the former." We intend to invest heavily in training and mentoring new hires, and we hope that research analysts will end up being long-term core contributors at Open Phil — as research analysts, as grant investigators, and as high-level managers, among other roles — or, in some cases, in important roles that require similar skills outside Open Phil.

Thanks for the question - I have wondered the same, as I also studied History at undergraduate level.

A slight detour from your question, but maybe of interest. There is currently is no community / FB group for people with backgrounds or research interests in History within EA that I know of. There have been quite a few times when discussions around the usefulness of historical studies has come up and it might be good to share ideas and collaborate.

I don't have time to try and coordinate this at the moment, but it seems like trying to establish some sort of discussion forum (or organisation?) for using the study of history to advance our understanding of (and strategy towards) cause areas which are often prioritised within EA.

If this is something you (or anyone else seeing this) has an interest in me developing, it's something to bear in mind? People should feel free to contact me at james_a_harris [at] hotmail.co.uk if you want to talk about it further.

Examples: I'm thinking primarily within Effective Animal Advocacy (Sentience Institute's study of the British antislavery movement; ACE discontinuing their social studies project; technology adoption being considered as a precedent for clean meat e.g. by Sentience Institute and Paul Shapiro) but this would also apply to other fields. The systematic approach described in the post linked at [1] seems to correlate more closely with the approach Holden and others took at OPP than it does the studies done in the Effective Animal Advocacy sphere.

[1] http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1lz/why_we_should_be_doing_more_systematic_research/

OpenPhil is big on history, I would apply.

(I work for Open Phil.)

As Holden said elsewhere, "Quantitative aptitude is not a hard requirement for this position (there are some ways the role could evolve that would not require it), but it's a major plus." In that sense we prefer candidates with quantitative/technical majors, but also note that in most cases we pay more attention to an applicant's performance on the work tests that are part of our application process than we do to their CV.

Research experience in a current Open Phil focus area is a bonus, but less important than general quantitative aptitude and performance on our work tests.

We don't control the visa process and can't ensure that people will get sponsorship. We don't expect sponsorship requirements to be a major factor for us in deciding which applicants to move forward with.

Yes, we recently removed a 2-question timed test from the job ad page. We wanted to lower the cost of submitting an initial application, and also we want to filter some applications before we request that applicants take the timed test. However, we are still using this timed test in an early part of our application process, and we still think it is diagnostic of who will be a good fit for our research analyst positions.

(I work for Open Phil.)

All bios here: https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team

Grants Associates and Operations Associates are likely to report to Derek or Morgan. Research Analysts are likely to report to people who have been in similar roles for a while, such as Ajeya, Claire, Luke and Nick. None of this is set in stone though.

We're flexible. People don't clock in or out; we evaluate performance based on how much people get done on a timescale of months. We encourage people to work hard but also prioritize work-life balance. The right balance varies by the individual.

Most people here work more than one would in a traditional 9-5 job. (A common figure is 35-40 "focused" hours per week.) I think that reflects that they're passionate about their work rather than that they feel pressure from management to work a lot. We regularly check in with people about work-life balance and encourage them to work less if it seems this would be good for their happiness.

We could certainly imagine ramping up grantmaking without a much better answer. As an institution we're often happy to go with a "hacky" approach that is suboptimal, but captures most of the value available under multiple different assumptions.

If someone at Open Phil has an idea for how to make useful progress on this kind of question in a reasonable amount of time, we'll very likely find that worthwhile and go forward. But there are lots of other things for Research Analysts to work on even if we don't put much more time into researching or reflecting on moral uncertainty.

Also note that we may pursue an improved understanding via grantmaking rather than via researching the question ourselves.

GiveWell's CEA was produced by multiple people over multiple years - we wouldn't expect a single person to generate the whole thing :)

I do think you should probably be able to imagine yourself engaging in a discussion over some particular parameter or aspect of GiveWell's CEA, and trying to improve that parameter or aspect to better capture what we care about (good accomplished per dollar). Quantitative aptitude is not a hard requirement for this position (there are some ways the role could evolve that would not require it), but it's a major plus.

What's Givewell's CEA?

Jumping in here for Holden (I'm an Open Phil RA)…

We would like our Research Analysts to work in the SF office most of the time, with 'partly remote' in the job ad meaning that they can occasionally work from home/different locations. Despite our policy, we aren't totally closed to the idea of hiring someone who mostly works remotely, but they'd have to meet a higher bar.

We do formal performance reviews twice per year, and we ask managers to use their regular (~weekly) checkins with reports to sync up on performance such that nothing in these reviews should be surprising. There's no unified metric for an employee's output here; we set priorities for the organization, set assignments that serve these priorities, set case-by-case timelines and goals for the assignments (in collaboration with the people who will be working on them), and compare output to the goals we had set.

We're in the process of reviewing our policies, but we're likely to settle on something like 25 paid days off (including sick days), 10 holiday days (with the option to work on holidays and use the paid time off elsewhere), several months of paid parental leave, and a flexible unpaid leave policy for people who want to take more time off. We are also flexible with respect to working from home.

We're certainly not using the same standards as academia! In general, we aim to base assignments on a combination of 1. How we judge what's most important to do (in terms of accomplishing as much good as possible) 2. What the employees themselves are motivated and interested to work on (including their own judgments of how to do as much good as possible).

(I work for Open Phil.)

Comparing to academia, I'd say that research at Open Phil is (1) consistently targeted at what will help us do as much good as possible rather than what is most intellectually interesting or prestigious, (2) aimed at informing our actions as cheaply as possible, meaning that we cut corners when we don't think doing so will change our bottom-line conclusions, rather than trying to live up to the standards for thoroughness etc. expected in academia, and (3) only aimed at what academia would consider "novel research" when that's what is required to help us do the most good.

Most of the roles here involve a lot of independent work, consisting of reading/writing/analysis and one-on-one checkins rather than large-group collaboration. It’s possible that this will change for some roles in the future (e.g. it’s possible that we’ll want more large-group collaboration as our cause prioritization team grows), but we’re not sure of that. I think you should probably be prepared for a fair amount of work along the lines of what I've described here.

I answered a similar question here: http://effective-altruism.com/ea/1mf/hi_im_holden_karnofsky_ama_about_jobs_at_open/dpl

In general, people who have been in the Research Analyst role for a while will be the managers and primary mentors of new Research Analysts. There will be regular (~weekly) scheduled checkins as well as informal interaction as needed (e.g., over Slack).

There's no hard line between training and "just doing the work" - every assignment should have some direct value and some training value. We expect to lean pretty hard toward the training end of the spectrum for people's first few months, then gradually move along the spectrum to where assignments are more optimized for direct value.

I would rate those about equally, though I'd add that GiveWell would prefer not to hire people whose main goal is to go to OP.

We currently have a happy hour every 3 weeks and host group activities as well, including occasional parties and a multiple-day staff retreat this year. We want to make it easy for staff to socialize and be friends, without making it a requirement or an overly hard nudge (if people would rather stick to their work, that's fine by us).

Quick replies to each:

1a. Our goals for 2018 are laid out in the post you linked to.

1b. The expectation is based mostly on the fact that we gave well over $100 million last year, and we're devoting similar time and effort to grantmaking in 2018.

2a. Open Phil is still a fairly new organization, and I don't think many know much about us yet. Probably we are best known in the effective altruism community, where we seem to have a strong reputation.

2b. Does it matter for our reputation, do you mean? I'm not sure. I'm not aware of us having received critiques about that.

Because applicants are working through our application process at different speeds, we're still learning what portion of applicants are invited forward at each stage. We are also adjusting the process as we go along. As of today, our application process looks like this:

1. Initial submission of application + résumé.
2. 2-question timed test.
3. A "conversation notes" work test. (compensated via honorarium)
4. A brief call, to explain the rest of our process and answer the applicant's questions.
5. An "internal grant write-up" work test. (compensated via honorarium)

To some degree we are still determining next steps after #5, and they depend somewhat on the applicant's availability and preferences, and that's the main thing we discuss with applicants at step #4, on an individual basis.

(I work for Open Phil.)

Spending time with GiveWell's CEA is probably more helpful than reading a textbook. You could also just practice doing Fermi estimates in general.

This varies by the individual. We have some Research Analysts who are always working on a variety of things, and some who have become quite specialized. It varies largely by the interests/preferences of the employee.

All else equal, we consider applicants stronger when they have degrees in challenging fields from strong institutions. It’s not the only thing we’re looking at, even at that early stage. And the early stage is for filtering; ultimately, things like work trial assignments will be far more important to hiring decisions.

I am a Program Officer at Open Philanthropy who joined as a Research Analyst about 3 years ago.

The prior two places I lived were New Brunswick, NJ and Oxford, UK. I live in a house with a few friends. It is 25-30m commute door-to-door via BART. My rent and monthly expenses are comparable to what I had in Oxford but noticeably larger than what I had in New Brunswick. I got pay increases when I moved to Open Phil, and additional raises over time. I’m comfortable on my current salary and could afford to get a single-bedroom apartment if I wanted, but I’m happy where I am.

Overall, I would say that it was an easy adjustment.

Perhaps other staff will chime in here, but my take: our pay is competitive and takes cost of living into account, and we are near public transportation, so I don't think the rents or commutes are a major issue. As a former NYC resident, I think the Bay Area is a great place to live (weather, food, etc.) and has a very strong effective altruist community. I don't see a lot of drawbacks to living here if you can make it work.