This was repeatedly brought up in the comments of TracingWoodgrains's LW post about Nonlinear, but I think after this post I am even more convinced that it's (probably long past) time for EA orgs to halt most or all innovation/novelty/experimentation in the space of organizational structure. It turns out that perhaps Chesterton's fence applies very strongly here, and that all those "velocity-killing" formalisms of bureaucracy probably exist for good reasons and should not be lightly abandoned. I don't know if this should elevated to some kind of global principle, but at the very least I think I personally will be adopting a code of no longer donating to any EA organization which does not publicly commit to all of
1. Everyone is either a salaried or hourly employee, or a paid contractor, under the normal laws of the applicable territory (in the US, either a W-2 or 1099 employee)
2. Romantic relationships between people and their supervisors, or between the *anyone* in the org and *anyone* in the org's senior leadership, are forbidden by policy
3. No "company housing". The org can pay you a rent stipend if need be, but there can be no mandatory requirement that you will live with other members of the org outside working hours, and frankly even having it be an option is suspicious to me
4. No mentions whatsoever of drugs during work hours or work-associated social events. I am a big fan of drugs myself, and I like to talk about them with friends and, very occasionally, even coworkers, but it appears to be a common denominator in many stories of EA orgs gone wrong that people are talking about psychedelics/nootropics to their subordinates the same way they do with their close friends, which puts those people in a very awkward position
There are other requirements I'd like to see to prevent the cultishness and abuses of power which seem endemic to all the EA horror stories, but I'm not sure how I would formalize them in a way an HR department could print out in a company handbook.
And this doesn't seem like it's asking very much. 1 through 4 are utterly uncontroversial at normal companies and charities. Indeed, an HR rep from any normal company would probably look at those and barely understand how an org could possibly not have them, but that's the situation EA keeps finding itself in, to repeated failure. Whatever gains in efficiency and efficacy at "the mission" might hypothetically come from abandoning these, they clearly have been swamped in practice by the problems they cause. I won't speak for anyone else, but personally I am now convinced that it's time to go back to being boring, organizationally speaking, and doing one's best to be efficacious despite that.
Huh, the thing I notice most in this that doesn't seem to have been explicitly commented on is, like, the disregard of people who were sick or otherwise having medical needs, or having family emergencies. I should note that I mostly haven't read the original sources, I've primarily read just this post. But, from this post, we have:
> Alice was sick with covid and in complete isolation. She requested a vegan burger from Burger King, but Emerson and Drew refused because they wanted to work in a place with a nicer atmosphere.
She is sick! Can you not do this for someone who is sick?
> Kat and Emerson discouraged Alice from visiting her family because her trip overlapped with "some of the top figures in the field" coming to visit. (The chatlogs are suggestive that Alice timed her visit around a family emergency, but Kat doesn't explicitly mention this.)
Another similar instance!
> Emerson refused to drive Chloe to a medical errand when Chloe couldn’t drive; Kat thinks this is all right because Chloe was an assistant so she shouldn’t cost Emerson time.
It is a medical matter! Fricking help the person who needs medical help!
> Chloe claims that she had to come up with cool things for people to do in order to get them to drive her places—even for medically necessary trips.
I disagree with your assessment of there being only three factual errors in the original article and am obviously dramatically more critical of it than you are, but on net I think this is a thorough, useful, and defensible perspective on the situation. While my own angle on much of what you cover is different to your own, you bring up a lot of points worth considering. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
EDIT: To clarify, I don’t think you grapple nearly enough with the extent to which the well was poisoned and you work within and in support of that context, which I do think is bad. Given that caveat, though, the article is reasonable.
Thanks for the writeup! Very helpful. I’m curious: are you planning to cross-post this to the forum? I imagine it could be useful for some people there but I also completely understand wanting to stay away from all of that
> A person should not simultaneously be your friend, your housemate, your mentee, an employee of the charity you founded, and the person you pay to clean your house.
Decoupling hat on: This looks A LOT like the role of an apprentice (lives with you, you teach them things, pay them, and they clean up). I guess if you have an apprentice you shouldn't try and be their friend (also romantic partner) until AFTER their apprenticeship is over. If a friendship develops, change some other aspect quickly, otherwise problems will emerge.
Unpaid workers are absolutely not employees as a legal matter, they are volunteers. Edit: or possibly interns, IF the requirements for an internship are met. Contractors are similarly not employees. So I'd give Ben Pace that one.
There's a sentiment on the EA forum that your text should be there in full. I created the link post; is it okay if I copy the entire post as well? (You could do it yourself ofc, but I assume you didn't on purpose.)
> They traveled with Chloe's boyfriend, whom Kat Woods considered to "have high potential."
Chloe's boyfriend was initially invited to travel with them, then Kat (or Emerson?) decided he was low-value. I think at that point they sent him home and Chloe was isolated from then onward.
> Drew and Alice dated, but to her credit Kat disapproved.
This isn't to Kat's credit, as if she made a professional recommendation to her enter not to date her boss's brother. Kat disapproved because she is uncomfortable with polyamory.
On one hand, you're like if what Kat is saying is true, then X is obviously a broken stair who people should know about. On the other hand, you're like, it's clearly out of bounds to mention their mental health history even in an anonymised form.
I don't know how you can hold both positions simultaneously. At least to me, the former seems like a stronger action than the later.
This was repeatedly brought up in the comments of TracingWoodgrains's LW post about Nonlinear, but I think after this post I am even more convinced that it's (probably long past) time for EA orgs to halt most or all innovation/novelty/experimentation in the space of organizational structure. It turns out that perhaps Chesterton's fence applies very strongly here, and that all those "velocity-killing" formalisms of bureaucracy probably exist for good reasons and should not be lightly abandoned. I don't know if this should elevated to some kind of global principle, but at the very least I think I personally will be adopting a code of no longer donating to any EA organization which does not publicly commit to all of
1. Everyone is either a salaried or hourly employee, or a paid contractor, under the normal laws of the applicable territory (in the US, either a W-2 or 1099 employee)
2. Romantic relationships between people and their supervisors, or between the *anyone* in the org and *anyone* in the org's senior leadership, are forbidden by policy
3. No "company housing". The org can pay you a rent stipend if need be, but there can be no mandatory requirement that you will live with other members of the org outside working hours, and frankly even having it be an option is suspicious to me
4. No mentions whatsoever of drugs during work hours or work-associated social events. I am a big fan of drugs myself, and I like to talk about them with friends and, very occasionally, even coworkers, but it appears to be a common denominator in many stories of EA orgs gone wrong that people are talking about psychedelics/nootropics to their subordinates the same way they do with their close friends, which puts those people in a very awkward position
There are other requirements I'd like to see to prevent the cultishness and abuses of power which seem endemic to all the EA horror stories, but I'm not sure how I would formalize them in a way an HR department could print out in a company handbook.
And this doesn't seem like it's asking very much. 1 through 4 are utterly uncontroversial at normal companies and charities. Indeed, an HR rep from any normal company would probably look at those and barely understand how an org could possibly not have them, but that's the situation EA keeps finding itself in, to repeated failure. Whatever gains in efficiency and efficacy at "the mission" might hypothetically come from abandoning these, they clearly have been swamped in practice by the problems they cause. I won't speak for anyone else, but personally I am now convinced that it's time to go back to being boring, organizationally speaking, and doing one's best to be efficacious despite that.
Huh, the thing I notice most in this that doesn't seem to have been explicitly commented on is, like, the disregard of people who were sick or otherwise having medical needs, or having family emergencies. I should note that I mostly haven't read the original sources, I've primarily read just this post. But, from this post, we have:
> Alice was sick with covid and in complete isolation. She requested a vegan burger from Burger King, but Emerson and Drew refused because they wanted to work in a place with a nicer atmosphere.
She is sick! Can you not do this for someone who is sick?
> Kat and Emerson discouraged Alice from visiting her family because her trip overlapped with "some of the top figures in the field" coming to visit. (The chatlogs are suggestive that Alice timed her visit around a family emergency, but Kat doesn't explicitly mention this.)
Another similar instance!
> Emerson refused to drive Chloe to a medical errand when Chloe couldn’t drive; Kat thinks this is all right because Chloe was an assistant so she shouldn’t cost Emerson time.
It is a medical matter! Fricking help the person who needs medical help!
> Chloe claims that she had to come up with cool things for people to do in order to get them to drive her places—even for medically necessary trips.
This again!
I disagree with your assessment of there being only three factual errors in the original article and am obviously dramatically more critical of it than you are, but on net I think this is a thorough, useful, and defensible perspective on the situation. While my own angle on much of what you cover is different to your own, you bring up a lot of points worth considering. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
EDIT: To clarify, I don’t think you grapple nearly enough with the extent to which the well was poisoned and you work within and in support of that context, which I do think is bad. Given that caveat, though, the article is reasonable.
Thanks for the writeup! Very helpful. I’m curious: are you planning to cross-post this to the forum? I imagine it could be useful for some people there but I also completely understand wanting to stay away from all of that
> A person should not simultaneously be your friend, your housemate, your mentee, an employee of the charity you founded, and the person you pay to clean your house.
Decoupling hat on: This looks A LOT like the role of an apprentice (lives with you, you teach them things, pay them, and they clean up). I guess if you have an apprentice you shouldn't try and be their friend (also romantic partner) until AFTER their apprenticeship is over. If a friendship develops, change some other aspect quickly, otherwise problems will emerge.
Unpaid workers are absolutely not employees as a legal matter, they are volunteers. Edit: or possibly interns, IF the requirements for an internship are met. Contractors are similarly not employees. So I'd give Ben Pace that one.
There's a sentiment on the EA forum that your text should be there in full. I created the link post; is it okay if I copy the entire post as well? (You could do it yourself ofc, but I assume you didn't on purpose.)
Yeah this is a good take
> They traveled with Chloe's boyfriend, whom Kat Woods considered to "have high potential."
Chloe's boyfriend was initially invited to travel with them, then Kat (or Emerson?) decided he was low-value. I think at that point they sent him home and Chloe was isolated from then onward.
> Drew and Alice dated, but to her credit Kat disapproved.
This isn't to Kat's credit, as if she made a professional recommendation to her enter not to date her boss's brother. Kat disapproved because she is uncomfortable with polyamory.
I'm legitimately confused by your stance.
On one hand, you're like if what Kat is saying is true, then X is obviously a broken stair who people should know about. On the other hand, you're like, it's clearly out of bounds to mention their mental health history even in an anonymised form.
I don't know how you can hold both positions simultaneously. At least to me, the former seems like a stronger action than the later.