“Appreciating Stable Support Roles at EA Orgs” by Amy Labenz

I recently had a conversation with a teammate that made me reflect on a possible cultural issue within the EA community. This teammate had expressed in a few meetings that they wanted to take on various new projects and expand their scope of responsibility. As their manager, I wanted to have Alliance Mentality to support them where possible. However, from my perspective, a slightly more tightly scoped role was probably a bit better for the team: their core responsibilities are vital for the team (and for what it's worth, when I try to do them, I'm much worse at them!).

During our recent one-on-one, realized that we both preferred the more tightly scoped role. More importantly, we uncovered that they had internalized a cultural norm from EA that people needed to be constantly changing or expanding their roles to be doing a good job.

I wanted to write a [...]

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Outline:

(00:58) The Pressure to Change Roles

(01:42) The Value of Steady Hands

(02:38) Shifting the Narrative

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First published:
September 30th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Q3DbyrFjqED9Y5Rz3/appreciating-stable-support-roles-at-ea-orgs

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.