Hi EA Forum,
I'm Holden Karnofsky I'm here to answer any questions about jobs at Open Philanthropy. I'll be here today from 9:30am to 12:30pm Pacific time (with some breaks) and will likely respond to comments later on as well.
We'd hate to miss out on strong applicants because of misconceptions about the roles, so I hope people will ask whatever is on their mind, on topics from office environment to day-to-day work to the likely long-term trajectory of the role. I think Open Philanthropy jobs are among the best possible ways for effective altruists to have impact, and I hope anyone who could imagine performing well in these jobs will at least consider applying!
Please post different questions as separate comments, for discussion threading.
Looking forward to it!
Added 12:32pm Pacific time: This concludes the "official" portion of the AMA, but feel free to post more questions; we may respond to them later on!
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.