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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Operations is really demanding, published by jwithing on March 29, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Operations is really, really demanding. I work as a software product manager, but spend two weeks a year as a reservist at a US Navy operations center. There I work 12 hour shifts where I send chat and email messages, make and take phone calls, and otherwise try to be of use. Before I was a full-time software PM, I was a full-time submariner where I project managed our ship's maintenance. My current workplace is a large e-commerce company with heavy operations footprint. My experiences there confirm what I already knew from the Navy--operations is a really demanding field. Operations is so, so important! How do we make it less demanding to its practitioners? What is operations? I want to play a little bit with the version of operations discussed in the 80,000 Hours career guide. Organizations have people that create things (medicine/widgets/research), people that highlight the value of these goods (salespeople/marketers/outreach), and then people that make sure all of the above goes smoothly--those are the operations folks. The career guide focuses on operations as the support class of the organization: HR, recruiting, finance, etc. But if GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation, or any org that delivers aid/goods are within the scope of "high-impact organizations," then operations might be the org's core competency, rather than something (relatively) behind-the-scenes. Their operations teams are responsible for delivering the products. Both forms of operations are hyper challenging and undervalued. Why is operations especially demanding? Operations is especially demanding because the scope and impact of its errors. Because operations deals heavily with human systems, the scope of ways things can wrong is nearly unbounded. You can't debug or test human systems. You can provide all the thoughtful written documentation on "How to X" but humans can still find a way to get it wrong. This is unlike code or other forms engineering--those objects do precisely what you tell it to do! So not only are the failure modes unbounded, the impact of an operations team's error can be quite high. Think about botching payroll, event execution, HR policies, or having an unprepared executive. An organization can't readily undo these things or make them "right." A poor marketer/salesperson/researcher has limited downside by comparison--they just cost you money. Bad ops exacts institutional damage. OK, but what exactly about operations especially demanding? Operations staff are keenly aware of the stakes of their work, and tirelessly work to reduce the chance of errors. This is super demanding! Consider the following real-life examples I've witnessed or personally dealt with in my most recent two weeks of operations work. Perhaps these are military heavy, but I'm sure they have analogs elsewhere: It's 1am on a Thursday night. The flight scheduled for midnight didn't happen, and now your team is running behind schedule. You get a call about this, and need to get some guidance from your boss so now you call them. Both of you will need to be in the office by 8am. It's 6pm on Sunday night. The scheduler for a Royal Navy admiral calls you to get something on the calendar with your US Navy admiral tomorrow. The earlier in the morning the better--can you accommodate? Your executive gets a daily report on operations, including on the weekend. The last few times the report hasn't been made to standard so you need to come in Saturday and Sunday mornings to make sure they're done properly. The above may seem pretty mundane, and it is if you work in ops. But human systems run 24/7. The cost of operations errors is high. Combine those two things and operations staff are never really quite off-the-c...