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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: Software Developers: Should you apply to work at CEA?, published by Yonatan Cale on March 16, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. CEA tries pretty hard to make it easy and worthwhile for you to apply to work there: No cover letter needed, only your CV and a quick question about your experience in EA (it can be answered in one line) They’ll tell you in advance (after looking at your CV) if they think it’s worth your while interviewing, so you won’t waste time on long interviews if not You can re-apply any time, you are not burning yourself or your reputation. They’ll give you reasonably detailed feedback if you’re rejected at a later stage, so at least you’ll learn something useful You won’t waste their time by applying. If they were afraid of having their time wasted, they’d say so, and they ask people to trust them on this rather than making that decision for them. It will make Ben happy :) If you were accepted to CEA, would you want to work there? If so, apply here If not, Please fill in this anonymous form and tell us why. What is the consideration we forgot? If you’re not sure CEA is a good fit for you, read on: More about the application process Consider skipping to what CEA does if you don’t care about the application process What’s the bar for getting invited to an interview? Ben (CEA’s Head of Online) wants to hire senior people, but he has a nontrivial definition for what that means (for example, you don’t necessarily need “Senior” in your title), and we both think it is preferable to apply and let Ben run his own algorithm. But if you want this algorithm anyway, message one of us and we’ll send it to you. What’s the interview process? A 15 minute call for you to ask questions A 2.5 hour Python/javascript task that you do alone. You’ll probably pass if you can do this in 30 minutes. A 1.5 hour technical interview: Talk about your solution to the task above Take a look at a piece of terrible code, and rant about explain what’s wrong with it A 1 hour interview with our People Operations Team Talk about your involvement with the EA community and/or how you implement EA ideas in your life. Talk to the online team for 30 minutes. Software engineers are often socially awkward, this is fine. CEA aren’t looking for you to be a social butterfly, but they want to be sure they can communicate with you about things like a project you’ve worked on, or a technical trade-off you had to make. Possible follow-up interview(s). CEA will tell you if they have open questions and what they’d like to talk about. 1-2 day paid work trial: For example, CEA’s recent hire did this. What feedback will you get if you’re rejected? It depends on which stage you reach Before the interview: categorical feedback, such as “not enough experience” or “not involved enough with EA”. After the first trial task: ~90% of rejections are “the test cases (which they sent you) didn’t pass”. ~10% are “your solution functionally worked but the way you implemented the solution was complicated/confusing/not following best practices. If you show your solution to an experienced engineer, they will probably be able to use it for a short mentoring session”. At a later stage: if requested, Ben will provide 1-3 paragraphs of feedback. What products does CEA work on? Some EAs help people. Some EAs help animals. CEA helps EAs. CEA does this with: The EA Forum EffectiveAltruism.org Virtual Programs The EA Newsletter Also, see their github Are those products important? Well, you could make some complicated impact calculation where you give some amount of $ per post written or viewed, but I think it’s more concrete to imagine the impact of specific features: What if we wouldn’t have a karma system, or forum tags that let people find more on a specific topic, or a newsletter (which currently has 60k subscribers)? What...