Yeah, this post makes me wonder if there are non-abusive employers in EA who are nevertheless enabling abusers by normalizing behavior that makes abuse popular. Employers who pay their employees months late without clarity on why and what the plan is to get people paid eventually. Employers who employ people without writing things down, like how much people will get paid and when. Employers who try to enforce non-disclosure of work culture and pay.
None of the things above are necessarily dealbreakers in the right context or environment, but when an employer does those things they are making it difficult to distinguish themself from an abusive employer, and also enabling abusive employers because they’re not obviously doing something nonstandard. This is highlighted by:
I relatedly think that the EA ecosystem doesn’t have reliable defenses against such predators.
If EAs want to have defenses, against these predators, they have to act in such a way that the early red flags here (not paid on time, no contracts just verbal agreements) are actually serious red flags by having non-abusive employers categorically not engage in them, and having more established EA employees react in horror if they hear about this happening.
Yeah, this post makes me wonder if there are non-abusive employers in EA who are nevertheless enabling abusers by normalizing behavior that makes abuse popular. Employers who pay their employees months late without clarity on why and what the plan is to get people paid eventually. Employers who employ people without writing things down, like how much people will get paid and when. Employers who try to enforce non-disclosure of work culture and pay.
Do any of those things happen much in EA? (I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an example of one of those things outside of Nonlinear, but maybe I’m out of the loop.)
CEA was pretty bad at this a few years ago, although I’m told they’ve improved. Things like forgetting to pay contractors, inconsistent about what expenses were reimbursable, even having people start trials without settling on salary.
Last year SERI MATS was pretty late on many people’s stipends, though my understanding is they were just going through some growing pains during that time, and they’re on the ball nowadays.
Yeah, to be clear I don’t have any information to suggest that the above is happening—I don’t work in EA circles—except for the fact that Ben said the EA ecosystem doesn’t have defenses against this happening, and that is one of the defenses I expect to exist.
Yeah, this post makes me wonder if there are non-abusive employers in EA who are nevertheless enabling abusers by normalizing behavior that makes abuse popular. Employers who pay their employees months late without clarity on why and what the plan is to get people paid eventually. Employers who employ people without writing things down, like how much people will get paid and when. Employers who try to enforce non-disclosure of work culture and pay.
None of the things above are necessarily dealbreakers in the right context or environment, but when an employer does those things they are making it difficult to distinguish themself from an abusive employer, and also enabling abusive employers because they’re not obviously doing something nonstandard. This is highlighted by:
If EAs want to have defenses, against these predators, they have to act in such a way that the early red flags here (not paid on time, no contracts just verbal agreements) are actually serious red flags by having non-abusive employers categorically not engage in them, and having more established EA employees react in horror if they hear about this happening.
Do any of those things happen much in EA? (I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an example of one of those things outside of Nonlinear, but maybe I’m out of the loop.)
CEA was pretty bad at this a few years ago, although I’m told they’ve improved. Things like forgetting to pay contractors, inconsistent about what expenses were reimbursable, even having people start trials without settling on salary.
Last year SERI MATS was pretty late on many people’s stipends, though my understanding is they were just going through some growing pains during that time, and they’re on the ball nowadays.
(Fwiw, I don’t remember problems with stipend payout at seri mats in the winter program. I was a winter scholar 2022⁄23.)
Yes. This was mats 2.0 in the summer of 2022.
Yeah, to be clear I don’t have any information to suggest that the above is happening—I don’t work in EA circles—except for the fact that Ben said the EA ecosystem doesn’t have defenses against this happening, and that is one of the defenses I expect to exist.