Gavriel Kleinwaks
Posts 5
Comments8
Great questions--my colleagues and I (at 1Day Sooner) have actually spoken to representatives from HERA and BARDA (which is under HHS) who are very interested in the potential of far-UVC. What we've seen is that policymakers are genuinely concerned about the effectiveness and safety of widespread far-UVC use, and want to see greater research in the field, without necessarily being able to guarantee that funding themselves. We, and other organizations, have been advocating for and trying to organize research and pilot programs. (I don't have a good sense of the international advocacy field around pandemic prep, though; most of our partners are based in the US.) I think that generally advocacy has actually been fairly specific, or at least been targeted at understanding specific concerns from policymakers, but it's not surprising that this doesn't necessarily come across at a glance. The more detailed and specific the plan, the more technical it gets and the more it's being communicated person-to-person or through gigantic reports. Our report does contain specific recommendations in the "Bottlenecks and Funding Opportunities" section if you'd like to check it out!
Thanks so much for the kind words about our report! We actually published an updated version just an hour ago--you can see the new report here and the forum announcement with a summary here. (Small note on organizational affiliation: the report is a collaboration between 1Day Sooner and Rethink Priorities.)
My typical week has 4-6 meetings. I usually have 3 standing meetings: staff meeting, a check-in with my boss, and a meeting with a project collaborator. Then each week I usually wind up having 1-3 extra one-off meetings related to projects, like a check-in with a contractor, an informational meeting with a researcher, or a brainstorming session with a colleague. Internal meetings tend to be 60-90 minutes whereas one-offs with external parties tend to be 30-40 minutes. If eg project schedules sync in a weird way, I might get up to 8 meetings, but that's uncommon. (Some of my colleagues have much more meeting-heavy schedules; it depends on the project and what stage they're on.)
In terms of booking: I find my existing meeting schedule very easy to handle, and place a high value on personally being helpful and accessible to others. So I've intentionally set up my Calendly to show slots at any time during my working hours and to be book-able on fairly short notice. But that's totally self-motivated! (Due to working fully remotely, I actually legitimately like having a meeting to break up the day.)
Hi, sorry to hear about your experience! I work in a research/project management-type role. My workload fluctuates a huge amount by week, and I do typically work long hours, but even when I have a particularly heavy week, it hardly ever feels like I'm "on call." Within a week, I can largely organize my work as I see fit and I believe this is mostly true for my colleagues in similar roles; the only time we behave as if we are on call is for major deadlines. I occasionally take meetings at weird times due to international partnerships, but always with plenty of advance notice.
And actually, when it comes to ops roles, our head of ops is very encouraging of people protecting their vacation time. I give her a ton of credit for being thoughtful and intentional about how to develop a healthy culture around working hours/protected time, especially given that we're an international organization spread out across time zones. Of course it mattered that she's one of the co-founders and could lay out reasonable expectations--ie, she wasn't going to always be on call, and wouldn't expect anyone else to.
I think unquestionably certain roles are more demanding in hours, responsiveness, or both, but that should be made clear in job descriptions or interviews, and hopefully allow you to make an informed decision--eg, one former colleague was hired for a comms role explicitly described as involving "rapid response," so you can predict that would put you more on call than other roles at the same org.
So basically, my sense is that:
a) roles in ops & events management will have more "fires to put out" than other roles in the same organization, but also
b) ops will have more "fires" at some organizations than others, and
c) if someone at a high enough level cares, they can just lay out norms, and that will shape org culture.
Although my feelings are broadly more optimistic about EA's ability to improve its institutions and move forward than many stances I've seen, the entire trajectory of the FTX blowup has made me prefer the idea of a career that takes me farther away from insular EA bubbles, rather than a career that immerses me in EA bubbles. It's not a huge change--I just used to think that I wouldn't particularly care if I stayed in an EA bubble professionally, and now that seems unwise, making some career choices even more favorable than previously. This article specifically didn't cause the change, but it's something I've been mulling over for a while and I think this simply crystallized the thought for me.
Super seconded! I have had a couple of EA-curious friends (who would be a great fit for EA, very passionate and smart and dedicated to positively impacting the world) ask if I would recommend attending a conference, and had to awkwardly explain that although I loved my experience at EAG, they would probably not get in. I was able to recommend EAGx as a more accessible alternative, but the American EAGx conferences are pretty student-oriented, still have illegible admissions criteria, and wouldn't necessarily present the benefits of EAG as efficiently to post-grads. There NEEDS to be an accessible event I can invite people to. ETA: I think it's fine to have events with different levels of accessibility, it's just frustrating that the current combo doesn't really provide a good entry point/thing to invite people to. Making admissions criteria more legible, especially for EAGx, could help address this.
Thanks so much for the kind feedback and comparison calculation! Your skepticism about the eACH estimates is warranted--I was unaware that coronaviruses were unusually susceptible (compared with other viruses, you mean?); the estimates we saw were all based on either SARS-CoV-2 or tuberculosis (also quite susceptible). It's useful to know how other people are approaching this question, and ultimately the problem calls for much more extensive real-world observations.