Sometimes people suggest a norm of not pitching people who are already in high-impact roles, for instance because they’re unlikely to accept, or because it might be bad if they did accept, because their current role is really high impact.
I think this is wrong.
I don’t think it’s uncooperative to pitch people if you would like them to work at your org:
- In general I think that you end up with better talent allocation if you have a system where everyone does this and then the individuals decide than if people are too timid to pitch.
- If you don’t pitch them, you deprive them of the information that you’d like to work with them (which might not be obvious to them), and lose any possibility of them joining (even when it might be optimal).
- Obviously, sometimes individuals will decide to accept the “wrong” offer - the offer that is lower impact.
- But overall I expect individuals to make better decisions than the organizations that might pitch them: individuals have info about their private preferences and circumstances, as well as more detailed info about both options, whereas the pitching orgs mostly have info on only how good their option is.
- It’s often hard to tell when people might want to join: maybe people have a personal reason to move cities, maybe they’re not enjoying their current role, etc. Asking them lets the system incorporate this non-public / non-obvious info.
- More deontologically, I think it’s good to empower people over their career decisions and not make choices for them.
- Not doing this is arguably illegal (collusion between employers)
In my experience the above is the established norm in EA orgs (e.g. I think 80k strongly thinks this, this was our policy at CEA - and that’s a reciprocal norm, e.g. 80k would be fine with CEA pitching its staff, and vice versa).
Things that I think would be bad, but which I’m not suggesting here:
- Doing a disingenuous pitch
- Giving misleading views about whether you think someone should join your org (e.g. sometimes I pitch people, but tell them that I think they probably shouldn’t join us because their current role seems stronger in terms of fit / impact)
- (less sure) Being (excessively) negative about their current / other options. (edited)