Open Call for Research Assistants in Developmental Interpretability
29Jesse Hoogland
9Thomas Kwa
9Jesse Hoogland
9MiguelDev
4epistemic meristem
4winstonBosan
13Jesse Hoogland
11kwiat.dev
2Chris_Leong
2Chris_Leong
3Stan van Wingerden
New Comment
Now that the deadline has arrived, I wanted to share some general feedback for the applicants and some general impressions for everyone in the space about the job market:
- My number one recommendation for everyone is to work on more legible projects and outputs. A super low-hanging fruit for >50% of the applications would be to clean up your GitHub profiles or to create a personal site. Make it really clear to us which projects you're proud of, so we don't have to navigate through a bunch of old and out-of-use repos from classes you took years ago. We don't have much time to spend on every individual application, so you want to make it really easy for us to become interested in you. I realize most people don't even know how to create a GitHub profile page, so check out this guide.
- We got 70 responses and will send out 10 invitations for interviews.
- We rejected a reasonable number of decent candidates outright because they were looking for part-time work. If this is you, don't feel dissuaded.
- There were quite a few really bad applications (...as always): poor punctuation/capitalization, much too informal, not answering the questions, totally unrelated background, etc. Two suggestions: (1) If you're the kind of person who is trying to application-max, make sure you actually fill in the application. A shitty application is actually worse than no application, and I don't know why I have to say that. (2) If English is not your first language, run your answers through ChatGPT. GPT-3.5 is free. (Actually, this advice is for everyone).
- Between 5 and 10 people expressed interest in an internship option. We're going to think about this some more. If this includes you, and you didn't mention it in your application, please reach out.
- Quite a few people came from a data science / analytics background. Using ML techniques is actually pretty different from researching ML techniques, so for many of these people I'd recommend you work on some kind of project in interpretability or related areas to demonstrate that you're well-suited to this kind of research.
- Remember that job applications are always noisy. We almost certainly made mistakes, so don't feel discouraged!
I would apply if the rate were more like USD $50/hour, considering the high cost of living in Berkeley. As it is this would be something like a 76% pay cut compared to the minimum ML engineer pay at Google and below typical grad student pay, and require an uncommon level of frugality.
Hey Thomas, I wrote about our reasoning for this in response to Winston:
All in all, we're expecting most of our hires to come from outside the US where the cost of living is substantially lower. If lower wages are a deal-breaker for anyone but you're still interested in this kind of work, please flag this in the form. The application should be low-effort enough that it's still worth applying.
1Hello, I agree with Jesse as the budget they have is really good for hiring capable alignment researchers here in Asia (I'm based currently in Chiang Mai, Thailand) or any other place where cost is extremely low compared back there in the West.
Good luck on this project team Dev Interp.
1More than a 76% pay cut, because a lot of the compensation at Google is equity+bonus+benefits; the $133k minimum listed at your link is just base salary.
Always welcome more optionality in the opportunity space!
Suggestion: Potential Improvement in Narrative Signalling by lowering the range of RAs to hire (thus increasing pay):
- If I were applying to this, I'd feel confused and slightly underappreciated if I had the right set of ML/Software Engineering skills but to be barely paid subsistence level for my full-time work (in NY).
- It seems like the funding amount is well corresponded to how much the grant is. I am rather naive when it comes to how much ML/engineering talent should be paid in pursuit of alignment goals. But it seems like $70k spread across 4 people at full-time (for half year each) is only slightly above minimal wage in many places.
- Comparisons: At 35k a year, it seems it might be considerably lower than industry equivalent even when compared to other programs
- Ex: Lightcone has a general policy of paying ~70% market pay for equivalent talent.
- Recalling from memory of LTFF/similar grants that experienced researchers were granted 70k ~ 200k for their individual research.
- A quick glance at 80k job-board for RAs nets me a range of 32,332 ~ 87,000.
- Ex: Lightcone has a general policy of paying ~70% market pay for equivalent talent.
- Of course... money is tight: The grant constraint is well acknowledged here. But potentially the number of RAs expected to hire can be further down adjusted as while potentially increasing the submission rate of the candidates that truly fits the requirement of the research program.
- Hiring more might not work as intended: Also, it might come as a surprise that fewer people to manage will turn out to be a blessing rather than a curse - hiring one's way out of something is tempting but should usually be tempered with caution.
- Thing I might have got wrong:
- The intended audiences and people of the right skill-set will not be in countries where the salary is barely above subsistence level.
- The Research Project has decided that people who possesses an instinct for "I'd like to work here, but please give me X because I think I am worth that much and can offer at least that much value" is generally a poor fit for the project.
- A misunderstanding the salary distribution and the rate of deterioration of the current financial climate within the scene.
Overall, I am glad y'all exist! Good luck :)
Hey Winston, thanks for writing this out. This is something we talked a lot about internally. Here are a few thoughts:
Comparisons: At 35k a year, it seems it might be considerably lower than industry equivalent even when compared to other programs
I think the more relevant comparison is academia, not industry. In academia, $35k is (unfortunately) well within in the normal range for RAs and PhD students. This is especially true outside the US, where wages are easily 2x - 4x lower.
Often academics justify this on the grounds that you're receiving more than just monetary benefits: you're receiving mentorship and training. We think the same will be true for these positions.
The actual reason is that you have to be somewhat crazy to even want to go into research. We're looking for somewhat crazy.
If I were applying to this, I'd feel confused and slightly underappreciated if I had the right set of ML/Software Engineering skills but to be barely paid subsistence level for my full-time work (in NY).
If it helps, we're paying ourselves even less. As much as we'd like to pay the RAs (and ourselves) more, we have to work with what we have.
Of course... money is tight: The grant constraint is well acknowledged here. But potentially the number of RAs expected to hire can be further down adjusted as while potentially increasing the submission rate of the candidates that truly fits the requirement of the research program.
For exceptional talent, we're willing to pay higher wages.
The important thing is that both funding and open positions are exceptionally scarce. We expect there to be enough strong candidates who are willing to take the pay cut.
All in all, we're expecting most of our hires to come from outside the US where the cost of living is substantially lower. If lower wages are a deal-breaker for anyone but you're still interested in this kind of work, please flag this in the form. The application should be low-effort enough that it's still worth applying.
Often academics justify this on the grounds that you're receiving more than just monetary benefits: you're receiving mentorship and training. We think the same will be true for these positions.
I don't buy this. I'm actually going through the process of getting a PhD at ~40k USD per year, and one of the main reasons why I'm sticking with it is that after that, I have a solid credential that's recognized worldwide, backed by a recognizable name (i.e. my university and my supervisor). You can't provide either of those things.
This offer seems to take the worst of both worlds between academia and industry, but if you actually find someone good at this rate, good for you I suppose
Would any of the involved parties be interested in having a fireside chat for AI Safety Australia and New Zealand about developmental interpretability and this position a few days before the application closes?
If so, please feel free to PM me.
Curated and popular this week