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Three months ago, LessWrong admin Ben Pace wrote a long thread on the EA forums: Sharing Info About Nonlinear, in which he shared the stories of two former employees in an EA startup who had bad experiences and left determined to warn others about the company. The startup is an "AI x-risk incubator," which in practice seems to look like a few people traveling around exotic locations, connecting with other effective altruists, and brainstorming new ways to save the world from AI. Very EA. The post contains wide-ranging allegations of misconduct mostly centering around their treatment of two employees they hired who started traveling with them, ultimately concluding that "if Nonlinear does more hiring in the EA ecosystem it is more-likely-than-not to chew up and spit out other bright-eyed young EAs who want to do good in the world."
He, and it seems to some extent fellow admin Oliver Habryka, mentioned they spent hundreds of hours interviewing dozens of people over the course of six months to pull the article together, ultimately paying the two main sources $5000 each for their trouble. It made huge waves in the EA community, torching Nonlinear's reputation.
A few days ago, Nonlinear responded with a wide-ranging tome of a post, 15000 words in the main post with a 134-page appendix. I had never heard of either Lightcone (the organization behind the callout post) or Nonlinear before a few days ago, since I don't pay incredibly close attention to the EA sphere, but the response bubbled up into my sphere of awareness.
The response provides concrete evidence in the form of contemporary screenshots against some of the most damning-sounding claims in the original article:
accusations that when one employee, "Alice", was sick with COVID in a foreign country and nobody would get her vegan food so she barely ate for two days turned into "There was vegan food in the house and they picked food up for her, but on one of the days they wanted to go to a Mexican place instead of getting a vegan burger from Burger King."
accusations that they promised another, "Chloe", compensation around $75,000 and stiffed her on it in various ways turned into "She had a written contract to be paid $1000/monthly with all expenses covered, which we estimated would add up to around $70,000."
accusations that they asked Alice to "bring a variety of illegal drugs across the border" turned into "They asked Alice, who regularly traveled with LSD and marijuana of her own accord, to pick up ADHD medicine and antibiotics at a pharmacy. When she told them the meds still required a prescription in Mexico, they said not to worry about it."
The narrative the Nonlinear team presents is of one employee with mental health issues and a long history of making accusations against the people around her came on board, lost trust in them due to a series of broadly imagined slights, and ultimately left and spread provable lies against them, while another who was hired to be an assistant was never quite satisfied with being an assistant and left frustrated as a result.
As amusing a collective picture as these events paint about what daily life at the startup actually looked like, they also made it pretty clear that the original article had multiple demonstrable falsehoods in it, in and around unrebutted claims. More, they emphasized that they'd been given only a few days to respond to claims before publication, and when they asked for a week to compile hard evidence against falsehoods, the writers told them it would come out on schedule no matter what. Spencer Greenberg, the day before publication, warned them of a number of misrepresentations in the article and sent them screenshots correcting the vegan portion; they corrected some misrepresentations but by the time he sent the screenshots said it was too late to change anything.
That's the part that caught my interest: how did the rationalist community, with its obsession with establishing better epistemics than those around it, wind up writing, embracing, and spreading a callout article with shoddy fact-checking?
From a long conversation with Habryka, my impression is that a lot of EA community members were left scarred and paranoid after the FTX implosion, correcting towards "We must identify and share any early warning signs possible to prevent another FTX." More directly, he told me that he wasn't too concerned with whether they shared falsehoods originally so long as they were airing out the claims of their sources and making their level of epistemic confidence clear. In particular, the organization threatened a libel suit shortly before publication, which they took as a threat of retaliation that meant they should and must hold to their original release schedule.
My own impression is that this is a case of rationalist first-principles thinking gone awry and applied to a domain where it can do real damage. Journalism doesn't have the greatest reputation these days and for good reason, but his approach contrasts starkly with its aspiration to heavily prioritize accuracy and verify information before releasing it. I mention this not to claim that they do so successfully, but because his approach is a conscious deviation from that, an assertion that if something is important enough it's worth airing allegations without closely examining contrary information other sources are asking you to pause and examine.
I'd like to write more about the situation at some point, because I have a lot to say about it even beyond the flood of comments I left on the LessWrong and EA mirrors of the article and think it presses at some important tension points. It's a bit discouraging to watch communities who try so hard to be good from first principles speedrun so many of the pitfalls broader society built guardrails around.
Concrete note on this:
The "all expenses" they're talking about are work-related travel expenses. I, too, would be extremely mad if an employer promised me $75k / year in compensation, $10k of which would be cash-based, and then tried to say that costs incurred by me doing my job were considered to be my "compensation".
Honestly most of what I take away from this is that nobody involved seems to have much of an idea of how things are done in professional settings, and also there seems to be an attitude of "the precautions that normal businesses take are costly and unnecessary since we are all smart people who want to help the world". Which, if that's the way they want to swing, then fine, but I think it is worth setting those expectations upfront. And also I'd strongly recommend that anyone fresh out of college who has never had a normal job should avoid working for an EA organization like nonlinear until they've seen how things work in purely transactional jobs.
Also it seems to me based on how much interest there was in that infighting that effective altruists are starved for drama.
They never promised $75k/year in compensation, $10k of which would be cash-based. This was the compensation package listed in their written, mutually agreed upon employment contract:
They included another text in evidence where they restated part of it:
The only apparent mention of $70000 as a number happened during a recorded interview (edited for clarity, meaning retained):
I would not personally take a job offering this compensation structure, but they were fully upfront about what the comp package was and it came pre-agreed as part of the deal. I see no grounds for complaints about dishonesty around it.
It's not a job, it's more like being an au pair: the 'employer' or 'host family' provides room and board and an allowance in return for light domestic/child minding work.
The selling point here seems to be "wouldn't you like to travel and have fun overseas on our dime? we'll pay for travel, and room and board, and even give you a stipend on top! and all you have to do is help us with our fun, impactful, altruistic projects!"
As a gap year thing, sure. Maybe. Were I a parent, I'd still be "but who are these people and what happens if you're overseas and get sick or something?" But it's not a job job, it's volunteer work or voluntourism or the likes, and that may be what Interlinear are relying on.
Yeah, that’s the same as things like teach abroad programs and Peace Corps. It’s nice when you’re young and single.
Sounds like Nonlinear are relying on those blurry boundaries; one person says you're an employee, here's your contract, you'll be working for me but the head boss says oh no all these are volunteers and we pay for travel, room and board plus we throw in a stipend, but they're independent contractors (as it were). So when they have you there, you think you're working in a job, but any trouble and you find out nope no that's not what we said and that's not what is written down, not our problem.
Speaking of blurry boundaries, Nonlinear almost certainly violated either federal tax law or minimum wage laws, and potentially immigration law too.
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I read the same doc you did, and like. I get that "Chloe" did in fact sign that contract, and that the written contract is what matters in the end. My point is not that Nonlinear did something illegal, but... did we both read the same transcript? Because that transcript reads to me like "come on, you should totally draw art for my product, I can only pay 20% of market rates but I can get you lots of exposure, and you can come to my house parties and meet all the cool people, this will be great for your career".
I don't know how much of it is that Kat's writing style pattern matches really strongly to a particular shitty and manipulative boss I very briefly worked for right after college. E.g. stuff like
just does not fill me with warm fuzzy feelings about someone's ability to entertain the hypothesis that their own behavior could possibly be a problem. Again, I am probably not terribly impartial here - I have no horse in this particular race, but I once had one in a similar race.
While I don't endorse "come on, you should totally draw art for my product"–type behavior, I do think the position would have been appealing and appropriate for a certain type of person I am not far from. My monthly salary on top of room and board was significantly larger as a military enlistee, but I also wasn't traveling the world. I think they were realistically underpaying for what they wanted but also think "don't take the job" is an adequate remedy to that.
I take your point about the writing style, but for me it's secondary to the core impression that the investigation was very badly mishandled in a way that makes examining things now feel unfair. The initial report should not have been released as-is and it reflects poorly on the whole EA/LW-rationalist community that it was. Given the poor choices around its release, I don't feel inclined to focus too much on what really looks like mundane and predictable workplace/roommate drama.
I agree that it was badly mishandled. I think it's valuable to tell EAs that the "people will try to get you to take a job where they say you'll be paid in experience/exposure, be mindful of that dynamic" but singling out a single organization to that degree makes it sound like it's a problem specific to that organization (which it is not, even within the EA space I personally know of another org with similar dynamics, and I'm not even very involved with the space).
I personally still wouldn't work for nonlinear but then I also would have noped out in the initial hash-out-the-contract phase.
The problem is that even if Nonlinear is pure as the driven snow (and there seems to be some grounds to doubt that), it's operating in the EA sphere where 'put the majority of the money you earn to good causes, live sparely so you can give even more' is an acceptable community value, and where there are a lot of idealists willing to save the world if they can, and willing to be emotionally guilt-tripped into volunteering, doing way more work than they should be doing, and living on fresh air while doing that. Where scrupulosity is a known problem, and people do tie themselves into knots over paperclip maximisers.
It's not sustainable for anybody and it's very open to abuse.
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Yeah. And honestly, there are worse things than being paid in exposure. I'd describe that as the primary compensation for my podcast job (my bosses pay me a perfectly fair hourly wage, but I'm certainly not doing it for the money). It's just worth being clear-eyed about precisely what that entails and when it's appropriate.
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See all the reputable media companies, including the New York Times at one time, that use(d) unpaid interns for the same thing - this is helping you get your foot in the door, it pays in exposure. Lots of places rely on the unpaid/voluntary labour of hopefuls to carry them through backlogs, or the busy period, or rush orders. The wonders of the gig economy, where there will be no such thing as guaranteed employment but it's your responsibility to be flexible, available, and constantly re-skilling/upskilling to meet demand.
Sounds like a good learning experience about the world of work, but I imagine since this is all within the EA bubble, the expectations about being treated super-specially and not being taken advantage of and getting all sorts of loving, caring, treatment were sky-high.
Everyone involved sounds narcissistic at best and absolute pricks at worst, and I'm not going to single out one person from the lot.
There is a certain narrative that this is common but I'm not sure a buy it. Maybe it's just software engineering but interns have never made sense as a free labor prospect to me, they cost more in senior dev time spent training than they could possibly be alleviating. It only makes sense as a junior talent pipeline tool.
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Sounds like a mercifully inexpensive lesson about the nonexistence of free lunches. What an offer like that translates to is
If someone willingly agrees to work for a pathetic salary with "all expenses paid," or draw art for "exposure," and they get what they signed up for, it's really not shitty or manipulative, it's just an unremarkable business agreement, regardless of what unrealistic hopes on party may have had.
Ask questions, get everything in writing, in a contract, and if it sounds too good to be true, walk away. I'm continually amazed at how my some of my colleagues and acquaintances just take others' word and then get disappointed when their own expectations let them down. Classic example: "We can't give you a raise this year, but I'm sure we'll be able to do something for you when the next performance cycle rolls around." Okay cool, write me a bonus offer right now for next year and sign it, otherwise I'm hopping on LinkedIn tonight.
I worked a few seasonal jobs in my youth that included room and board, which was taken out of the already-modest paychecks. You really could get away with not spending anything for months if you wanted, although many of my coworkers would occasionally find a restaurant or bar at which to spend money.
I don't regret doing these because the job itself was pretty enjoyable. I make better money now, but I didn't feel exploited by the arrangement: as long as you're saving enough for retirement and such, gigs that cover "expenses" in-kind can be an option, although probably not the most interesting one.
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I have no idea how so many of these so called "well adjusted" human beings fall for things so simple as the Mystery Box. Like people used to call me borderline autistic and even in my worst moments I would never ever have fallen for "I'm sure we'll be able to do something for you when the next performance cycle rolls around".
OTOH, and maybe it's my backwater upbringing talking, $1K cash on top of room, board and other expenses, doesn't sound like a bad deal, if you're still young.
Combined with world travel within an existing social circle and without grinding repetitive labor, and it sounds good to me right now at over 30. Maybe negotiate some sort of bonus if my living/travel costs come in way under the estimate.
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