LessWrong is looking to hire an additional programmer. Ideally, someone with 5+ years experience who is up for a CTO role, or seems like a strong candidate to grow into such a role. We’re looking for someone excited about our longterm vision. Over the next several years, we want to build a platform for intellectual progress across the rationality, EA and x-risk communities. In addition to smoothing out the core LW user experience, we’re looking to:
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Theorize about and experiment with new features that can move the state-of-the-art of online discourse forward.
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Help revamp other rationality and EA aligned forums (we’ve just started a couple projects in this vein)
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More generally, understand and solve problems relating to communication and the intellectual-pipeline in the rationalsphere. (Especially if it looks like they could benefit from technical solutions) We want someone with technical chops (the site is built in javascript and ReactJS, although strong experience with other languages is fine), as well as someone who can help make architectural decisions that impact the sorts of goals listed above. Position will require you commute to Berkeley. Ping us if you’re interested (sending any of us an email is fine) The LessWrong team is:
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Oliver Habryka (oliver.habryka@gmail.com)
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Raymond Arnold (raemon777@gmail.com)
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Ben Pace (benitopace@gmail.com) Feel free to comment here with any questions about the position or our overall vision.
Does this mean that the EA forum will switch over to using the same platform as LW2.0?
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We’re discussing that with CEA and it looks likely, but not set in stone yet. (If so, it’d be using LW as a base, similar to how they used old LW as a base)
Is the position location-based, or can it be worked remotely? What is the proposed compensation? What specifically are the other forums that would be under the purview of this position?
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You would have to be able to commute to Berkeley. At this stage it unfortunately doesn’t make sense for us to consider a remote position. Compensation is pretty variable and up for negotiation but would be something in the $70k - $120k range, with some wiggle room up if we think someone is a very good or very senior hire. The current team all work on relatively low salaries (~$60k), because none of us need super much money, but I don’t expect this to extend to our next two hires. We sadly can’t really pay industry market rates for top programmers, which are in the $200k range, but I care about giving people enough money to feel comfortable. We are currently working on the Agent Foundations Forum (https://agentfoundations.org/) and are chatting with CEA about also developing the EA Forum (http://effective-altruism.com/).
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Where does the funding come from to be able to spend something like 400k per year for the total payroll?
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So far funding has come from CEA, BERI and Eric Rogstad
Mostly the same people that fund other community building orgs. EA Grants, BERI and individual donors, and MIRI is also supporting us with some funds for working on the Agent Foundations forum.