Regarding our career development and transition funding (CDTF) program:
The default expectation for CDTF grants is that they’re one-off grants. My impression is that this is currently clear to most CDTF grantees (e.g., I think most of them don’t reapply after the end of their grant period, and the program title explicitly says that it’s “transition funding”).
(When funding independent research through this program, we sometimes explicitly clarify that we’re unlikely to renew by default).
Most of the CDTF grants we make have grant periods that are shorter than a year (with the main exception that comes to mind being PhD programs). I think that’s reasonable (esp. given that the grantees know this when they accept the funding). I’d guess most of the people we fund through this program are able to find paid positions after <1 year.
Yeah, I was thinking of PhD programs as one of the most common longer-term grants.
Agree that it’s reasonable for a lot of this funding to be shorter, but also think that given the shifting funding landscape where most good research by my lights can no longer get funding, I would be quite hesitant for people to substantially sacrifice career capital in the hopes of getting funding later (or more concretely, I think it’s the right choice for people to choose a path where they end up with a lot of slack to think about what directions to pursue, instead of being particularly vulnerable to economic incentives while trying to orient towards the very high-stakes feeling and difficult to navigate existential risk reduction landscape, which tends to result in the best people predictably working for big capability companies).
This includes the constraints of “finding paid positions after <1 year”, where the set of organizations that have funding to sponsor good work is also very small these days (though I do think that has a decent chance of changing again within a year or two, so it’s not a crazy bet to make).
Given these recent shifts and the harsher economic incentives of transitioning into the space, I think it would make sense for people to negotiate with OP about getting longer grants than OP has historically granted (which I think aligns with what I think OP staff makes sense as well, based on conversations I’ve had).
Regarding our career development and transition funding (CDTF) program:
The default expectation for CDTF grants is that they’re one-off grants. My impression is that this is currently clear to most CDTF grantees (e.g., I think most of them don’t reapply after the end of their grant period, and the program title explicitly says that it’s “transition funding”).
(When funding independent research through this program, we sometimes explicitly clarify that we’re unlikely to renew by default).
Most of the CDTF grants we make have grant periods that are shorter than a year (with the main exception that comes to mind being PhD programs). I think that’s reasonable (esp. given that the grantees know this when they accept the funding). I’d guess most of the people we fund through this program are able to find paid positions after <1 year.
(I probably won’t have time to engage further.)
Yeah, I was thinking of PhD programs as one of the most common longer-term grants.
Agree that it’s reasonable for a lot of this funding to be shorter, but also think that given the shifting funding landscape where most good research by my lights can no longer get funding, I would be quite hesitant for people to substantially sacrifice career capital in the hopes of getting funding later (or more concretely, I think it’s the right choice for people to choose a path where they end up with a lot of slack to think about what directions to pursue, instead of being particularly vulnerable to economic incentives while trying to orient towards the very high-stakes feeling and difficult to navigate existential risk reduction landscape, which tends to result in the best people predictably working for big capability companies).
This includes the constraints of “finding paid positions after <1 year”, where the set of organizations that have funding to sponsor good work is also very small these days (though I do think that has a decent chance of changing again within a year or two, so it’s not a crazy bet to make).
Given these recent shifts and the harsher economic incentives of transitioning into the space, I think it would make sense for people to negotiate with OP about getting longer grants than OP has historically granted (which I think aligns with what I think OP staff makes sense as well, based on conversations I’ve had).