Operations Manager and High Impact Executive Assistant
Deadline: November 1st. Applications closed.
Fill out this form to apply
BENEFITS TO YOU
Fill out this form to apply
BENEFITS TO YOU
- Travel (optional). This position can be done remotely, but ideally you’d travel with Kat and Emerson, who live nomadically. You’d get paid to see the world and live in endless summer, since we only stay in places where it’s warm and sunny. No more long, dreary winters. The plan for 2021-2022 so far is the Caribbean in the winter and EA hubs in the summer (Bay Area and London). Here are some pictures of our “offices” from the last year that you could come join us at.
"Office" in Italy
Traveling through the Swiss Alps
Trying to do the most good in a tropical paradise
Our office and home in Costa Rica was so remote that we heard howler monkeys while working on our Google Docs.
- High impact. Be the reason for more ideas getting investigated, thus starting more and higher impact projects. Doing operations is like being the immune system for the organization - complex, absolutely crucial, and if it’s not done well, the whole organization collapses.
- EA startup culture. Nonlinear has a startup culture of creativity, casual attire, flexibility, informality, and task diversity. You will get to the see the inner workings of a new EA charity, being one of the first full time employees, seeing it grow and wearing a lot of hats as things grow.
- Work-life balance. Our motto is to try to do the most good and have a good time doing so. We want to help the world as best we can in a sustainable way, as well as valuing our team’s happiness intrinsically. We make sure to have a good balance of working hard and keeping reasonable hours and taking time off to do the really fun things.
- Live with EAs. You’ll live with fellow EAs, getting to have high level intellectual conversations about how to best help the world during meals and break days.
- Not all desk work. A combination of both intellectual work and working with your hands and getting outside. This is not a job where you’re stuck behind a desk all day.
- Mentorship and growth. People sometimes think of administrative work as rote, box-checking, but the best people at it are actually brilliant at communications and creative problem solving. We are going to invest heavily in your growth and you will receive regular training from two successful entrepreneurs in how to negotiate and get good deals. A regular aspect of your job will be getting paid to read and apply books on self-development, management, persuasion, and other key aspects of the role.
- EA experience. Get experience with an EA nonprofit, which will help help launch your career in the EA space.
- Get a strong resume reference
- Pay: amount dependent on role fit and employee needs
ROLE DESCRIPTION
This is a combination of doing operations and administrative work for Nonlinear as a whole and doing Executive Assistant work for Kat and Emerson.
You will be in charge of making sure that Nonlinear’s internal infrastructure is running smoothly, everybody is getting paid, Nonlinear maintains its charitable status, and generally the “meta” part of the organization.
On the Executive Assistant side, you would be expected to think creatively and independently about how best to save or optimize Kat and Emerson’s time. This could range from more mundane things, like cooking healthy meals, filing taxes, or arranging appointments, to more unique ways, like:
- Researching, helping implement, and evaluating productivity techniques
- Publishing Kat’s book on problem-solving
- Doing deep dives into the scientific literature on different health issues
- Hiring and managing people on Upwork to handle various tasks
- Doing the nitty gritty details of actually doing trades in crypto
- Buying and setting up an EA group house
- Identifying the best apps and extensions to boost output
- Helping Nonlinear stay compliant with regulations
- Automating routine tasks
- Being an accountability buddy for getting things done
THE CASE FOR IMPACT
If what you care about is people being helped, not directly helping them yourself, being an executive assistant to a high impact person, freeing up their time to do more direct work, can be a very high leverage position. For example, say there is a person who does work that you consider to be very useful for the world. Often these people are limited in the time they can dedicate to the cause because of other things in their lives. If you spend one hour of your time taking care of that instead of them, causing them to work another hour, you have in essence converted your time into their time. This can be a huge multiplying factor on your own impact. You can see more about the rationale here on 80,000 Hours.
The case for impact relies on the impact of who you’re assisting. In this case, you’ll be helping out Kat and Emerson, two successful entrepreneurs with a long track record of impact. Kat is most known for helping co-found Charity Entrepreneurship, a charity incubator, on which Nonlinear is modelled. Emerson was awarded the Forbes 30 under 30 for his work and started his first successful organization at the age of 12. You can see their bios here.
IDEAL CANDIDATE
- You love to travel and find it exciting to adapt to new environments.
- You are the sort of person who loves making To Do lists and thinks The Checklist Manifesto should be mandatory reading.
- You are you obsessed with increasing your own productivity and health, and love the idea of helping others do the same.
- You enjoy or don’t mind doing paperwork. There’s something about the straightforwardness of it, you get a chance to read some of your book while waiting in line, and checking items off the list is always satisfying.
- It’s hard to phase you. You like the challenge of tackling complex problems instead of feeling stressed out about them.
- You enjoy a combination of working with your mind and hands. You don’t want to be stuck behind a desk all day.
WHAT’S NOT NEEDED
- Experience in a similar role
- Credentials
APPLICATION PROCESS
The application has been closed.
- The application deadline is November 1st, 2021, midnight UK time
- Fill out this form
- The strongest candidates will be contacted for the first stage interview