“Too many people in EA underprice the cost of a bad reputation” by GraceAdams🔸

Summary: Good work helps build a good reputation, but it's not the only factor. Reputation also requires making your work legible, building relationships with stakeholders, and communicating with them consistently over time. I think many people in EA systematically underestimate what a bad reputation costs, largely because those costs are invisible. You can see the people who stick around. You can't see the people who decided not to work with you. I close with some practical suggestions for weighing reputation in decisions.

Notes on writing: This is more of a hot-take, quickly written, with some Claude assistance in shaping it into a full post, but heavily edited and reviewed by me. This was spurred by Manifund's recent announcement but is something I generally have been wanting to write. I've written this in my personal capacity, and it's informed by working 5 years in senior roles at EA orgs.

Good work is necessary, not sufficient

Reputation is everything. It's a cliché for a reason.

Doing good work is one of the main ways to build a good reputation, and there's an implicit belief I've noticed in many people in EA that it's the only thing that should matter. If the [...]

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Outline:

(01:08) Good work is necessary, not sufficient

(01:58) What a good reputation actually buys you

(02:36) The invisible costs of a bad reputation

(03:24) Being weird about this doesn't scale

(04:40) The people we lose

(05:27) What to do about it

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First published:
September 13th, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/mopnEjSSb5fouNJBn/too-many-people-in-ea-underprice-the-cost-of-a-bad

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.