Great post/suggestions, I especially agree with target outreach. I want to amplify something that’s touched on but not explicitly stated:
EA is simply a lens/framework—you can apply these principles anywhere, and the impact may be significant! I work in environmental sustainability / climate change mitigation and notice that the movements closely mirror each other because:
Maximizing impact is the overarching principle (at least theoretically...)
It’s a rapidly growing and trendy field.
Until now, amateurs/volunteers/hobbyists have done a lot of the work.
In both EA and sustainability, people clamor for high-profile direct impact roles but they’re incredibly competitive, the roles may lack the imagined leverage and candidates spend an outsized amount of time trying to get them. It’s difficult to quantify, but many (most?) people will be more impactful applying a EA framework to non-EA specific work. The EA movement is still nascent enough that it makes sense to encourage people to apply to EA-specific roles or start new organizations, but eventually the messaging will transition to how you can apply EA to any job you take, not how you can become an EA superstar.
Adding this as a separate comment to maintain some organization—I’ve mentioned this in comments on other posts, but I really think that there’s room for an organization or mechanism that identifies and rewards undervalued EA-related work that’s already being done at existing non-EA institutions. In the context of your post, it would further normalize the idea that plenty of good EA work happens outside of EA.
Great post/suggestions, I especially agree with target outreach. I want to amplify something that’s touched on but not explicitly stated:
EA is simply a lens/framework—you can apply these principles anywhere, and the impact may be significant! I work in environmental sustainability / climate change mitigation and notice that the movements closely mirror each other because:
Maximizing impact is the overarching principle (at least theoretically...)
It’s a rapidly growing and trendy field.
Until now, amateurs/volunteers/hobbyists have done a lot of the work.
In both EA and sustainability, people clamor for high-profile direct impact roles but they’re incredibly competitive, the roles may lack the imagined leverage and candidates spend an outsized amount of time trying to get them. It’s difficult to quantify, but many (most?) people will be more impactful applying a EA framework to non-EA specific work. The EA movement is still nascent enough that it makes sense to encourage people to apply to EA-specific roles or start new organizations, but eventually the messaging will transition to how you can apply EA to any job you take, not how you can become an EA superstar.
Adding this as a separate comment to maintain some organization—I’ve mentioned this in comments on other posts, but I really think that there’s room for an organization or mechanism that identifies and rewards undervalued EA-related work that’s already being done at existing non-EA institutions. In the context of your post, it would further normalize the idea that plenty of good EA work happens outside of EA.
80k podcast does this (more identify than reward, but still). But I agree that more would be good.