Similar to Ozzie, I would guess the ‘over-qualified’ hesitation often has less to do with, “I fear I would be under-utilised and become disinterested if I took a more junior role, and thus do less than the most good I could”, but a more straightforward, “Roles which are junior, have unclear progression and don’t look amazing on my CV if I move on aren’t as good for my career as other opportunities available to me.”
This opportunity cost (as the OP notes) is not always huge, and it can be outweighed by other considerations. But my guess is it is often a substantial disincentive:
In terms of traditional/typical kudos/cred/whatever, getting in early on something which is going up like a rocket offers a great return on invested reputational or human capital. It is a riskier return, though: by analogy I’d guess being “employee #10” for some start-ups is much better than working at google, but I’d guess for the median start-up it is worse.
Many EA orgs have been around for a few years now, and their track-record so far might incline one against rocketing success by conventional and legible metrics. (Not least, many of them are targeting a very different sort of success than a tech enterprise, consulting firm, hedge fund, etc. etc.)
Junior positions at conventionally shiny high-status things have good career capital. I’d guess my stint as a junior doctor ‘looks good’ on my CV even when applying to roles with ~nothing to do with clinical practice. Ditto stuff like ex-googler, ex-management consultant, ?ex-military officer, etc. “Ex-junior-staffer-at-smallish-nonprofit” usually won’t carry the same cachet.
As careers have a lot of cumulative/progressive characteristics, ‘sideways’ moves earlier on may have disproportionate impact on ones trajectory. E.g. ‘longtermist careerists’ might want very outsized compensation for such a ‘tour’ to make up for compounded loss of earnings (in expectation) for pausing their climb up various ladders.
None of this means ‘EA jobs’ are only for suckers. There are a lot of upsides even from a ‘pure careerism’ perspective (especially for particular career plans), and obvious pluses for folks who value the mission/impact too. But insofar as folks aren’t perfectly noble, and care somewhat about the former as well as the latter (ditto other things like lifestyle, pay, etc. etc.) these disincentives are likely to be stronger pushes for more ‘overqualified’ folks.
And insofar as EA orgs would like to recruit more ‘overqualified’ folks for their positions (despite, as I understand it, their job openings being broadly oversubscribed with willing and able—but perhaps not ‘overqualified’ - applicants), I’d guess it’s fairly heavy-going as these disincentives are hard to ‘fix’.
The disincentives listed here make sense to me. I would just add that people’s motivations are highly individual, and so people will differ in how much weight they put on any of these points or on how well their CV looks.
Personally, I’ve moved from Google to AMF and have never looked back. The summary: I’m much more motivated now; the work is actually more varied and technically challenging than before, even though the tech stack is not as close to the state of the art. People are (as far as I can tell) super qualified in both organizations. I’m happy to chat personally about my individual motivations if anyone who reads this feels that it would benefit them.
Similar to Ozzie, I would guess the ‘over-qualified’ hesitation often has less to do with, “I fear I would be under-utilised and become disinterested if I took a more junior role, and thus do less than the most good I could”, but a more straightforward, “Roles which are junior, have unclear progression and don’t look amazing on my CV if I move on aren’t as good for my career as other opportunities available to me.”
This opportunity cost (as the OP notes) is not always huge, and it can be outweighed by other considerations. But my guess is it is often a substantial disincentive:
In terms of traditional/typical kudos/cred/whatever, getting in early on something which is going up like a rocket offers a great return on invested reputational or human capital. It is a riskier return, though: by analogy I’d guess being “employee #10” for some start-ups is much better than working at google, but I’d guess for the median start-up it is worse.
Many EA orgs have been around for a few years now, and their track-record so far might incline one against rocketing success by conventional and legible metrics. (Not least, many of them are targeting a very different sort of success than a tech enterprise, consulting firm, hedge fund, etc. etc.)
Junior positions at conventionally shiny high-status things have good career capital. I’d guess my stint as a junior doctor ‘looks good’ on my CV even when applying to roles with ~nothing to do with clinical practice. Ditto stuff like ex-googler, ex-management consultant, ?ex-military officer, etc. “Ex-junior-staffer-at-smallish-nonprofit” usually won’t carry the same cachet.
As careers have a lot of cumulative/progressive characteristics, ‘sideways’ moves earlier on may have disproportionate impact on ones trajectory. E.g. ‘longtermist careerists’ might want very outsized compensation for such a ‘tour’ to make up for compounded loss of earnings (in expectation) for pausing their climb up various ladders.
None of this means ‘EA jobs’ are only for suckers. There are a lot of upsides even from a ‘pure careerism’ perspective (especially for particular career plans), and obvious pluses for folks who value the mission/impact too. But insofar as folks aren’t perfectly noble, and care somewhat about the former as well as the latter (ditto other things like lifestyle, pay, etc. etc.) these disincentives are likely to be stronger pushes for more ‘overqualified’ folks.
And insofar as EA orgs would like to recruit more ‘overqualified’ folks for their positions (despite, as I understand it, their job openings being broadly oversubscribed with willing and able—but perhaps not ‘overqualified’ - applicants), I’d guess it’s fairly heavy-going as these disincentives are hard to ‘fix’.
The disincentives listed here make sense to me. I would just add that people’s motivations are highly individual, and so people will differ in how much weight they put on any of these points or on how well their CV looks.
Personally, I’ve moved from Google to AMF and have never looked back. The summary: I’m much more motivated now; the work is actually more varied and technically challenging than before, even though the tech stack is not as close to the state of the art. People are (as far as I can tell) super qualified in both organizations. I’m happy to chat personally about my individual motivations if anyone who reads this feels that it would benefit them.