Nice post! I think that I agree with all of the specific points you made, that they seem in aggregate pretty useful+important to say, and that in future Iāll probably send this post to at least 5 people when giving career advice.
But here are two criticisms:
I think you donāt state explicitly what you mean by āEA workā?
And Iām guessing at least 25% of readers will consciously or unconsciously interpret it as āwork at explicitly EA orgsā, but Iām also guessing you in fact mean it as something like āwork thatās motivated by impartial altruism and would be seen by many EAs as plausibly the highest impact choice for the person could take right nowā.
E.g., Iām guessing youād include things like roles in the US government or running for political office in cases where those things either plausibly have very high net positive impact or are great for the personās career capital and the person aims to use that career capital impactfully later.
I think itās already the case that many people unfortunately conflate āimpactful roleā with ārole at an EA orgā, and also that many people get annoyed at āEA insidersā for appearing to do so (e.g., I think 80k has sometimes been criticised based on perceptions of this).
So if I were you, Iād probably have defined āEA workā early on and explicitly flagged that it includes but is not limited to work at EA orgs.
(To be clear, I do think mid-career peopleāas with everyone else should also strongly consider switching to working at EA orgs specifically! They should just consider both that and impactful roles elsewhere.)
I think much/āmost of the advice/āinfo provided in this post is ~exactly as relevant to early-career people as to mid-career people. This is of course itself a good thingājust adds to its usefulness! - but it also makes me feel like maybe therefore this either shouldāve been split into two posts or shouldāve had a different title?
I expect most of the people Iāll want to share this with in future will be early-career, since thatās most of the people I come across in EA and give career advice to. Iāll probably just clarify each time that most (though not all) of the contents are really just as relevant to early-career people and the title is just a bit misleading.
(Disclaimer-ish thing: I work with Ben at Rethink Priorities.)
Thanks. On the first point in particular, the post might add a bit of confusion here unfortunately.
Edit: I added something near the top that hopefully makes things a bit clearer re the first point
Also note that, for the purposes of this post, by āEA workā I mostly mean working at EA orgs. But I also think it would be great if mid-career people considered switching to really impactful stuff that isnāt at EA orgs, and if theyāre already doing really impactful stuff that isnāt at an EA org maybe they should keep doing that. And a lot of what I say here is still relevant for switching to highly impactful work that isnāt at an EA org.
Nice post! I think that I agree with all of the specific points you made, that they seem in aggregate pretty useful+important to say, and that in future Iāll probably send this post to at least 5 people when giving career advice.
But here are two criticisms:
I think you donāt state explicitly what you mean by āEA workā?
And Iām guessing at least 25% of readers will consciously or unconsciously interpret it as āwork at explicitly EA orgsā, but Iām also guessing you in fact mean it as something like āwork thatās motivated by impartial altruism and would be seen by many EAs as plausibly the highest impact choice for the person could take right nowā.
E.g., Iām guessing youād include things like roles in the US government or running for political office in cases where those things either plausibly have very high net positive impact or are great for the personās career capital and the person aims to use that career capital impactfully later.
I think itās already the case that many people unfortunately conflate āimpactful roleā with ārole at an EA orgā, and also that many people get annoyed at āEA insidersā for appearing to do so (e.g., I think 80k has sometimes been criticised based on perceptions of this).
So if I were you, Iād probably have defined āEA workā early on and explicitly flagged that it includes but is not limited to work at EA orgs.
(To be clear, I do think mid-career peopleāas with everyone else should also strongly consider switching to working at EA orgs specifically! They should just consider both that and impactful roles elsewhere.)
I think much/āmost of the advice/āinfo provided in this post is ~exactly as relevant to early-career people as to mid-career people. This is of course itself a good thingājust adds to its usefulness! - but it also makes me feel like maybe therefore this either shouldāve been split into two posts or shouldāve had a different title?
I expect most of the people Iāll want to share this with in future will be early-career, since thatās most of the people I come across in EA and give career advice to. Iāll probably just clarify each time that most (though not all) of the contents are really just as relevant to early-career people and the title is just a bit misleading.
(Disclaimer-ish thing: I work with Ben at Rethink Priorities.)
Thanks. On the first point in particular, the post might add a bit of confusion here unfortunately.
Edit: I added something near the top that hopefully makes things a bit clearer re the first point