I’m not sure why several of the responses to this post are suggesting to take the conversation private. I am in a similar situation with Martyna and would like to read these conversations to get some perspective and advice via eaves-dropping. I’m confident there are others.
That’s a valid point and as my comment also had the offer of a private conversation I will try to add a few thoughts here. Generally, if someone asks me about EA career advice when mid-career I would suggest following:
Look at the 80K content and especially the 8-week career course. I think it can be a misconception that this is only for students, early-career people or if you want to completely change your career path. For me, it was very helpful and there are several places that discuss different options depending on prior experience and seniority. Thinking about what a fulfilling career looks like and doing cause prioritization is something that can be helpful for anyone.
Apply for a 80K 1:1 call when you’re ready. I had one with Habiba and she was able to connect me to other people in their mid-career that recently were hired or contracted by EA orgs. Talking to them helped me a lot to see that there are many opportunities to help organisations to have an impact and very different paths to them.
Take your time: “If you can increase the impact of your career by just 1%, it would be worth spending up to 800 hours learning how to do that.[1]” by 80K can be translated to 400 or 200 hours for shorter careers that is still a lot of time.
Try things out. I keep coming back to the book Designing Your Life[2], especially the tipps around
Tracking the amounts of engagement and energy different activities bring in order to assess better what kinds of work could energize you.
Planning and trying out smaller prototypes in order to find out what is a good fit. For this was volunteering
Get some slack: If you don’t have the time in your life to think about these topics and try things out then I would recommend trying to free up time by:
Reducing your job hours if possible (perhaps there is a way to reduce your donations or spending for some time to only work 4 days/week?)
Reducing other activities for some time or using vacation
Temporarily moving to a place where you spend less and take a remote job
Setting up a plan to free up time after you are able to (eg when the children reach a certain age, when you have a certain amount saved up etc.)
If this all seems too much at the moment then give yourself some slack. Rushing into a new job that does not suit you is not only bad for you but also for the organisation hiring you. For me it took 6 years from reading about EA to starting to volunteer and I had to overcome many misconceptions around the demandingness of EA and might have dropped out if it wasn’t for meeting people and seeing that everyone is human and many people struggle with the question how much they should dedicate of their lives to doing good.
For me it was and is very important to meet people and to see how big and diverse on many lines the movement is. I can’t recommend enough to apply for EAG and EAGx conferences and to talk to many people. Especially the mid- and late-career speedmeetings at EAG London were very inspiring.
The last point brings me back to the private conversations: As good as communicating on the forum is, I would recommend doing these. I anybody wants to have a chat, please send me a message, I would be happy to take a call.
You have a valid point, but I guess from my subjective standpoint, it’s much less intimidating to discuss my situation in private rather than in public. I started a general thread and now it would turn into self-help off-topic. Already did a little, bit embarrassing to me.
On the other hand, I think it’s totally reasonable to continue a discussion of supporting mid/senior EA’s with career choices here. Because one-on-ones can help one person. But an actual initiative would help many.
Feel free to PM me too. I’ll be happy to chat, brainstorm, share findings from my discussions too. Whatever you might find useful.
I keep on thinking about your comment today. Any chance you could outline your situation, struggle or view on the subject of 40kh? It could actually add a lot of value to hear the perspective or specific situation from others.
I outlined mine in one of the first responses. At first I though it’s meaningless in general topic discussion, but now I think that those specific circumstances are making the case.
Thanks for sharing your thinking, @Tyner. Will DM you, but had one thought related to these two bullets:
All of the jobs I’ve seen listed at non-profits pay pretty poorly. Does it really make sense to take a 70% pay cut?
...
A few times I have helped friends or family with work issues and generally done a really good job. Like, my friend spent maybe 40 hours struggling with getting a database to do what she wanted and I solved her issues in less than 2 hours. If I can really be 20x more productive then average then I really am awesome and should be using my skills directly. But that’s probably an outlier.
Rather than committing to a durable pay cut by leaving your full-time job, you could see if there are bite-sized bits of work that well align with your skillset that you can spend a few hundred hours a year on (for pay). You could consider taking a “little bet” by seeing if you could take a 1-3 month leave of absence — or go to 60% or 80% time in your current job for a few months — while supporting an EA project that could benefit from your skills.
There’s a good chance the EA Funds team would fund a well-scoped project where you would invest several hundred hours a year advancing a line of work that currently is under-staffed or missing your technical expertise.
Oh, this is great, I’m loving so many points, we have similar struggles indeed.
I can certainly imagine looking back at my career and feeling like it was safe and relatively pleasant but never really challenging and never really made a difference. And I would like to make a difference.
I went through all stages of grief with my occupation. I struggled with burnout for 7 years. I passionately started to hate a job I loved so much in the beginning. The reason was projects and the sector, maybe similarly like in your case.
In my case I think the trigger was when I was asked to design a mobile app for a burger restaurant, with the goal to tune up “up-sales”, to generate more revenue for the franchise. I was a vegetarian at that time, thinking of going vegan (which I also am already). That’s what I identify as the beginning of my burnout and prelude to depression.
Like, why can’t you just play it safe and continue with your high earning career and donate a ton more money and feel good about that? Why put your stability at risk to chase a vision of doing direct good?
That’s the exact reason why I outline the story of my burnout. The guilt. It cost me a few years of total inactivity, which wasn’t a big deal because at that time I was focusing on very ineffective volunteering (helping animal shelters). But if I’m to go through it now—with my current mindset and need of maximizing my impact—I’m certain this could be much harder and more dangerous for me. And the movement needs well-functioning members, right?
My husband often repeats—“Just squeeze any penny at your current job, and do side sanity projects on a side”—and it’s really wrong approach. I tried that for years, even now involved with EA, and it’s not doing me the favour. I still struggle with depression, not as severe as in past, but still disturbing. It needs to go. I have about 8 years to optimize my path, I don’t have time for breakdowns.
The bottom line is there is no selfishness in addressing your needs, especially when you feel the urge to do so much more good.
1. In the AAC training
What is ACC training?
2. All of the jobs I’ve seen listed at non-profits pay pretty poorly. Does it really make sense to take a 70% pay cut?
In my specific case, it wouldn’t, but like I wrote in the post—I stop fantasizing about getting into an impactful EA job. I recently got an offer with a cut of 25%, but the possibility of some upskilling, that could potentially give me back this 25% salary and more in the future. The thing is, the upskill was not of about 25% (subjectively of course), rather a 5-10%. I declined. I’m able to take cuts, but the return (even hypothetic) needs to balance the cut because I’m dead serious about ETG and ETS commitment.
3. Some of the top all time forum posts are about how difficult and painful it can be to get an EA
Agree. I got declined by one of EA related startups and it was much more painful than any other declination.
4. If I can really be 20x more productive then average then I really am awesome and should be using my skills directly.
Yes and no, in my very subjective opinion. For example (and it’s only a hypothesis for the sake of explanation) - in my case, it doesn’t make sense to make give directly page more intuitive, because the donors are people so well aligned with EA values that a slightly less intuitive interface will not make them back out from donating. But. It makes sense for me to do a usability study on the website of Effective Altruism Poland because the main purpose of this website is to recruit so far unrelated people and incept them with the EA framework.
Will your productivity skills be used in the most optimal way in those organizations? If you are to optimize the server performance, will it be a better contribution than a donation from 70% higher salary? Or are you able to influence the speed of research done on healthcare/alternative protein 20 times? I’m shooting blanks, I’m just trying to make a point here.
5. The company I work for does not particularly align with my values.
Can you pivot to different industries taking your position, salary, and skills unchanged? That’s what I’m trying to do.
I work for a pharmaceutical company. It’s much more rewarding and meaningful than doing burger apps, but. I have never worked in a field that I feel passionate about, and until my discussion with EA mentor about 3 years ago, I never even allowed myself to have passions or dreams. I’m done with that. It might not be possible, but I want to “have fun” and earn big before I turn 50. Because I have philanthropic goals and I need to be a well-functioning person to meet them, and that means to care more about my mental health and allow myself to have ambitions. The healthy dose of egoism.
6. I think this is all good truth-seeking activity, but it does get quite confusing, so couldn’t the thing I’m donating to turn out to be ineffective after people take a harder look in a few years? Would direct action give me more certainty that what I’m doing is moving things in the right direction?
Depends. The whole idea of helping neglected causes until they are will stop being as neglected as other ones on the list resonate with me strongly. That’s why I trust in GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators. But it’s much easier to change your donation flow than to change a career dedicated to cause.
8. There is so much funding in EA from Open Phil and likely a bunch more coming soon that it just dwarfs anything that my family could donate, which is somewhat disheartening.
True. But they can’s solve all the problems with those donations. If they could, we wouldn’t have EA and cause areas. Potentially every few bucks is a life of a person that can be saved. We might not see it, but it makes a difference for that person.
9. I don’t think I’m going to work more than another 10 or so years, so I do feel some pressure to decide soon if I’m going to make a change.
Same.
It’s long for me too, but I just want to highlight one last thing. This kind of support we can give to each other, it doesn’t cost a penny to give subjective advice, especially on the philosophical ground. It might help a tiny bit to clear things up in the head. But there is a much harder level to address: how to literary get from point A to B. That’s when solid counseling should step in:
helping to create a plan/strategy
connect with people who are already there where we want to be
determine the gaps and misalignments we should work on to be successful in getting the job
provide mentoring/sponsorship (professional, not financial)
create framework to better address the needs of mid/senior-level members with their specific circumstances
establish pay-it-forward networking, so the people who have been given guidelines could onboard others too and help with their transition
I’m not sure why several of the responses to this post are suggesting to take the conversation private. I am in a similar situation with Martyna and would like to read these conversations to get some perspective and advice via eaves-dropping. I’m confident there are others.
That’s a valid point and as my comment also had the offer of a private conversation I will try to add a few thoughts here. Generally, if someone asks me about EA career advice when mid-career I would suggest following:
Look at the 80K content and especially the 8-week career course. I think it can be a misconception that this is only for students, early-career people or if you want to completely change your career path. For me, it was very helpful and there are several places that discuss different options depending on prior experience and seniority. Thinking about what a fulfilling career looks like and doing cause prioritization is something that can be helpful for anyone.
Apply for a 80K 1:1 call when you’re ready. I had one with Habiba and she was able to connect me to other people in their mid-career that recently were hired or contracted by EA orgs. Talking to them helped me a lot to see that there are many opportunities to help organisations to have an impact and very different paths to them.
Take your time: “If you can increase the impact of your career by just 1%, it would be worth spending up to 800 hours learning how to do that.[1]” by 80K can be translated to 400 or 200 hours for shorter careers that is still a lot of time.
Try things out. I keep coming back to the book Designing Your Life [2], especially the tipps around
Tracking the amounts of engagement and energy different activities bring in order to assess better what kinds of work could energize you.
Planning and trying out smaller prototypes in order to find out what is a good fit. For this was volunteering
Get some slack: If you don’t have the time in your life to think about these topics and try things out then I would recommend trying to free up time by:
Reducing your job hours if possible (perhaps there is a way to reduce your donations or spending for some time to only work 4 days/week?)
Reducing other activities for some time or using vacation
Temporarily moving to a place where you spend less and take a remote job
Setting up a plan to free up time after you are able to (eg when the children reach a certain age, when you have a certain amount saved up etc.)
If this all seems too much at the moment then give yourself some slack. Rushing into a new job that does not suit you is not only bad for you but also for the organisation hiring you. For me it took 6 years from reading about EA to starting to volunteer and I had to overcome many misconceptions around the demandingness of EA and might have dropped out if it wasn’t for meeting people and seeing that everyone is human and many people struggle with the question how much they should dedicate of their lives to doing good.
For me it was and is very important to meet people and to see how big and diverse on many lines the movement is. I can’t recommend enough to apply for EAG and EAGx conferences and to talk to many people. Especially the mid- and late-career speedmeetings at EAG London were very inspiring.
The last point brings me back to the private conversations: As good as communicating on the forum is, I would recommend doing these. I anybody wants to have a chat, please send me a message, I would be happy to take a call.
See the end of this page
80K career advisor Michelle Hutchinson also found it useful as I found in this comment
You have a valid point, but I guess from my subjective standpoint, it’s much less intimidating to discuss my situation in private rather than in public. I started a general thread and now it would turn into self-help off-topic. Already did a little, bit embarrassing to me.
On the other hand, I think it’s totally reasonable to continue a discussion of supporting mid/senior EA’s with career choices here. Because one-on-ones can help one person. But an actual initiative would help many.
Feel free to PM me too. I’ll be happy to chat, brainstorm, share findings from my discussions too. Whatever you might find useful.
I keep on thinking about your comment today. Any chance you could outline your situation, struggle or view on the subject of 40kh? It could actually add a lot of value to hear the perspective or specific situation from others.
I outlined mine in one of the first responses. At first I though it’s meaningless in general topic discussion, but now I think that those specific circumstances are making the case.
Please share if you will.
I deleted this comment because it had too much personal info
Thanks for sharing your thinking, @Tyner. Will DM you, but had one thought related to these two bullets:
Rather than committing to a durable pay cut by leaving your full-time job, you could see if there are bite-sized bits of work that well align with your skillset that you can spend a few hundred hours a year on (for pay). You could consider taking a “little bet” by seeing if you could take a 1-3 month leave of absence — or go to 60% or 80% time in your current job for a few months — while supporting an EA project that could benefit from your skills.
There’s a good chance the EA Funds team would fund a well-scoped project where you would invest several hundred hours a year advancing a line of work that currently is under-staffed or missing your technical expertise.
Oh, this is great, I’m loving so many points, we have similar struggles indeed.
I went through all stages of grief with my occupation. I struggled with burnout for 7 years. I passionately started to hate a job I loved so much in the beginning. The reason was projects and the sector, maybe similarly like in your case.
In my case I think the trigger was when I was asked to design a mobile app for a burger restaurant, with the goal to tune up “up-sales”, to generate more revenue for the franchise. I was a vegetarian at that time, thinking of going vegan (which I also am already). That’s what I identify as the beginning of my burnout and prelude to depression.
That’s the exact reason why I outline the story of my burnout. The guilt. It cost me a few years of total inactivity, which wasn’t a big deal because at that time I was focusing on very ineffective volunteering (helping animal shelters). But if I’m to go through it now—with my current mindset and need of maximizing my impact—I’m certain this could be much harder and more dangerous for me. And the movement needs well-functioning members, right?
My husband often repeats—“Just squeeze any penny at your current job, and do side sanity projects on a side”—and it’s really wrong approach. I tried that for years, even now involved with EA, and it’s not doing me the favour. I still struggle with depression, not as severe as in past, but still disturbing. It needs to go. I have about 8 years to optimize my path, I don’t have time for breakdowns.
The bottom line is there is no selfishness in addressing your needs, especially when you feel the urge to do so much more good.
What is ACC training?
In my specific case, it wouldn’t, but like I wrote in the post—I stop fantasizing about getting into an impactful EA job. I recently got an offer with a cut of 25%, but the possibility of some upskilling, that could potentially give me back this 25% salary and more in the future. The thing is, the upskill was not of about 25% (subjectively of course), rather a 5-10%. I declined. I’m able to take cuts, but the return (even hypothetic) needs to balance the cut because I’m dead serious about ETG and ETS commitment.
Agree. I got declined by one of EA related startups and it was much more painful than any other declination.
Yes and no, in my very subjective opinion. For example (and it’s only a hypothesis for the sake of explanation) - in my case, it doesn’t make sense to make give directly page more intuitive, because the donors are people so well aligned with EA values that a slightly less intuitive interface will not make them back out from donating. But. It makes sense for me to do a usability study on the website of Effective Altruism Poland because the main purpose of this website is to recruit so far unrelated people and incept them with the EA framework.
Will your productivity skills be used in the most optimal way in those organizations? If you are to optimize the server performance, will it be a better contribution than a donation from 70% higher salary? Or are you able to influence the speed of research done on healthcare/alternative protein 20 times? I’m shooting blanks, I’m just trying to make a point here.
Can you pivot to different industries taking your position, salary, and skills unchanged? That’s what I’m trying to do.
I work for a pharmaceutical company. It’s much more rewarding and meaningful than doing burger apps, but. I have never worked in a field that I feel passionate about, and until my discussion with EA mentor about 3 years ago, I never even allowed myself to have passions or dreams. I’m done with that. It might not be possible, but I want to “have fun” and earn big before I turn 50. Because I have philanthropic goals and I need to be a well-functioning person to meet them, and that means to care more about my mental health and allow myself to have ambitions. The healthy dose of egoism.
Depends. The whole idea of helping neglected causes until they are will stop being as neglected as other ones on the list resonate with me strongly. That’s why I trust in GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators. But it’s much easier to change your donation flow than to change a career dedicated to cause.
True. But they can’s solve all the problems with those donations. If they could, we wouldn’t have EA and cause areas. Potentially every few bucks is a life of a person that can be saved. We might not see it, but it makes a difference for that person.
Same.
It’s long for me too, but I just want to highlight one last thing. This kind of support we can give to each other, it doesn’t cost a penny to give subjective advice, especially on the philosophical ground. It might help a tiny bit to clear things up in the head. But there is a much harder level to address: how to literary get from point A to B. That’s when solid counseling should step in:
helping to create a plan/strategy
connect with people who are already there where we want to be
determine the gaps and misalignments we should work on to be successful in getting the job
provide mentoring/sponsorship (professional, not financial)
create framework to better address the needs of mid/senior-level members with their specific circumstances
establish pay-it-forward networking, so the people who have been given guidelines could onboard others too and help with their transition
>This kind of support we can give to each other, it doesn’t cost a penny to give subjective advice
-