(Speaking as a Software Engineer with 3 years professional experience, and a casual EA organizer in Washington DC for 1.5 years)
It’s worth thinking about how technical a community-building role is. My impression of tech evangelist roles is that companies want your engineering skills to be top-notch, but are less strict about your community organizing skills. In that case, EA organizing would make sense as a side project but not as much sense as a full-time job.
The other caveat that comes to mind is whether EA offers opportunities for large-scale organizing. I can’t think of that many EA groups with >50 regulars. But I can easily think of few tech meetups, local political chapters, and social groups with >100 regulars and enough engagement to have active Slack channels + multiple ongoing projects.Edit: I no longer endorse this. EA DC got its first paid part-time organizer a few months ago (Q2 2021 if memory serves me right) and we definitely have >50 regulars now. I also suspect we still have considerable room to grow
can’t think of that many EA groups with >50 regulars
Agree that most EA groups are small, but those lead by full-time organizers such as London or (to a lesser extent) Berlin can reach those dimensions, see e.g. the EA London group directory. Berlin has 200-300 members who have been to an event at least once, an active Slack workspace and multiple meetup groups and projects running in parallel (mostly private, only some are public).
(Speaking as a Software Engineer with 3 years professional experience, and a casual EA organizer in Washington DC for 1.5 years)
It’s worth thinking about how technical a community-building role is. My impression of tech evangelist roles is that companies want your engineering skills to be top-notch, but are less strict about your community organizing skills. In that case, EA organizing would make sense as a side project but not as much sense as a full-time job.
The other caveat that comes to mind is whether EA offers opportunities for large-scale organizing. I can’t think of that many EA groups with >50 regulars. But I can easily think of few tech meetups, local political chapters, and social groups with >100 regulars and enough engagement to have active Slack channels + multiple ongoing projects.Edit: I no longer endorse this. EA DC got its first paid part-time organizer a few months ago (Q2 2021 if memory serves me right) and we definitely have >50 regulars now. I also suspect we still have considerable room to growAgree that most EA groups are small, but those lead by full-time organizers such as London or (to a lesser extent) Berlin can reach those dimensions, see e.g. the EA London group directory. Berlin has 200-300 members who have been to an event at least once, an active Slack workspace and multiple meetup groups and projects running in parallel (mostly private, only some are public).