Hi Michael, thanks for writing this up! These are important topics, and I’d love to see more discussion of them. Just want to clarify two potential misconceptions: I don’t think it’s no longer hard to get a direct work job, although I do feel reasonably confident that it isn’t as hard to get funding to do direct work as it was a few years ago (either through employment or grants, though I would probably still stand by this statement if we were only considering employment). Secondly, on this part:
Kuhan mentioned that to it’s not easy to get an EA job if you’re not willing to work that hard, both working hard during the job and preparing to get the job.
Is it the case that if you’re hard-working and motivated and aligned with the values of the organizations you’re applying for, then it’s not that hard to get a job that works on a top cause?
There may have been some miscommunication in our conversation—I didn’t mean to imply that just being willing to work hard is enough to get a direct work job, or that people who aren’t able to get direct work positions aren’t able to due to their work ethic. What I meant to communicate is that I’ve found individuals who have a strong understanding of EA ideas, take actions (especially career planning) based on these ideas, and have a strong work ethic have had a lot of success finding direct work opportunities (through applying to jobs at EA orgs, applying for grants to run projects/do research/etc, and starting new organizations).
Hi Michael, thanks for writing this up! These are important topics, and I’d love to see more discussion of them. Just want to clarify two potential misconceptions: I don’t think it’s no longer hard to get a direct work job, although I do feel reasonably confident that it isn’t as hard to get funding to do direct work as it was a few years ago (either through employment or grants, though I would probably still stand by this statement if we were only considering employment). Secondly, on this part:
There may have been some miscommunication in our conversation—I didn’t mean to imply that just being willing to work hard is enough to get a direct work job, or that people who aren’t able to get direct work positions aren’t able to due to their work ethic. What I meant to communicate is that I’ve found individuals who have a strong understanding of EA ideas, take actions (especially career planning) based on these ideas, and have a strong work ethic have had a lot of success finding direct work opportunities (through applying to jobs at EA orgs, applying for grants to run projects/do research/etc, and starting new organizations).