I agree with Sam that most of the difference between working at a typical tech company and CEA is the size. Even most startup employees probably work at startups 10-100x the size of CEA. Unlike Sam I have worked in the tech industry, but I when I was hired at Kairos, I was employee #6, which I think is unusually early. Relative to Kairos, I think my experience at CEA has differed in the following ways:
I bring more of myself to work. CEA really wants to know what I really think the best thing to do is, and I get to be really open about what I think that is, and all the reasoning I have. I can speak my native EA-language here (nobody blinks an eye when I talk about expected value).
I’m more in charge of my own projects here. Kairos gave me a lot of autonomy, but CEA gives me even more.
The converse of that is that Kairos had more mentorship from people more experienced than me. I think Sam and I have gotten pretty good at this, but Kairos had one incredibly impressive software engineer in particular who I learned a lot from.
It depends on which tech company, but I know a lot of people working for companies that they think are fine, but not so great that their jobs are doing much good directly. This is definitely the best perk of the job, which now that I’m writing it sounds trite, but is my honest feeling.
I agree with Sam that most of the difference between working at a typical tech company and CEA is the size. Even most startup employees probably work at startups 10-100x the size of CEA. Unlike Sam I have worked in the tech industry, but I when I was hired at Kairos, I was employee #6, which I think is unusually early. Relative to Kairos, I think my experience at CEA has differed in the following ways:
I bring more of myself to work. CEA really wants to know what I really think the best thing to do is, and I get to be really open about what I think that is, and all the reasoning I have. I can speak my native EA-language here (nobody blinks an eye when I talk about expected value).
I’m more in charge of my own projects here. Kairos gave me a lot of autonomy, but CEA gives me even more.
The converse of that is that Kairos had more mentorship from people more experienced than me. I think Sam and I have gotten pretty good at this, but Kairos had one incredibly impressive software engineer in particular who I learned a lot from.
It depends on which tech company, but I know a lot of people working for companies that they think are fine, but not so great that their jobs are doing much good directly. This is definitely the best perk of the job, which now that I’m writing it sounds trite, but is my honest feeling.