Personal opinion only: From watching a number of community builders end up in difficult situations over the years, I would strongly recommend anyone looking at EA community building as a career path carefully think about adequate compensation. When you are new to a series of ideas, especially those interacting with a sense of purpose, it is very easy to get excited, commit to a ton of work (often unpaid) with the assumption funders will see your work’s value when it’s off the ground and fund it. If you will work for free (for example, candidate referrals) there are many organizations that will take you up on the offer and “volunteer gigs” quickly become actual work with little/no compensation to match. Unfortunately, I have to say I have seen this particularly with people from Low to Middle Income Countries—you will end up with a lot of requests for referrels and/or people being referred to you by bigger organizations for “career chats” because those organizations don’t have anyone in the region so it gives a sense of funding endorsement/ implicit promise of funding when it might actually not be there. Further, you are very vulnerable both CV-wise and future grant-wise to the impacts of “brand shocks” and the perceived value of the EA brand generally. I strongly recommend caution.
This resonates a lot, and it’s something I probably should’ve included in the post. The implicit promise of funding is real, and I experienced some version of that myself. Als, the LMIC point which especially feels important and underrepresented in these conversations. Thanks for adding it!
Personal opinion only: From watching a number of community builders end up in difficult situations over the years, I would strongly recommend anyone looking at EA community building as a career path carefully think about adequate compensation. When you are new to a series of ideas, especially those interacting with a sense of purpose, it is very easy to get excited, commit to a ton of work (often unpaid) with the assumption funders will see your work’s value when it’s off the ground and fund it. If you will work for free (for example, candidate referrals) there are many organizations that will take you up on the offer and “volunteer gigs” quickly become actual work with little/no compensation to match. Unfortunately, I have to say I have seen this particularly with people from Low to Middle Income Countries—you will end up with a lot of requests for referrels and/or people being referred to you by bigger organizations for “career chats” because those organizations don’t have anyone in the region so it gives a sense of funding endorsement/ implicit promise of funding when it might actually not be there. Further, you are very vulnerable both CV-wise and future grant-wise to the impacts of “brand shocks” and the perceived value of the EA brand generally. I strongly recommend caution.
This resonates a lot, and it’s something I probably should’ve included in the post. The implicit promise of funding is real, and I experienced some version of that myself. Als, the LMIC point which especially feels important and underrepresented in these conversations. Thanks for adding it!