What do you see as the best opportunities to do EA direct work as a full-time career? Which considerations might one use to decide between full-time EA direct work and earning to give?
My personal take is that being a research manager at CSER is good. Researcher at MIRI or CSER would be good if one was quantitatively inclined or expert in policy or risky tech. Tech policy would be good in general if one was expert at that.
Broadly, I think that most promising careers currently accumulate and leverage some resource that is not money, but that relates to humanity’s future potential, in a way that folks like Musk or Moskovitz can’t easily purchase. Things like political clout, influence of researchers and influence of nvestors. If one can’t run a program to get any such resources, then earning to give could be decent if—like Matt Wage and Jaan Tallinn, you see opportunities that others miss.
One you get to the level of choosing between EA orgs, I think the most key consideration is personal fit (i.e. your chances of being really really good at the job). Within EA orgs, good personal fit seems like the best proxy for both your impact and your career capital. (the next most important would be how generally promising the org is).
Given that, it’s hard to talk about the best generally good opportunities. It’s also hard because the situation changes very rapidly.
And that means, I think it’s more about talking to lots of different organisations and seeing if there’s a good role for you that’s available or could be created.
A starting point would be, roughly in order of importance:
Personal fit in high earning careers vs. personal fit in best direct work opportunities. You can start to approximate this by asking various organisations whether they’d prefer to hire you or receive $x per year in donations. The more coordinated you are with other EAs, the closer this gets to something like comparative advantage. In general I think EAs are tilting too far towards etg.
Career capital potential of the two options. In particular, how likely are really impressive achievements in each option? to what extent do you expect EA to take off? how impressive will your peers be? how useful are the skills?
How uncertain you are about which causes will be best in the future (earning to give is the more flexible strategy, though if you gain transferable skills it’s not so bad).
Your assessment of whether the top causes are going to be more funding constrained or more constrained by the type of skills you could offer in the future.
What do you see as the best opportunities to do EA direct work as a full-time career? Which considerations might one use to decide between full-time EA direct work and earning to give?
My personal take is that being a research manager at CSER is good. Researcher at MIRI or CSER would be good if one was quantitatively inclined or expert in policy or risky tech. Tech policy would be good in general if one was expert at that.
Broadly, I think that most promising careers currently accumulate and leverage some resource that is not money, but that relates to humanity’s future potential, in a way that folks like Musk or Moskovitz can’t easily purchase. Things like political clout, influence of researchers and influence of nvestors. If one can’t run a program to get any such resources, then earning to give could be decent if—like Matt Wage and Jaan Tallinn, you see opportunities that others miss.
On the first question:
One you get to the level of choosing between EA orgs, I think the most key consideration is personal fit (i.e. your chances of being really really good at the job). Within EA orgs, good personal fit seems like the best proxy for both your impact and your career capital. (the next most important would be how generally promising the org is).
Given that, it’s hard to talk about the best generally good opportunities. It’s also hard because the situation changes very rapidly.
And that means, I think it’s more about talking to lots of different organisations and seeing if there’s a good role for you that’s available or could be created.
Which considerations to use?
A starting point would be, roughly in order of importance:
Personal fit in high earning careers vs. personal fit in best direct work opportunities. You can start to approximate this by asking various organisations whether they’d prefer to hire you or receive $x per year in donations. The more coordinated you are with other EAs, the closer this gets to something like comparative advantage. In general I think EAs are tilting too far towards etg.
Career capital potential of the two options. In particular, how likely are really impressive achievements in each option? to what extent do you expect EA to take off? how impressive will your peers be? how useful are the skills?
How uncertain you are about which causes will be best in the future (earning to give is the more flexible strategy, though if you gain transferable skills it’s not so bad).
Your assessment of whether the top causes are going to be more funding constrained or more constrained by the type of skills you could offer in the future.
Here’s a bunch more rough notes on the topic, just considering impact potential: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a5SDGv1bX09fRe7a6mp6BzAv69LJVkZ-o9r3WYFk_yM/edit
In terms of short-term decision making strategy, also consider:
How can I test each option?
Which best keeps my options open?