Career Conversations Week on the Forum (8-15 September)
TL;DR: September 8 − 15 will feature more career-related discussions on the EA Forum: a “Career Conversations Week.”[1] This is an invitation to participate and a pre-announcement of some posts that will be published during the event. You can follow posts under this tag.
A wide range of topics would fit the theme; consider writing about what you actually do in your job (and how you got there), sharing advice about how to choose a path, etc. (some more ideas below).
You can always write about these topics on the EA Forum, but if you want someone to provide extra encouragement — or if you want to post about it when others are talking about it, too — this event is your chance.
What this actually is and why we’re running it
Much like EA Strategy Fortnight, this event is ultimately a push for discussions of a particular kind — in this case, everything about (impact-oriented) careers. We have a tag for the event, we’ll put up a banner on the Frontpage (so that people know that this is happening), and some folks have already agreed to participate. We’ll also feature more career-related opportunities and we might resurface some classic posts on these topics.
Goals for the event include:
Prompting more people to take useful career-related actions (like applying to open opportunities)
Improving how we make career and hiring decisions
Developing a better sense for what different roles actually look like
Sharing useful resources
Posts that people expect to share for the event (let me know in the comments if you have something that you’d like to add!):
Lizka — about my job (and why you should write about yours, too)
Lorenzo Buonanno — new Who wants to be hired? and Who’s hiring? threads, and a reflection on last year’s threads
JP Addison — The cost of leaving your role is probably higher than you think
Ben West — Placeholder
Will H — Placeholder
Vaidehi Agarwalla — “Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers”
2ndRichter — about my job (and advice for people who want to get into communications
Probably Good — “What each member of Probably Good wishes they knew earlier in their careers”
Abby Hoskin — “What happens on an 80k career advising call”
80,000 Hours 1:1 Advising team — AMA
Charity Entrepreneurship — at least one of “Who is nonprofit entrepreneurship a good fit for?” (an updated version of our classic question), how to signal competence without uni credentials, and/or “nonprofit entrepreneurs on their unexpected career change”
Sofia Balderson — “Writing about my job: Co-founder of a new charity” and “What I wish I knew when I started out in animal advocacy”
New program announcements
How you can participate
Write relevant posts and quick takes
If you know you’ll write something, please feel free to comment on this post, and I’ll try to add it to the list above
Read and comment on posts written for the event
You can follow posts by subscribing to the tag
Run related events, apply to useful opportunities, etc., and mention these things on the EA Forum so that the actions aren’t invisible to others
If you write a post
Tag it with the relevant tag
Add the following to the bottom of your post:
This post is part of the September 2023 Career Conversations Week. You can see other Career Conversations Week posts here.
Example topics you could write about (you can add more in the comments!)
Advice — what you wish you knew when you were 20, how to test fit for different roles, pitfalls of certain types of work (part-time, remote, independent, grant-funded, etc.), questions to ask potential employers, etc.
Thoughts on network-level things like hiring bottlenecks, issues with how we advertise roles, and more
Or whatever else you have thoughts about!
This event is clearly inspired by EA Strategy Fortnight — thanks to all of you who helped make that happen and participated in it! :)
- ^
This isn’t the most creative title, but we went with it over options like
“The September JobFest,” “Visionary Vocations Week” and the “Optimal Occupations Odyssey” for the sake of clarity.
- EA Forum: plans for Giving Season 2023 by (23 Oct 2023 17:41 UTC; 121 points)
- About my job: “Content Specialist” by (8 Sep 2023 18:55 UTC; 66 points)
- How should technical AI researchers best transition into AI governance and policy? by (10 Sep 2023 5:29 UTC; 12 points)
- EA Anywhere Discussion: Career Conversations by (5 Sep 2023 17:06 UTC; 5 points)
- EA Anywhere Discussion: Career Conversations by (5 Sep 2023 17:02 UTC; 5 points)
- EA Anywhere Discussion: Career Conversations by (5 Sep 2023 17:02 UTC; 5 points)
This is great! I’ll post “Monetary and social incentives in longtermist careers” either during the week or before (I was writing this post anyways, but this will be provide a good accountability mechanism!)
Awesome, thank you! Adding it to the list.
I really like these themed events on the EA Forum and would love to see more of them! Thanks to everyone who contributes with posts, quick takes, and comments.
We scheduled related online discussions at EA Anywhere to facilitate knowledge-sharing and highlight useful career-related actions. Everyone is welcome to join!
September 10 at 6 pm UTC (Europe/America)
September 11 at 11 am UTC (Asia/Oceania)
I like that you’ve included some older posts in the sequence—lots of great content that gets lost because the Forum can be a newsfeed.
I’d love to nominate some posts for consideration. Some were very influential at the time and garnered some good discussion, continue to be solid advice or have interesting insights:
SHOW: A framework for shaping your talent for direct work (I like that it focuses a lot on getting outside of EA to build your career)
High absorbency career paths (helpful at a more career meta level rather than individual decision-making, but it’s useful for explaining why there are limited jobs in EA)
The Cost of Rejection (I don’t necessarily agree with all the conclusions, but I think the topic is important and deserves discussion—how can we, as a community, help each other be more resilient to rejection, and are there things which potential employers can do?)
Don’t Be Bycatch (I think this post is memorable /motivational and has good advice. Disclaimer: the author is a friend and we’ve worked on career-related projects together)
EA is a Career Endpoint (A shorter & more motivational flavor than the SHOW framework. Again, I like it because it’s memorable and a useful reference. I feel I’ve used this phrase or something similar more frequently than the SHOW framework. Disclaimer: the author is a friend and we’ve worked on career-related projects together)
EA jobs provide scarce non-monetary goods (I’ve referenced this post several times in my previous writing and think it’s really solid.)
What to do with people? (When I first read this I found it a really helpful framing. I think it’s more useful for meta career discussions)
Great theme idea. I’ll aim to post (working title) “Impostor syndrome can be valuable information.”
This week has been really good.
I am finding these career posts easier to connect with than the average non-community post. I guess I can more easily connect with a person’s job and I love finding out what people do.
So excited for this!
I will post two things:
1. Writing about my job: Co-founder of a new charity
2. What I wish I knew when I started out in animal advocacy
Thank you!