FWIW, I think something akin to a mysterious old wizard was relevant in my EA-aligned career journey.
The way Iāve been phrasing it is that, once I got clear indications that I was likely to be offered a research role at an EA org (Convergence Analysis), I felt like Iād gotten a āstamp of approvalā saying it now made sense for me to make independent posts to the Forum and LessWrong as well. I still felt uncertain about whether Iād have anything to say that was worth reading and wasnāt just reinventing the wheel, whether Iād say it well, whether people would care, etc., but I felt much less uncertain than I had just before that point.[1]
So maybe regular, formal job/āproject application processes already do a lot of the work weād otherwise want mysterious old wizards to do?
But I still think thereās room for mysterious old wizards, as you suggest. Iāve tried to fill a mild (i.e., caveated) version of this role for a couple people myself.
[1] My data point is a bit murkier than I made it sound above, for reasons such as the following:
I had already started drafting a post that was related to the first post I ended up actually posting
Though I still think the indications of a likely job offer probably brought forward the date I started posted, and increased how many posts I ended up writing around then (shooting for a sequence right away, rather than just one exploratory post)
I had also been offered an operations role at a high-status EA org at the same time, which also provided some degree of āstamp of approvalā
I also had various other āstamp of approvalā-ish things around the same time, e.g. from conversations at an EAG and an EAGx
Iād set the goal to āget up to speedā to a certain extent, and then started posting things, and if I recall correctly Iād felt that the first part should last me most of 2019 and I indeed felt Iād basically completed that part by the end of 2019. So that probably also caused me to switch into a mode of āalright, letās actually start posting nowā.
This seems like a useful concept to have.
FWIW, I think something akin to a mysterious old wizard was relevant in my EA-aligned career journey.
The way Iāve been phrasing it is that, once I got clear indications that I was likely to be offered a research role at an EA org (Convergence Analysis), I felt like Iād gotten a āstamp of approvalā saying it now made sense for me to make independent posts to the Forum and LessWrong as well. I still felt uncertain about whether Iād have anything to say that was worth reading and wasnāt just reinventing the wheel, whether Iād say it well, whether people would care, etc., but I felt much less uncertain than I had just before that point.[1]
So maybe regular, formal job/āproject application processes already do a lot of the work weād otherwise want mysterious old wizards to do?
But I still think thereās room for mysterious old wizards, as you suggest. Iāve tried to fill a mild (i.e., caveated) version of this role for a couple people myself.
[1] My data point is a bit murkier than I made it sound above, for reasons such as the following:
I had already started drafting a post that was related to the first post I ended up actually posting
Though I still think the indications of a likely job offer probably brought forward the date I started posted, and increased how many posts I ended up writing around then (shooting for a sequence right away, rather than just one exploratory post)
I had also been offered an operations role at a high-status EA org at the same time, which also provided some degree of āstamp of approvalā
I also had various other āstamp of approvalā-ish things around the same time, e.g. from conversations at an EAG and an EAGx
Iād set the goal to āget up to speedā to a certain extent, and then started posting things, and if I recall correctly Iād felt that the first part should last me most of 2019 and I indeed felt Iād basically completed that part by the end of 2019. So that probably also caused me to switch into a mode of āalright, letās actually start posting nowā.