I think mentoring is very broad and different kinds achieve different goals. A basic definition of mentoring would be: someone who advises or trains another person on a ongoing basis for a period of time. As opposed a one-off activity—like a single call or interaction.
A few different kinds:
Research Mentoring—Effective Thesis + opportunities through EA research organisations. AI Safety Support is also running/​ran a mentorship program a few months back.
I think there are probably still more opportunities for general research mentoring but don’t know enough about the EA Research landscape to comment further. (I’d be keen to hear others’ thoughts)
Career Mentoring—Student Career Mentoring, WANBAM
A fair deal of work is going on in this space.
I’ve deliberately not included 80K because I consider their services to fall under a one-off activity for the most part
Coordination Mechanisms:
Centralizing knowledge/​best practices for other groups to implement (e.g. WANBAM has compiled a bunch of excellent resources)
Mapping out the opportunities (e.g. a central EA Forum post that’s maintained) could be valuable for more efficiency.
Expert Tutoring /​Mentoring - (your proposal) It seems most valuable in somewhat narrow cases—e.g. an EA researcher trying to write on a new topic.
A subject matter expert who:
is good at teaching (possibly very rare depending on the subject)
wants to invest time in teaching/​thinks it’s valuable
A way for that expert to connect with potential tutees (and depending on demand to filter tutees)
Thus any coordination mechanism would need to 1) recruit SMEs and 2) pair them with tutees
Productivity/​Life coaching/​mentoring: There are a few EAs who offer life coaching services and there is also the EA Life Coaching exchange Facebook group.
Since this is a more professionalized service I don’t expect it would make sense to offer this for free to the whole community, but many of the coaches offer substantial subsidies for EAs.
However, there may be a case for encouraging it more
At best a coordination mechanism might just be a Forum Post which maintains all the active opportunities
(Applied) Rationality coaching: As far as I’m aware CFAR is the only group that officially offers training. I don’t know if I’d call it mentoring, but its similar enough to productivity coaching that I thought I’d include for completeness
A very small group of people can actually attend in-person CFAR workshops. I have seen only a few events online, and they are not formal programs (e.g. an accountability group for doing the Hammertime)
Could be opportunities here, but it also may be that this overlaps a lot with productivity coaching
I don’t think this would benefit from coordination mechanisms
I think mentoring is very broad and different kinds achieve different goals. A basic definition of mentoring would be: someone who advises or trains another person on a ongoing basis for a period of time. As opposed a one-off activity—like a single call or interaction.
A few different kinds:
Research Mentoring—Effective Thesis + opportunities through EA research organisations. AI Safety Support is also running/​ran a mentorship program a few months back.
I think there are probably still more opportunities for general research mentoring but don’t know enough about the EA Research landscape to comment further. (I’d be keen to hear others’ thoughts)
Career Mentoring—Student Career Mentoring, WANBAM
A fair deal of work is going on in this space.
I’ve deliberately not included 80K because I consider their services to fall under a one-off activity for the most part
Coordination Mechanisms:
Centralizing knowledge/​best practices for other groups to implement (e.g. WANBAM has compiled a bunch of excellent resources)
Mapping out the opportunities (e.g. a central EA Forum post that’s maintained) could be valuable for more efficiency.
Expert Tutoring /​Mentoring - (your proposal) It seems most valuable in somewhat narrow cases—e.g. an EA researcher trying to write on a new topic.
A subject matter expert who:
is good at teaching (possibly very rare depending on the subject)
wants to invest time in teaching/​thinks it’s valuable
A way for that expert to connect with potential tutees (and depending on demand to filter tutees)
Thus any coordination mechanism would need to 1) recruit SMEs and 2) pair them with tutees
Productivity/​Life coaching/​mentoring: There are a few EAs who offer life coaching services and there is also the EA Life Coaching exchange Facebook group.
Since this is a more professionalized service I don’t expect it would make sense to offer this for free to the whole community, but many of the coaches offer substantial subsidies for EAs.
However, there may be a case for encouraging it more
At best a coordination mechanism might just be a Forum Post which maintains all the active opportunities
(Applied) Rationality coaching: As far as I’m aware CFAR is the only group that officially offers training. I don’t know if I’d call it mentoring, but its similar enough to productivity coaching that I thought I’d include for completeness
A very small group of people can actually attend in-person CFAR workshops. I have seen only a few events online, and they are not formal programs (e.g. an accountability group for doing the Hammertime)
Could be opportunities here, but it also may be that this overlaps a lot with productivity coaching
I don’t think this would benefit from coordination mechanisms
Thanks! :-D