I often return to this bit of 80000 Hours’ anonymous career advice, about how when you’re great at your job, no one’s advice is that useful.
I think in general if you want to accomplish something, or you want to be good at something, or you want something to happen — you want to throw yourself into it, and get really deep into it. Focus on it. Obsess over it. If you don’t, you probably won’t get the result you want. And if you do — you’re going to find that advice from other people often isn’t that useful. By “advice” here I mean talking to people who aren’t paying much attention to what you’re doing and don’t know you very well and are just reacting to your description of the situation and your questions. And I’m assuming this isn’t a case where you’re asking the world’s expert on X to answer a narrowly defined question that they’re clearly the best person to answer because it’s 100% about X.
I think EAs tend to ask for a lot of advice, as defined above. And they should, I think asking for advice is good. But I think it’s good to understand what that advice is and isn’t. And usually when you’re doing your job really well, no one’s advice is going to be that useful. They’re never going to know what you should do. They’re never going to know as much as you do, and if they do, you’re not doing it right.
I like it a lot. It reminds me of Agnes Callard’s observation about a young writer asking Margaret Atwood for advice and getting only the trite advice to “write every day”:
The young person is not approaching Atwood for instructions on how to operate Microsoft Word, nor is she making the unreasonable demand that Atwood become her writing coach. She wants the kind of value she would get from the second, but she wants it given to her in the manner of the first. But there is no there there. Hence the advice-giver is reduced to repeating reasonable-sounding things she has heard others say—thoughts that are watered down so far that there’s really no thought left, just water.
I have a thought on this. It related to the level of effort from the advice giver, and the willingness to understand the recipient’s context. Often advice is given with only a few seconds of effort, or with the giver applying a sort of cookie-cutter template to their understanding of the recipient. That is when useless advice comes from. When the giver dedicates some time minutes toward understanding and exploring the receiver’s context, toward actually paying attention, then the advice is able to be of much better quality.
This is specifically fresh in my mind because a few days ago I helped John Doe review his resume. John told me that I was not the first person to help, several other people had looked at his resume and told him that is was pretty good. But I did more than merely glance at his resume; I read through it with a critical eye. I had a page full of notes for him. Some of the notes were preference/stylistic things, but plenty of the notes were ‘errors’ that other people hadn’t bothered to notice: the text used two different shades of dark blue, there was inconsistent formatting in the dates. John was amazed that multiple people had reviewed his resume, and nobody had noticed or bothered to tell him that he was using two different colors (it was not intentional on his part to use two different colors).
In contrast, I’ve heard and (heard of) plenty of career advice within EA that simply isn’t apt. Recommending a recipient with no interest in an area to pursue that area, or ignoring a recipient’s visa/legal status, ignoring a recipient’s financial constraints, etc. I was once told to treat people to coffee and to use my parents’ professional networks. Both of those things are true in general, but I don’t live within a hundred miles of a place where I could treat networking contacts to coffee, and my retired working class parents don’t have professional networks. It reminds me a little bit of trying to try; how much effort do people actually put into the act of giving helpful advice.
I often return to this bit of 80000 Hours’ anonymous career advice, about how when you’re great at your job, no one’s advice is that useful.
I like it a lot. It reminds me of Agnes Callard’s observation about a young writer asking Margaret Atwood for advice and getting only the trite advice to “write every day”:
I have a thought on this. It related to the level of effort from the advice giver, and the willingness to understand the recipient’s context. Often advice is given with only a few seconds of effort, or with the giver applying a sort of cookie-cutter template to their understanding of the recipient. That is when useless advice comes from. When the giver dedicates some time minutes toward understanding and exploring the receiver’s context, toward actually paying attention, then the advice is able to be of much better quality.
This is specifically fresh in my mind because a few days ago I helped John Doe review his resume. John told me that I was not the first person to help, several other people had looked at his resume and told him that is was pretty good. But I did more than merely glance at his resume; I read through it with a critical eye. I had a page full of notes for him. Some of the notes were preference/stylistic things, but plenty of the notes were ‘errors’ that other people hadn’t bothered to notice: the text used two different shades of dark blue, there was inconsistent formatting in the dates. John was amazed that multiple people had reviewed his resume, and nobody had noticed or bothered to tell him that he was using two different colors (it was not intentional on his part to use two different colors).
In contrast, I’ve heard and (heard of) plenty of career advice within EA that simply isn’t apt. Recommending a recipient with no interest in an area to pursue that area, or ignoring a recipient’s visa/legal status, ignoring a recipient’s financial constraints, etc. I was once told to treat people to coffee and to use my parents’ professional networks. Both of those things are true in general, but I don’t live within a hundred miles of a place where I could treat networking contacts to coffee, and my retired working class parents don’t have professional networks. It reminds me a little bit of trying to try; how much effort do people actually put into the act of giving helpful advice.