Agree that ingroup rejection matters. If you want to make a large impact, getting rejected from an EA org can feel like you’re not good enough to make a large impact.
Group organizers may hear that many budding high potential EAs apply to EA jobs and become less motivated to do EA organizing if there is no clear paths for budding EAs given the high rejection rates.
As a result, I think having good alternatives to EA orgs is quite important. 80k mentions having a plan Z if plans A or B don’t work out. For high-achieving people, not being able to achieve plan A or B can feel awful. However, it is possible that non plan As or Bs can still be very high impact. I feel like good examples of people settling on their plan Z’s are underrepresented in the EA community since guest speakers tend to work on EA causes in EA orgs, and therefore you’d never get someone who gives a talk about landing on a plan Z situation.
Agreed, more public figures of people who found something meaningful and impactful that wasn’t what they initially thought they would/should work on would help with that :)
Hot takes:
Agree that ingroup rejection matters. If you want to make a large impact, getting rejected from an EA org can feel like you’re not good enough to make a large impact.
Group organizers may hear that many budding high potential EAs apply to EA jobs and become less motivated to do EA organizing if there is no clear paths for budding EAs given the high rejection rates.
As a result, I think having good alternatives to EA orgs is quite important. 80k mentions having a plan Z if plans A or B don’t work out. For high-achieving people, not being able to achieve plan A or B can feel awful. However, it is possible that non plan As or Bs can still be very high impact. I feel like good examples of people settling on their plan Z’s are underrepresented in the EA community since guest speakers tend to work on EA causes in EA orgs, and therefore you’d never get someone who gives a talk about landing on a plan Z situation.
Let me know what you think! :)
Agreed, more public figures of people who found something meaningful and impactful that wasn’t what they initially thought they would/should work on would help with that :)