Thanks for writing this, and for liberating the draft!
As someone who’s closer to category #2 than #1 (I worked in the corporate world for a long time before starting at an ea-aligned and -founded biosecurity nonprofit) I’m, as you say, naturally inclined to like this post. But considerations in the other direction:
People who didn’t spend 5+ years in the corporate world and instead spent them doing altruistically useful things probably got a bunch of altruistically useful things done.
If you’re advising young EAs on what to do after graduating this is effectively suggesting they wait 3-10y before substantially contributing, which is time during which they might drift away from EA (or AI might end the world as we know it, etc).
People who went to grad school (ex: my PhD biosecurity coworkers) are already pretty far into their career by the time they fully finish school. But maybe you’re mostly thinking about college grads?
To the extent that you’re thinking about where to recruit EAs for direct work, though, if you can find people with more experience in a wide range of work that’s certainly valuable!
Thanks for writing this, and for liberating the draft!
As someone who’s closer to category #2 than #1 (I worked in the corporate world for a long time before starting at an ea-aligned and -founded biosecurity nonprofit) I’m, as you say, naturally inclined to like this post. But considerations in the other direction:
People who didn’t spend 5+ years in the corporate world and instead spent them doing altruistically useful things probably got a bunch of altruistically useful things done.
If you’re advising young EAs on what to do after graduating this is effectively suggesting they wait 3-10y before substantially contributing, which is time during which they might drift away from EA (or AI might end the world as we know it, etc).
People who went to grad school (ex: my PhD biosecurity coworkers) are already pretty far into their career by the time they fully finish school. But maybe you’re mostly thinking about college grads?
To the extent that you’re thinking about where to recruit EAs for direct work, though, if you can find people with more experience in a wide range of work that’s certainly valuable!