I have mixed feelings about this because I don’t know enough about the situation.
Conflicts:
There are things that people are naturally better at and worse at, and the law of comparative advantage does make sense
vs.
There are things that people could get good at but don’t because they don’t believe in themselves and don’t try aka imposters syndrome.
(I think this may result in some lack of diversity in tech, STEM, EA, etc.)
I think the EA community might lean more towards trying really hard to match people with what they are good at / not bad at. I think the EA community may underestimate that when people try and want to get better at a skill (or that they aren’t good at something because they don’t believe in themselves and don’t try to get better), they can get much better at it and surprise themselves and others by how much progress they’ve made.
It seems to me that community building is what excites you a lot at the moment, which means that there is a lot of potential for improvement because you care about improving.
Are there other things that also excite you as well? It could be good to enjoy community building and try other things too (though I realize that this may come with a lot of emotional baggage)! (As someone who’s been rejected from community building grants, I still feel the emotional baggage and it still makes it hard to make clear-headed decisions)
CEA has a different perspective than the community members who are seeing the community building happen on the ground. I think that getting feedback from the people who in your community is more accurate. I agree with notabot that grant-seeking and community building are different skills. I also agree with Dancer with it being very plausible that CEA made the right decision given the little information they had, but it doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong with your community building.
I have mixed feelings about this because I don’t know enough about the situation.
Conflicts:
There are things that people are naturally better at and worse at, and the law of comparative advantage does make sense vs. There are things that people could get good at but don’t because they don’t believe in themselves and don’t try aka imposters syndrome. (I think this may result in some lack of diversity in tech, STEM, EA, etc.)
I think the EA community might lean more towards trying really hard to match people with what they are good at / not bad at. I think the EA community may underestimate that when people try and want to get better at a skill (or that they aren’t good at something because they don’t believe in themselves and don’t try to get better), they can get much better at it and surprise themselves and others by how much progress they’ve made.
It seems to me that community building is what excites you a lot at the moment, which means that there is a lot of potential for improvement because you care about improving.
Are there other things that also excite you as well? It could be good to enjoy community building and try other things too (though I realize that this may come with a lot of emotional baggage)! (As someone who’s been rejected from community building grants, I still feel the emotional baggage and it still makes it hard to make clear-headed decisions)
CEA has a different perspective than the community members who are seeing the community building happen on the ground. I think that getting feedback from the people who in your community is more accurate. I agree with notabot that grant-seeking and community building are different skills. I also agree with Dancer with it being very plausible that CEA made the right decision given the little information they had, but it doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong with your community building.