Thanks for writing and sharing your insights! I think the whole EA community would be a lot healthier if people had a much more limited view of EA, striving to take jobs that have positive impact in the long run, rather than focussing so much on the much shorter-term goal of taking jobs in high-profile EA organisations, at great personal expense.
I share the view that a lot of EAs probably focus much too much on getting roles at explicitly EA organisations, implicitly interpret “direct work” as “work at an explicitly EA orgs”, should broaden the set of roles and orgs they consider or apply for, etc. And obviously there are many roles outside of explicitly EA orgs where one can have a big positive impact. I think highlighting this is valuable, as this post and various other posts over the last couple years have, as 80,000 Hours tries to do, and as this comment does.
That said, I disagree with part of what you’re saying, or how it can be interpreted. I think that there are people for whom working at explicitly EA organisations is probably the most impactful thing they can do, and people for whom it’s probably the most enjoyable and rewarding thing they can do, and people for whom both of those things are true. And this can be true in the long-term as well as the short term. And it’s hard to say in advance who will be one of those people, so it’s probably best if a substantial portion of the unsure people apply to roles at EA and non-EA orgs and see what happens.
So I don’t think taking jobs in EA orgs (high-profile or not) necessarily comes at great personal expense, or necessarily conflicts with taking jobs that have positive impact in the long-run. In fact, I doubt that’d be true of most people who are offered those roles. And applying for jobs in EA orgs also doesn’t have to come at great personal expense or conflict with having a positive impact in the long-run, as long as one also applies to other things, remembers not to treat “only” getting offered a role outside of an EA org as failure, etc.
(Personally, I applied for ~30 roles in 2019, ~25 of which were at EA orgs, though not all high -profile ones. And I ended up with 2 offers, both from EA orgs. And I now think that, at least for now, continuing to work at EA orgs is more impactful and rewarding for me in particular than alternative options would be.
But again, I definitely don’t think that this’ll be true for everyone, and think applying for a wide range of things seems good. I also think I’d usually advise people to apply for more than just 5 roles at non-EA orgs—there were reasons particular to my circumstances why I only applied for 5 such roles.)
And applying for jobs in EA orgs also doesn’t have to come at great personal expense
I want to push back against this point a bit. Although I completely agree that you shouldn’t treat working at non-EA orgs as a failure!
In my experience, applying for jobs in EA orgs has been very expensive compared to applying to other jobs, even completely ignoring any mental costs. There was a discussion about this topic here as well, and my view on the matter has not changed much—except I now have some experience applying to jobs outside EA orgs, backing up what I previously thought.
To get to the last stage of a process in the application processes I went through at EA orgs routinely took a dozen hours, and often dozens. This did not happen once when I applied to jobs outside of EA orgs. Application processes were just much shorter. I don’t think applying to EA jobs as I did in 2018 would have been compatible with having a full-time job, or only with great difficulty.
Something I also encountered only in EA org application processes were them taking several months or being very mismanaged—going back and forth on where someone was in the application process, or having an applicant invest dozens of hours only to inform them that the org was actually unable to provide visas.
Interesting. For what it’s worth, that doesn’t match my own experience. (Though I’m of course not contesting that that was the case for you, and I don’t know whether your or my experiences would be more representative of the experiences other people have had/would have.) I’ll share my own experience below, in case the extra data point is useful to anyone.
I found some EA org application processes quite quick, some moderately long, and some quite long, and found the same for non-EA org application processes. I don’t think there was an obvious difference in average time taken for me.
I think the two longest application processes I’ve gone through were for the Teach For Australia program (which I got into; this was before I learned about EA) and the UK Civil Service Fast Stream (where I got to the final stage but ultimately didn’t receive an offer)
Though some of my EA org application processes did come close to the length of those two
I did these applications while doing a full-time job
Though I’m a sort of person who for some reason finds it natural to do work-like things for long hours (as long as I feel fairly autonomous in how I do this), which I know won’t be true for everyone
From memory, there were two cases where EA orgs’ application processes involved long gaps in response time and/or seemed mismanaged, in a way that I don’t think I experienced with non-EA applications.
But I also applied to fewer roles outside of EA orgs, so maybe there just weren’t enough rolls of the dice for that to come up.
And there were quite a few times where I just never heard back, and eventually assumed I hadn’t got the job but they hadn’t told me. This happened in some applications to EA orgs and some to non-EA orgs, and probably somewhat more often per application to non-EA orgs.
I never got far enough through application processes where I’d require a visa for the visa issue to come up, so can’t comment on that.
I should emphasise again that:
I’m just sharing my own experience
I agree with the broader point that most EAs probably shouldn’t be primarily aiming for roles in explicitly EA orgs
I’m glad you’re now on a track that you’re much happier with and seemingly having more success in :)
For anyone else reading this, the UK Civil Service Fast Stream is a 4+month application process that at one point requires you to take a day off work and travel in to do work tests; it’s a leadership programme with an application process that’s much more time-consuming than anything I’ve ever applied for before or since.
I’ve also experienced the average EA org application process to be a bit more disordered/chaotic than the average non-EA job I applied to (though I was also ghosted for weeks after a final-round interview with a major financial firm). I expect this is almost entirely a function of org size, but it’s still unfortunate and something I hope is changing.
As far as time required by application processes, I had a very different experience while applying to many orgs, leaving me unsure of how the “average” process compares to the average private-sector process. I’m glad to see you re-sharing your previous comment about this; I’ll link to my previous reply so that people can have a bit more data.
I agree with everything you are saying, and I did not mean to imply that people should not consider working at explicit EA organisations. Indeed, I would also be interested at working at one of them at some point!
The point I wanted to make is that the goal of “getting a job at an EA organisation” in itself is a near-term career goal, since it does not answer many of the questions choosing a career entails, many of which have been highlighted in the post above as well as by 80,000 hours. I am thinking of questions like:
How do I choose a field where I would both enjoy the work and have an impact? How do I avoid significant negatives that would stop me having a meaningful and happy life and career? How do I build the skills that make me attractive in the field I want to work in?
Of course, we’ll never get everything right, but this is a more nuanced view than focussing all your efforts on getting a job at an EA organisation. I would also like to see more discussions of “hybrid” careers, where one for example builds a career as an expert in the Civil Service and then joins an EA organisation or acts as an advisor during a one year break to exchange experiences.
Thanks for writing and sharing your insights! I think the whole EA community would be a lot healthier if people had a much more limited view of EA, striving to take jobs that have positive impact in the long run, rather than focussing so much on the much shorter-term goal of taking jobs in high-profile EA organisations, at great personal expense.
I share the view that a lot of EAs probably focus much too much on getting roles at explicitly EA organisations, implicitly interpret “direct work” as “work at an explicitly EA orgs”, should broaden the set of roles and orgs they consider or apply for, etc. And obviously there are many roles outside of explicitly EA orgs where one can have a big positive impact. I think highlighting this is valuable, as this post and various other posts over the last couple years have, as 80,000 Hours tries to do, and as this comment does.
That said, I disagree with part of what you’re saying, or how it can be interpreted. I think that there are people for whom working at explicitly EA organisations is probably the most impactful thing they can do, and people for whom it’s probably the most enjoyable and rewarding thing they can do, and people for whom both of those things are true. And this can be true in the long-term as well as the short term. And it’s hard to say in advance who will be one of those people, so it’s probably best if a substantial portion of the unsure people apply to roles at EA and non-EA orgs and see what happens.
So I don’t think taking jobs in EA orgs (high-profile or not) necessarily comes at great personal expense, or necessarily conflicts with taking jobs that have positive impact in the long-run. In fact, I doubt that’d be true of most people who are offered those roles. And applying for jobs in EA orgs also doesn’t have to come at great personal expense or conflict with having a positive impact in the long-run, as long as one also applies to other things, remembers not to treat “only” getting offered a role outside of an EA org as failure, etc.
(Personally, I applied for ~30 roles in 2019, ~25 of which were at EA orgs, though not all high -profile ones. And I ended up with 2 offers, both from EA orgs. And I now think that, at least for now, continuing to work at EA orgs is more impactful and rewarding for me in particular than alternative options would be.
But again, I definitely don’t think that this’ll be true for everyone, and think applying for a wide range of things seems good. I also think I’d usually advise people to apply for more than just 5 roles at non-EA orgs—there were reasons particular to my circumstances why I only applied for 5 such roles.)
I want to push back against this point a bit. Although I completely agree that you shouldn’t treat working at non-EA orgs as a failure!
In my experience, applying for jobs in EA orgs has been very expensive compared to applying to other jobs, even completely ignoring any mental costs. There was a discussion about this topic here as well, and my view on the matter has not changed much—except I now have some experience applying to jobs outside EA orgs, backing up what I previously thought.
To get to the last stage of a process in the application processes I went through at EA orgs routinely took a dozen hours, and often dozens. This did not happen once when I applied to jobs outside of EA orgs. Application processes were just much shorter. I don’t think applying to EA jobs as I did in 2018 would have been compatible with having a full-time job, or only with great difficulty.
Something I also encountered only in EA org application processes were them taking several months or being very mismanaged—going back and forth on where someone was in the application process, or having an applicant invest dozens of hours only to inform them that the org was actually unable to provide visas.
Interesting. For what it’s worth, that doesn’t match my own experience. (Though I’m of course not contesting that that was the case for you, and I don’t know whether your or my experiences would be more representative of the experiences other people have had/would have.) I’ll share my own experience below, in case the extra data point is useful to anyone.
I found some EA org application processes quite quick, some moderately long, and some quite long, and found the same for non-EA org application processes. I don’t think there was an obvious difference in average time taken for me.
I think the two longest application processes I’ve gone through were for the Teach For Australia program (which I got into; this was before I learned about EA) and the UK Civil Service Fast Stream (where I got to the final stage but ultimately didn’t receive an offer)
Though some of my EA org application processes did come close to the length of those two
I did these applications while doing a full-time job
Though I’m a sort of person who for some reason finds it natural to do work-like things for long hours (as long as I feel fairly autonomous in how I do this), which I know won’t be true for everyone
From memory, there were two cases where EA orgs’ application processes involved long gaps in response time and/or seemed mismanaged, in a way that I don’t think I experienced with non-EA applications.
But I also applied to fewer roles outside of EA orgs, so maybe there just weren’t enough rolls of the dice for that to come up.
And there were quite a few times where I just never heard back, and eventually assumed I hadn’t got the job but they hadn’t told me. This happened in some applications to EA orgs and some to non-EA orgs, and probably somewhat more often per application to non-EA orgs.
I never got far enough through application processes where I’d require a visa for the visa issue to come up, so can’t comment on that.
I should emphasise again that:
I’m just sharing my own experience
I agree with the broader point that most EAs probably shouldn’t be primarily aiming for roles in explicitly EA orgs
I’m glad you’re now on a track that you’re much happier with and seemingly having more success in :)
For anyone else reading this, the UK Civil Service Fast Stream is a 4+month application process that at one point requires you to take a day off work and travel in to do work tests; it’s a leadership programme with an application process that’s much more time-consuming than anything I’ve ever applied for before or since.
Yeah, thanks for giving that extra context.
The Teach For Australia application process is quite similar.
I’ve also experienced the average EA org application process to be a bit more disordered/chaotic than the average non-EA job I applied to (though I was also ghosted for weeks after a final-round interview with a major financial firm). I expect this is almost entirely a function of org size, but it’s still unfortunate and something I hope is changing.
As far as time required by application processes, I had a very different experience while applying to many orgs, leaving me unsure of how the “average” process compares to the average private-sector process. I’m glad to see you re-sharing your previous comment about this; I’ll link to my previous reply so that people can have a bit more data.
Hi Michael, thanks for your reply!
I agree with everything you are saying, and I did not mean to imply that people should not consider working at explicit EA organisations. Indeed, I would also be interested at working at one of them at some point!
The point I wanted to make is that the goal of “getting a job at an EA organisation” in itself is a near-term career goal, since it does not answer many of the questions choosing a career entails, many of which have been highlighted in the post above as well as by 80,000 hours. I am thinking of questions like:
How do I choose a field where I would both enjoy the work and have an impact?
How do I avoid significant negatives that would stop me having a meaningful and happy life and career?
How do I build the skills that make me attractive in the field I want to work in?
Of course, we’ll never get everything right, but this is a more nuanced view than focussing all your efforts on getting a job at an EA organisation. I would also like to see more discussions of “hybrid” careers, where one for example builds a career as an expert in the Civil Service and then joins an EA organisation or acts as an advisor during a one year break to exchange experiences.