I think that mentorship and guidance are lacking and undervalued in the EA community. This seems odd to me. Everyone seems to agree that coordination problems are hard, that we’re not going to solve tough problems without recruiting additional talent, and that outreach in the “right” places would be good. Functionally, however, most individuals in the community, most organizations, and most heads of organizations seem to act as though they can make a difference through brute force alone.
I also don’t get the impression that most EA organizations and heads of EA organizations are keen on meeting or working with new and interested people. People affiliated with EA write many articles about increasing personal productivity; I have yet to read a single article about increasing group effectiveness.
80,000 Hours may be the sole exception to this rule, though I haven’t formally gone through their coaching program, so I don’t know what their pipeline is like. CFAR also seems to be addressing some of these issues, though their workshops are still prohibitively expensive for lots of people, especially newcomers. EA outreach is great, but once people have heard about EA, I don’t think it’s clear what they should do or how they should proceed.
The final reason why I find this odd is because in most professional settings, mentorship is explicitly valued. Even high-status people who have plenty of stuff on their plate will set aside some time for service.
My model for why this is happening has two parts. First, I think there is some selection effect going on; most people in EA are self-starters who came on board and paved their own path. (That’s great and all, but do people think that most major organizations and movements got things done solely by a handful of self-starters trying to cooperate?)
Second, I think it might be the case that most people are good at doing cost-benefit analyses on how much impact their pet project will have on the world, but aren’t thinking about the multiplier effect they could have by helping other people be effective. (This is often because they are undervaluing the effectiveness of other, relatively not-high-status people.)
Anonymous #22:
Another possibility is that most people in EA are still pretty young, so they might not feel like they’re really in a position to mentor anyone.