Your comment makes me think that something that might be really easy and really valuable is to just have an online space where people are encouraged to share docs outlining their career ideas, plans, and uncertainties (whether that be filled-in versions of the 80k career planning worksheet, or just sections of that, or filled-in versions of other templates, or something else), in order to get feedback and advice.[1]
Obviously people can already take the initiative to do that in ad hoc ways, either in public spaces (like youāve done) or via reaching out to specific people. And thatās already useful. But I expect a lot of people who could benefit from this sort of thing would be too shy to do that, or just not think to do it, or be held back by not having enough of a network of relevant people.
Four options come to mind for how to do this:
Create an āopen threadā on the EA Forum for people to share such things
Does anyone have thoughts on which of these options might be best? Maybe as a first step someone should just make an open thread and see how it goes?
One thing to consider is that a lot of these career docs may be sensitive, so it may be best not to share them publicly. But it might be easy to mitigate that issue, e.g. via sharing a link to a google doc that people have to request access to before seeing, or just saying the doc exists and asking people to send a message in order to be sent a copy/ālink.
[1] This also reminds me of Rob Wiblinās comments about how having a line manager can be surprisingly beneficial, and how it may be possible to capture a lot of those benefits by just having pairs of junior people who want more line management act as each otherās line managers.
This sounds great to me! Iād be tempted to try out things in existing infrastructure first, like trying it out in the careers discussion fbook group, or the open thread you mentioned.
Other options that come to mind:
Look at the EA London community directory for people who would likely have relevant comments on your plan and reach out to them. This seems like it might be more likely to get a reply than a general call, and the person might have more relevant comments than a random person would. But they would likely have less time because theyāre not selected by being keen to look over a career plan.
Talking to other EAs at your local meet up about looking through your plan, or if there isnāt a group in your area joining EA Anywhere
Iāve been surprised how much peopleās preferences on how to give comments on career plans differs. For example, I find it takes me ages to read through a plan so I end up putting it off for ages. Whereas I really like talking to people, so Iām much happier to chat to someone for half an hour. By contrast a friend of mine finds answering questions on the spot really stressful, so far prefers reading over things. So it seems worth giving people an option about whether to read through something (and if so how much) or whether to chat.
In the longer run, I think it would be cool to have a facebook group or slack for EA job seekers to keep each other motivated and accountable, because itās so hard to apply for jobs and deal with the uncertainty. That might also be a good place for people sharing and commenting on career plans.
That all makes sense/āsounds good to me. Iāve now made an open thread on the Forum for this, as an experiment. Hopefully some of the other ideas can be tried out as well later.
These suggestions are all great. Would a discord server work? This is a community platform that is easy to download and maintain. There are individual chats, group forums, and voice channels for all means of communication. With enough support, this can be set up quickly. Please upvote if this is something that sounds useful, and depending on support, there will be a link posted on this post shortly. Keep in mind this discord server could be used for all things EA, besides, connecting individuals and providing an easy place to share documents and stories. Please provide feedback!
Iām afraid I donāt really know anything about discord (me and tech are not the best of friends...), but from your description it sounds good! I think there is some EA activity on discord, so maybe you could build off that. I donāt know anything about the form it takes or how to find it though unfoābut Iām guessing others on this forum do.
Your comment makes me think that something that might be really easy and really valuable is to just have an online space where people are encouraged to share docs outlining their career ideas, plans, and uncertainties (whether that be filled-in versions of the 80k career planning worksheet, or just sections of that, or filled-in versions of other templates, or something else), in order to get feedback and advice.[1]
Obviously people can already take the initiative to do that in ad hoc ways, either in public spaces (like youāve done) or via reaching out to specific people. And thatās already useful. But I expect a lot of people who could benefit from this sort of thing would be too shy to do that, or just not think to do it, or be held back by not having enough of a network of relevant people.
Four options come to mind for how to do this:
Create an āopen threadā on the EA Forum for people to share such things
Similar to 80kās previous Careers Questions Open Thread
Create a Facebook group for this
Create a Slack workspace for this, or a channel in an existing workspace
Make this a common thing in the Effective Altruism Careers Discussion FB group
Does anyone have thoughts on which of these options might be best? Maybe as a first step someone should just make an open thread and see how it goes?
One thing to consider is that a lot of these career docs may be sensitive, so it may be best not to share them publicly. But it might be easy to mitigate that issue, e.g. via sharing a link to a google doc that people have to request access to before seeing, or just saying the doc exists and asking people to send a message in order to be sent a copy/ālink.
[1] This also reminds me of Rob Wiblinās comments about how having a line manager can be surprisingly beneficial, and how it may be possible to capture a lot of those benefits by just having pairs of junior people who want more line management act as each otherās line managers.
This sounds great to me! Iād be tempted to try out things in existing infrastructure first, like trying it out in the careers discussion fbook group, or the open thread you mentioned.
Other options that come to mind:
Look at the EA London community directory for people who would likely have relevant comments on your plan and reach out to them. This seems like it might be more likely to get a reply than a general call, and the person might have more relevant comments than a random person would. But they would likely have less time because theyāre not selected by being keen to look over a career plan.
Finding an accountability partner eg through the EA life coaching exchange Facebook group and looking through each otherās.
Talking to other EAs at your local meet up about looking through your plan, or if there isnāt a group in your area joining EA Anywhere
Iāve been surprised how much peopleās preferences on how to give comments on career plans differs. For example, I find it takes me ages to read through a plan so I end up putting it off for ages. Whereas I really like talking to people, so Iām much happier to chat to someone for half an hour. By contrast a friend of mine finds answering questions on the spot really stressful, so far prefers reading over things. So it seems worth giving people an option about whether to read through something (and if so how much) or whether to chat.
In the longer run, I think it would be cool to have a facebook group or slack for EA job seekers to keep each other motivated and accountable, because itās so hard to apply for jobs and deal with the uncertainty. That might also be a good place for people sharing and commenting on career plans.
That all makes sense/āsounds good to me. Iāve now made an open thread on the Forum for this, as an experiment. Hopefully some of the other ideas can be tried out as well later.
These suggestions are all great. Would a discord server work? This is a community platform that is easy to download and maintain. There are individual chats, group forums, and voice channels for all means of communication. With enough support, this can be set up quickly. Please upvote if this is something that sounds useful, and depending on support, there will be a link posted on this post shortly. Keep in mind this discord server could be used for all things EA, besides, connecting individuals and providing an easy place to share documents and stories. Please provide feedback!
In case you havenāt seen it, I also replied to this comment when you made it on the Open Thread.
Iām afraid I donāt really know anything about discord (me and tech are not the best of friends...), but from your description it sounds good! I think there is some EA activity on discord, so maybe you could build off that. I donāt know anything about the form it takes or how to find it though unfoābut Iām guessing others on this forum do.
The link from Aaron on the Open Thread was helpful. Thanks for pointing the way!