I notice a pattern in my conversations where someone is making a career decision: the most helpful parts are often prompted by “what are your strengths and weaknesses?” and “what kinds of work have you historically enjoyed or not enjoyed?”
I can think of a couple cases (one where I was the recipient of career decision advice, another where I was the advice-giver) where we were kinda spinning our wheels, going over the same considerations, and then we brought up those topics >20 minutes into the conversation and immediately made more progress than the rest of the call to that point.
Maybe this is because in EA circles people have already put a ton of thought into considerations like “which of these jobs would be more impactful conditional on me doing a 8⁄10 job or better in them” and “which of these is generally better for career capital (including skill development, networks, and prestige),” so it’s the conversational direction with the most low-hanging fruit. Another frame is that this is another case of people underrating personal fit relative to the more abstract/generally applicable characteristics of a job.
I notice a pattern in my conversations where someone is making a career decision: the most helpful parts are often prompted by “what are your strengths and weaknesses?” and “what kinds of work have you historically enjoyed or not enjoyed?”
I can think of a couple cases (one where I was the recipient of career decision advice, another where I was the advice-giver) where we were kinda spinning our wheels, going over the same considerations, and then we brought up those topics >20 minutes into the conversation and immediately made more progress than the rest of the call to that point.
Maybe this is because in EA circles people have already put a ton of thought into considerations like “which of these jobs would be more impactful conditional on me doing a 8⁄10 job or better in them” and “which of these is generally better for career capital (including skill development, networks, and prestige),” so it’s the conversational direction with the most low-hanging fruit. Another frame is that this is another case of people underrating personal fit relative to the more abstract/generally applicable characteristics of a job.