Interesting take on money and talent, thank you for writing up. I thought I would share some of my experience that might suggest an opposing view.
I do direct work and I don’t think I could do earning-to-give very well. Also when I look at my EA friends I see both someone who has gone from direct work to earning-to-give, disliked it and went back to direct work and someone who has gone from earning-to-give to direct work, disliked that an gone back to earning-to-give. Ultimately all this suggests to me that personal fit is likely to be by far the mort important factor here and that these arguments are mostly only useful to the folk who could do really well at either path.
I also think there are a lot of people in the EA community who have really struggled to get into doing direct work (example), and I have struggled to find funding at times and relied on earning-to-give folk to fund me. I wonder if there is maybe a grass is greener on the other side effect going on.
The example you linked to is about someone struggling to get a job in an ‘EA organisation’. This is clearly not the same as direct work, which is a much larger category. I am pretty sure you’d agree as someone who does direct work not always in an EA org, but let me know if I’m wrong there.
Interesting take on money and talent, thank you for writing up. I thought I would share some of my experience that might suggest an opposing view.
I do direct work and I don’t think I could do earning-to-give very well. Also when I look at my EA friends I see both someone who has gone from direct work to earning-to-give, disliked it and went back to direct work and someone who has gone from earning-to-give to direct work, disliked that an gone back to earning-to-give. Ultimately all this suggests to me that personal fit is likely to be by far the mort important factor here and that these arguments are mostly only useful to the folk who could do really well at either path.
I also think there are a lot of people in the EA community who have really struggled to get into doing direct work (example), and I have struggled to find funding at times and relied on earning-to-give folk to fund me. I wonder if there is maybe a grass is greener on the other side effect going on.
The example you linked to is about someone struggling to get a job in an ‘EA organisation’. This is clearly not the same as direct work, which is a much larger category. I am pretty sure you’d agree as someone who does direct work not always in an EA org, but let me know if I’m wrong there.
Yes I agree with you.
That said the original post appears in a few places to be specifically taking about talent at EA organisations so the example felt apt.