First: yes, I strongly agree that the E world would be a better place if young EAs gained some maturity and general professional skills before trying to change the world.
Second: My guess is that the companies who are competent and at which young EAs would learn valuable skills has a lot of overlap with the list of companies who are large/famous/well-paying.
Third: The rough impression I have is that it is very uncommon to be able to identify how good of a working environment a particular role will be before you are actually working in the environment. Job descriptions, interviews, and websites often to not give an honest description of the pluses and minuses of a role.
Thus, if I were a recent college grad, I’m not sure what action I would take based on this pose other than applying to large/famous/well-paying companies (which I would do anyway). Maybe I would slightly shift my priority away from “have impact now by applying to OpenPhil” and I would instead focus a bit more on “work for a Fortune 500 company to develop my skills for a few years, then shift into direct impact.” Am I understanding that roughly correctly?
A couple of thoughts in response.
First: yes, I strongly agree that the E world would be a better place if young EAs gained some maturity and general professional skills before trying to change the world.
Second: My guess is that the companies who are competent and at which young EAs would learn valuable skills has a lot of overlap with the list of companies who are large/famous/well-paying.
Third: The rough impression I have is that it is very uncommon to be able to identify how good of a working environment a particular role will be before you are actually working in the environment. Job descriptions, interviews, and websites often to not give an honest description of the pluses and minuses of a role.
Thus, if I were a recent college grad, I’m not sure what action I would take based on this pose other than applying to large/famous/well-paying companies (which I would do anyway). Maybe I would slightly shift my priority away from “have impact now by applying to OpenPhil” and I would instead focus a bit more on “work for a Fortune 500 company to develop my skills for a few years, then shift into direct impact.” Am I understanding that roughly correctly?
I think Ruby is implicitly saying to prefer successful-seeming startups to big companies.