Getting advice on a job decision, efficiently (five steps)
When using EA considerations to decide between job offers, asking for help is often a good idea, even if those who could provide advice are busy, and their time is valued. This is because advisors can spend minutes of their time to guide years of yours. It’s not disrespecting their “valuable” time, if you do it right. I’ve had some experience as an advisor, both and as an advisee, and I think a safe bet is to follow the following several steps:
Make sure you actually have a decision that is will concretely guide months to years of your time, i.e. ask about which offer to take, not which company to apply for.
Distill the pros and cons, and neutral attributes of each option down to page or two of text, in a format that permits inline comments (ideally a GDoc). Specifically:
To begin with, give a rough characterization of each option, describing it in neutral terms.
Do mention non-EA considerations e.g. location preferences, alongside EA-related ones.
Remove duplicates. If something is listed as a “pro” for option A, it need not also be listed as a “con” for option B. This helps with conciseness and helps avoid arbitrary double-counting of considerations. If there are many job offers, then simply choose some option A as the baseline, and measure the pros/cons of each other option relative to option A, as in the “three-way comparison example” below.
Merge pros/cons that are related to one another. This also helps with conciseness and avoiding arbitrary double-counting
Indicate the rough importance of various pros/cons. If you think some consideration is more important, then you should explicitly mark it as so. You can mark considerations as strong (+++/---) or weak (+/-) if you want.
Share it to experts whose time is less valuable before the paramount experts in your field,
When advisors ask questions about the detail of your situation, make sure to elaborate these points in the document
Make sure the advisors have an opportunity to give you an all-things-considered judgment within the document (to allow for criticism), or privately, in case they are reluctant to share their criticism of some options.
To make a decision, don’t just add up the considerations in the list. Also, take into account the all-things-considered judgments of advisors (which includes expertise that they may not be able to articulate), as well as your personal instincts (which include self-knowledge that you may not be able to articulate).
Would it be more intuitive to do your 3-way comparison the other way around—list the pros and cons of each option relative to FHI, rather than of FHI relative to each alternative?
Getting advice on a job decision, efficiently (five steps)
When using EA considerations to decide between job offers, asking for help is often a good idea, even if those who could provide advice are busy, and their time is valued. This is because advisors can spend minutes of their time to guide years of yours. It’s not disrespecting their “valuable” time, if you do it right. I’ve had some experience as an advisor, both and as an advisee, and I think a safe bet is to follow the following several steps:
Make sure you actually have a decision that is will concretely guide months to years of your time, i.e. ask about which offer to take, not which company to apply for.
Distill the pros and cons, and neutral attributes of each option down to page or two of text, in a format that permits inline comments (ideally a GDoc). Specifically:
To begin with, give a rough characterization of each option, describing it in neutral terms.
Do mention non-EA considerations e.g. location preferences, alongside EA-related ones.
Remove duplicates. If something is listed as a “pro” for option A, it need not also be listed as a “con” for option B. This helps with conciseness and helps avoid arbitrary double-counting of considerations. If there are many job offers, then simply choose some option A as the baseline, and measure the pros/cons of each other option relative to option A, as in the “three-way comparison example” below.
Merge pros/cons that are related to one another. This also helps with conciseness and avoiding arbitrary double-counting
Indicate the rough importance of various pros/cons. If you think some consideration is more important, then you should explicitly mark it as so. You can mark considerations as strong (+++/---) or weak (+/-) if you want.
Share it to experts whose time is less valuable before the paramount experts in your field,
When advisors ask questions about the detail of your situation, make sure to elaborate these points in the document
Make sure the advisors have an opportunity to give you an all-things-considered judgment within the document (to allow for criticism), or privately, in case they are reluctant to share their criticism of some options.
To make a decision, don’t just add up the considerations in the list. Also, take into account the all-things-considered judgments of advisors (which includes expertise that they may not be able to articulate), as well as your personal instincts (which include self-knowledge that you may not be able to articulate).
Would it be more intuitive to do your 3-way comparison the other way around—list the pros and cons of each option relative to FHI, rather than of FHI relative to each alternative?
I agree that’s better. If I turn this into a proper post, I’ll fix the example.
Thanks for this meta-advice! Will try to adhere to it when asking for advice the next time :)