Great thoughts, ishaan. Thanks for your contributions here. Some of these thoughts connect with MichaelA’s comments above. In general, they touch on the question of whether or not there are things we can productively discover or say about the needs of EA orgs and the capabilities of applications that would reduce the size of the “zone of uncertainty.”
This is why I tried to convey some of the recent statements by people working at major EA orgs on what they perceive as major bottlenecks in the project pipeline and hiring process.
One key challenge is triangulation. How do we get the right information to the right person? 80000 Hours has solved a piece of this admirably, by making themselves into a go-to resource on thinking through career selection from an EA point of view.
This is a comment section on a modestly popular blog post, which will vanish from view in a few days. What would it take to get the information that people like you, MichaelA, and many others have, compile it into a continually maintained resource, and get it into the hands of the people who need it? Does that knowledge have a shelf life long enough to be worth compiling, yet general enough to be worth broadcasting, and that is EA-specific enough to not be available elsewhere?
I’m primarily interested here in making statements that are durably true. In this case, I believe that EA grantmakers will always need to have a bar, and that as long as we have a compelling message, there will consequently always be some people failing to clear it who are stuck in the “zone of uncertainty.”
With this post, I’m not trying to tell them what they should do. Instead, I am trying to articulate a framework for understanding this situation, so that the inchoate frustration that might otherwise result can be (hopefully) transmuted into understanding. I’m very concerned about the people who might feel like “bycatch” of the movement, caught in a net, dragged along, distressed, and not sure what to do.
That kind of situation can produce anger at the powers that be, which is a valid emotion. However, when the “powers that be” are leaders in a small movement that the angry person actually believes in, it could be more productive to at least come to a systemic understanding of the situation that gives context to that emotion. Being in a line that doesn’t seem to be moving very fast is frustrating, but it’s a very different experience if you feel like the speed at which it’s moving is understandable given the circumstances.
With this post, I’m not trying to tell them what they should do.
I think that conflicts with some phrasings in this post, which are stated as recommendations/imperatives. So if in future you again have the goal of not telling people what they should do but rather providing something more like emotional support or a framework, I recommend trying to avoid that kind of phrasing. (Because as mentioned in another comment, I think this post in effect provides career advice and that that advice is overly specific and will only be right for some readers.)
Example paragraph that’s stated as about what people should do:
Don’t try to wake up and save the world. Don’t be bycatch. Take 15 years and become a domain expert. Take a career and become a macrostrategy expert. Mentor. Run small and non-EA projects. Circle back to EA periodically with your newfound skills and see what a difference you can make then. There is absolutely no way we can have a longtermist movement if we can’t be longtermist about our own lives and careers. But if we can, then we can.
I can see how you might interpret it that way. I’m rhetorically comfortable with the phrasing here in the informal context of this blog post. There’s a “You can...” implied in the positive statements here (i.e. “You can take 15 years and become a domain expert”). Sticking that into each sentence would add flab.
There is a real question about whether or not the average person (and especially the average non-native English speaker) would understand this. I’m open to argument that one should always be precisely literal in their statements online, to prioritize avoiding confusion over smoothing the prosody.
What would it take to get the information that people like you, MichaelA, and many others have, compile it into a continually maintained resource, and get it into the hands of the people who need it?
I guess the “easy” answer is “do a poll with select interviews” but otherwise I’m not sure. I guess it would depends on which specific types of information you mean? To some degree organizations will state what they want and need in outreach. If you’re referring to advice like what I said re: “indicate that you know what EA is in your application”, a compilation of advice posts like this one about getting a job in EA might help. Or you could try to research/interview to find more concrete aspects of what the “criteria +bar to clear on those criteria” is for different funders if you see a scenario where the answer isn’t clearly legible. (If it’s a bar at all. For some stuff it’s probably a matter of networking and knowing the right person.)
Another general point on collecting advice is that I think it’s easy to accidentally conflate “in EA” (or even “in the world”) with “in the speaker’s particular organization, in that particular year, within that specific cause area” when listening to advice…The same goes for what both you and I have said above. For example, my perspective on early-career is informed by my particular colleagues, while your impression that “funders have more money than they can spend” or the work being all within “a small movement” etc is not so applicable for someone who wants to work in global health. Getting into specifics is super important.
Great thoughts, ishaan. Thanks for your contributions here. Some of these thoughts connect with MichaelA’s comments above. In general, they touch on the question of whether or not there are things we can productively discover or say about the needs of EA orgs and the capabilities of applications that would reduce the size of the “zone of uncertainty.”
This is why I tried to convey some of the recent statements by people working at major EA orgs on what they perceive as major bottlenecks in the project pipeline and hiring process.
One key challenge is triangulation. How do we get the right information to the right person? 80000 Hours has solved a piece of this admirably, by making themselves into a go-to resource on thinking through career selection from an EA point of view.
This is a comment section on a modestly popular blog post, which will vanish from view in a few days. What would it take to get the information that people like you, MichaelA, and many others have, compile it into a continually maintained resource, and get it into the hands of the people who need it? Does that knowledge have a shelf life long enough to be worth compiling, yet general enough to be worth broadcasting, and that is EA-specific enough to not be available elsewhere?
I’m primarily interested here in making statements that are durably true. In this case, I believe that EA grantmakers will always need to have a bar, and that as long as we have a compelling message, there will consequently always be some people failing to clear it who are stuck in the “zone of uncertainty.”
With this post, I’m not trying to tell them what they should do. Instead, I am trying to articulate a framework for understanding this situation, so that the inchoate frustration that might otherwise result can be (hopefully) transmuted into understanding. I’m very concerned about the people who might feel like “bycatch” of the movement, caught in a net, dragged along, distressed, and not sure what to do.
That kind of situation can produce anger at the powers that be, which is a valid emotion. However, when the “powers that be” are leaders in a small movement that the angry person actually believes in, it could be more productive to at least come to a systemic understanding of the situation that gives context to that emotion. Being in a line that doesn’t seem to be moving very fast is frustrating, but it’s a very different experience if you feel like the speed at which it’s moving is understandable given the circumstances.
I think that conflicts with some phrasings in this post, which are stated as recommendations/imperatives. So if in future you again have the goal of not telling people what they should do but rather providing something more like emotional support or a framework, I recommend trying to avoid that kind of phrasing. (Because as mentioned in another comment, I think this post in effect provides career advice and that that advice is overly specific and will only be right for some readers.)
Example paragraph that’s stated as about what people should do:
I can see how you might interpret it that way. I’m rhetorically comfortable with the phrasing here in the informal context of this blog post. There’s a “You can...” implied in the positive statements here (i.e. “You can take 15 years and become a domain expert”). Sticking that into each sentence would add flab.
There is a real question about whether or not the average person (and especially the average non-native English speaker) would understand this. I’m open to argument that one should always be precisely literal in their statements online, to prioritize avoiding confusion over smoothing the prosody.
I guess the “easy” answer is “do a poll with select interviews” but otherwise I’m not sure. I guess it would depends on which specific types of information you mean? To some degree organizations will state what they want and need in outreach. If you’re referring to advice like what I said re: “indicate that you know what EA is in your application”, a compilation of advice posts like this one about getting a job in EA might help. Or you could try to research/interview to find more concrete aspects of what the “criteria +bar to clear on those criteria” is for different funders if you see a scenario where the answer isn’t clearly legible. (If it’s a bar at all. For some stuff it’s probably a matter of networking and knowing the right person.)
Another general point on collecting advice is that I think it’s easy to accidentally conflate “in EA” (or even “in the world”) with “in the speaker’s particular organization, in that particular year, within that specific cause area” when listening to advice…The same goes for what both you and I have said above. For example, my perspective on early-career is informed by my particular colleagues, while your impression that “funders have more money than they can spend” or the work being all within “a small movement” etc is not so applicable for someone who wants to work in global health. Getting into specifics is super important.