MichaelA🔸 comments on EA is a Career Endpoint

[MichaelA🔸]

SHOW: A framework for shaping your talent for direct work covers some quite similar themes, so readers may find that of interest as well.

TLDR: If your career as an EA has stalled, you’ll eventually break through if you do one (or more) of four things: gaining skills outside the EA community, assisting the work of more senior EAs, finding valuable projects that EAs aren’t willing to do, or finding projects that no one is doing yet.

See also Rob Wiblin’s comment on the post:

This is great. One thing I’d add is ‘Demonstrate’. (Or dare I say.… Show.)

If you think your skills are better than people can currently measure with confidence, you need to find a way to credibly signal how capable you are, while demanding as little time as possible from senior people in the process.

You can do that in a lower level role, or by pulling off some impressive, scrutable and visible project. Or getting a more classic credential. Maybe other things as well.

One reason so many prominent EAs have been writers in the past is not only that it’s a very broadly useful skill. It’s also a skill which is unusually public and easy for others to evaluate you on. It also gives you a chance to demonstrate your general reasoning ability, which is one of the most widely valued characteristics.