The good news is that it’s possible to level up your context pretty fast. Based on what professionals have told me, the community is also really open and helpful, so you can have a lot of support if you know where and what to ask.
A slight qualifier here is that getting to the level of context required for some jobs—especially senior ones that experienced professionals might be applying to—can take (sometimes much) longer, so it’s important to have realistic expectations there. For instance, if you want to work in AI safety, and have a background (e.g. quantitative finance, venture capital) that could give you great skills to be a grantmaker, you’ll likely still need to know more than just the high-level concepts and the landscape of organisations working on it; you might need to know the strengths and weaknesses of different theories of change, and have a sense of the wider funding landscape.
That said, I want to commend this as a really helpful article, Gergő! The suggestions above would still be helpful in the scenario I outline. And FWIW, I’d love to see more experienced professionals in EA, and in AIS in particular.
Caveat: speaking personally here, rather than for my employer Open Phil.
A slight qualifier here is that getting to the level of context required for some jobs—especially senior ones that experienced professionals might be applying to—can take (sometimes much) longer, so it’s important to have realistic expectations there. For instance, if you want to work in AI safety, and have a background (e.g. quantitative finance, venture capital) that could give you great skills to be a grantmaker, you’ll likely still need to know more than just the high-level concepts and the landscape of organisations working on it; you might need to know the strengths and weaknesses of different theories of change, and have a sense of the wider funding landscape.
That said, I want to commend this as a really helpful article, Gergő! The suggestions above would still be helpful in the scenario I outline. And FWIW, I’d love to see more experienced professionals in EA, and in AIS in particular.
Caveat: speaking personally here, rather than for my employer Open Phil.