The short version: How can people contribute to EA if they don’t have lots of extra money and they don’t have the skillsets to work at organizations focused on important problems?
The slightly longer version: The primary path that is promoted for contributing is something along the lines of “get skills and then do work.” And I think that is a great suggestion for people who either A) have the ability to choose a field to work in (such as a college undergraduate), or B) already have the skills and can relatively easily pivot (such as experienced project managers or software developers). EA organizations don’t really have a great need for nurses, for history professors, for plumbers, etc. Some people are able to afford to take a few years off work to reskill and then start a new career, but not everyone is able to do that. I know that I would be hard pressed to pay for tuition, food, and housing while spending a few years doing studies/retraining.
The secondary path is composed of variations on “donate money.” This is great for people with high incomes (or more moderate incomes that are predicted to be very stable for the future, such as tenured professors), and simply isn’t as feasible for people with lower incomes or with unstable future incomes.
So as a community, I’m not sure what our messaging should be for people who aren’t able to easily shift their career, and who don’t have much money to spare. I suspect that the answer might be some variation of “not all people can contribute to effective altruism; this community isn’t for everyone.” But I’m hoping that there is something else out there.
EA organizations don’t really have a great need for nurses, for history professors, for plumbers, etc.
Fwiw, I was involved with an EA organisation that that struggled for years with the admin of finding trustworthy tradespeople (especially plumbers).
More generally, I think a lot of EA individuals would benefit a lot from access to specialist knowledge from all sorts of fields, if people with that knowledge were willing to offer it free or at a discount to others in the community.
At the risk of going off-topic, look for plumbing firms that pay their employees a flat hourly rate rather than a commission based on how much revenue they generate. That’s what my plumber said he looked for when researching plumbers for out-of-town family members.
In general, finding someone who has more than enough work and bills at an hourly rate is often a sound strategy when one is dependent on the contractor’s professional judgment as to what needs to be done and how long it should take. Under those circumstances, the busy hourly-rate contractor has much less incentive to recommend unnecessary work or stretch it out. The downside is that, because they have more than enough work, they may not be immediately available. . . .
The short version: How can people contribute to EA if they don’t have lots of extra money and they don’t have the skillsets to work at organizations focused on important problems?
The slightly longer version: The primary path that is promoted for contributing is something along the lines of “get skills and then do work.” And I think that is a great suggestion for people who either A) have the ability to choose a field to work in (such as a college undergraduate), or B) already have the skills and can relatively easily pivot (such as experienced project managers or software developers). EA organizations don’t really have a great need for nurses, for history professors, for plumbers, etc. Some people are able to afford to take a few years off work to reskill and then start a new career, but not everyone is able to do that. I know that I would be hard pressed to pay for tuition, food, and housing while spending a few years doing studies/retraining.
The secondary path is composed of variations on “donate money.” This is great for people with high incomes (or more moderate incomes that are predicted to be very stable for the future, such as tenured professors), and simply isn’t as feasible for people with lower incomes or with unstable future incomes.
So as a community, I’m not sure what our messaging should be for people who aren’t able to easily shift their career, and who don’t have much money to spare. I suspect that the answer might be some variation of “not all people can contribute to effective altruism; this community isn’t for everyone.” But I’m hoping that there is something else out there.
Fwiw, I was involved with an EA organisation that that struggled for years with the admin of finding trustworthy tradespeople (especially plumbers).
More generally, I think a lot of EA individuals would benefit a lot from access to specialist knowledge from all sorts of fields, if people with that knowledge were willing to offer it free or at a discount to others in the community.
At the risk of going off-topic, look for plumbing firms that pay their employees a flat hourly rate rather than a commission based on how much revenue they generate. That’s what my plumber said he looked for when researching plumbers for out-of-town family members.
In general, finding someone who has more than enough work and bills at an hourly rate is often a sound strategy when one is dependent on the contractor’s professional judgment as to what needs to be done and how long it should take. Under those circumstances, the busy hourly-rate contractor has much less incentive to recommend unnecessary work or stretch it out. The downside is that, because they have more than enough work, they may not be immediately available. . . .