Maybe people are overoptimistic about indendepent/ grant funded work as an option or something?
EA seems unusually big on funding people indendently, eg. people working via grants rather than via employment through some sort of organisation or institution.
(Why is that? Well EAs want to do EA work. And there are more EAs that want to do EA work than there are EA jobs in organisations. Also EA has won the lottery again… so EAs get funded outside the scope of organisations).
When I was working at an organisation (or basically any time I’ve been in an institution) I was like ‘I can’t wait to get out of this organisation with all it’s meetings and slack notifications and meetings… once I’m out I’ll be independent and free and I’ll finally make my own decisions about how to spend my time and realise my true potential’.
But as inspirational speaker Dylan Moran warns: ‘Stay away from your potential. You’ll mess it up, it’s potential, leave it. Anyway, it’s like your bank balance—you always have a lot less than you think’
After leaving an organisation and beginning to work on grant funding I found it a lot more difficult than expected, and missed the structure that came with working in an organisation.
Some more good things about organisations: mentorship, colleagues, training, plausibly free stationary, a clear distinction between work time and not work time, defined roles and responsibilities, feedback, a sense of identity, something to blame if things don’t go to plan.
Speculatively, EA is quite big on self-belief/ believing in one’s own potential, and encouraging people to take risks.
And I worry that all this means that more people end up doing independent work than is a good idea.
Thanks, I think this is an interesting take, in particular since much of the commentary is rather the opposite—that EAs should be more inclined not to try to get into an effective altruist organisation.
I think one partial—and maybe charitable—explanation why independent grants are so big in effective altruism is that it scales quite easily—you can just pay out more money, and don’t need a managerial structure. By contrast, scaling an organisation takes time and is difficult.
I could also see room for organisational structures that are somewhere in-between full-blown organisations and full independence.
Overall I think this is a topic that merits more attention.
Maybe people are overoptimistic about indendepent/ grant funded work as an option or something?
EA seems unusually big on funding people indendently, eg. people working via grants rather than via employment through some sort of organisation or institution.
(Why is that? Well EAs want to do EA work. And there are more EAs that want to do EA work than there are EA jobs in organisations. Also EA has won the lottery again… so EAs get funded outside the scope of organisations).
When I was working at an organisation (or basically any time I’ve been in an institution) I was like ‘I can’t wait to get out of this organisation with all it’s meetings and slack notifications and meetings… once I’m out I’ll be independent and free and I’ll finally make my own decisions about how to spend my time and realise my true potential’.
But as inspirational speaker Dylan Moran warns: ‘Stay away from your potential. You’ll mess it up, it’s potential, leave it. Anyway, it’s like your bank balance—you always have a lot less than you think’
After leaving an organisation and beginning to work on grant funding I found it a lot more difficult than expected, and missed the structure that came with working in an organisation.
Some more good things about organisations: mentorship, colleagues, training, plausibly free stationary, a clear distinction between work time and not work time, defined roles and responsibilities, feedback, a sense of identity, something to blame if things don’t go to plan.
Speculatively, EA is quite big on self-belief/ believing in one’s own potential, and encouraging people to take risks.
And I worry that all this means that more people end up doing independent work than is a good idea.
Thanks, I think this is an interesting take, in particular since much of the commentary is rather the opposite—that EAs should be more inclined not to try to get into an effective altruist organisation.
I think one partial—and maybe charitable—explanation why independent grants are so big in effective altruism is that it scales quite easily—you can just pay out more money, and don’t need a managerial structure. By contrast, scaling an organisation takes time and is difficult.
I could also see room for organisational structures that are somewhere in-between full-blown organisations and full independence.
Overall I think this is a topic that merits more attention.