I agree with Denise’s concerns about the time involved in following these suggestions, but I also think there are good lessons worth pointing out here. Some notes:
Consider that “EA organization” refers to a very small group of nonprofits, which collectively hire… 50 people each year? Remove GiveWell and the Open Philanthropy Project (which have their own detailed guidelines on what they look for in applicants), and I’d guess that the number drops by half or more. Many of the positions recommended by 80,000 Hours require deep expertise in a particular topic; research and volunteering can help, but questions of general EA knowledge/experience aren’t likely to be as important. If you want to work on AI alignment, focus on reading CHAI’s bibliography rather than, say, the EA Forum.
As far as volunteering, research, and other projects go, quality > quantity. Years of reading casually about EA and posting on social media don’t hurt, but these factors aren’t nearly as important as a work reference who raves about your skills as a volunteer, or a Forum post that makes a strong contribution to the area you want to work on.
If you want an operations job and you wrote a blog post about the comparison of top online operational resource courses, then you are a person EA organisations are interested in talking to.
This only holds true if the post was useful, helping EA orgs solve a problem they had or getting strong positive feedback from people who used it to select a course. There’s a lot of writing in the EA blogosphere; much of it is great, but some posts just never find an audience. Again, quality > quantity; better to spend a lot of time figuring out which post idea is likely to have the most impact, then working on the best version you can produce, than to publish a lot of posts you didn’t have the time to think about as carefully.
(This doesn’t mean that the Forum itself doesn’t encourage unpolished work—we’re happy to see your ideas! -- but that the writing most likely to demonstrate your practical skills is writing that you’ve polished.)
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As an aside: I’m not a career coach by any means, but I’ve worked in EA operations and EA content, and I’ve talked to a lot of different organizations about what they look for in applicants. If you have particular questions about applying to an org in/adjacent to EA, you’re welcome to comment here or email me (though it’s possible that my advice will consist of “ask these questions to the organization” or “read this article they wrote about what they want”).
I agree with Denise’s concerns about the time involved in following these suggestions, but I also think there are good lessons worth pointing out here. Some notes:
Consider that “EA organization” refers to a very small group of nonprofits, which collectively hire… 50 people each year? Remove GiveWell and the Open Philanthropy Project (which have their own detailed guidelines on what they look for in applicants), and I’d guess that the number drops by half or more. Many of the positions recommended by 80,000 Hours require deep expertise in a particular topic; research and volunteering can help, but questions of general EA knowledge/experience aren’t likely to be as important. If you want to work on AI alignment, focus on reading CHAI’s bibliography rather than, say, the EA Forum.
As far as volunteering, research, and other projects go, quality > quantity. Years of reading casually about EA and posting on social media don’t hurt, but these factors aren’t nearly as important as a work reference who raves about your skills as a volunteer, or a Forum post that makes a strong contribution to the area you want to work on.
This only holds true if the post was useful, helping EA orgs solve a problem they had or getting strong positive feedback from people who used it to select a course. There’s a lot of writing in the EA blogosphere; much of it is great, but some posts just never find an audience. Again, quality > quantity; better to spend a lot of time figuring out which post idea is likely to have the most impact, then working on the best version you can produce, than to publish a lot of posts you didn’t have the time to think about as carefully.
(This doesn’t mean that the Forum itself doesn’t encourage unpolished work—we’re happy to see your ideas! -- but that the writing most likely to demonstrate your practical skills is writing that you’ve polished.)
--
As an aside: I’m not a career coach by any means, but I’ve worked in EA operations and EA content, and I’ve talked to a lot of different organizations about what they look for in applicants. If you have particular questions about applying to an org in/adjacent to EA, you’re welcome to comment here or email me (though it’s possible that my advice will consist of “ask these questions to the organization” or “read this article they wrote about what they want”).
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I work for CEA, but these views are my own.