I agree with Deniseās 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 āEA organizationā refers to a very small group of nonprofits, which collectively hireā¦ 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 Iād 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/āexperience arenāt likely to be as important. If you want to work on AI alignment, focus on reading CHAIās 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 donāt hurt, but these factors arenāt 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. Thereās 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 didnāt have the time to think about as carefully.
(This doesnāt mean that the Forum itself doesnāt encourage unpolished workāweāre happy to see your ideas! -- but that the writing most likely to demonstrate your practical skills is writing that youāve polished.)
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As an aside: Iām not a career coach by any means, but Iāve worked in EA operations and EA content, and Iāve 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/āadjacent to EA, youāre welcome to comment here or email me (though itās possible that my advice will consist of āask these questions to the organizationā or āread this article they wrote about what they wantā).
I agree with Deniseās 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 āEA organizationā refers to a very small group of nonprofits, which collectively hireā¦ 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 Iād 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/āexperience arenāt likely to be as important. If you want to work on AI alignment, focus on reading CHAIās 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 donāt hurt, but these factors arenāt 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. Thereās 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 didnāt have the time to think about as carefully.
(This doesnāt mean that the Forum itself doesnāt encourage unpolished workāweāre happy to see your ideas! -- but that the writing most likely to demonstrate your practical skills is writing that youāve polished.)
--
As an aside: Iām not a career coach by any means, but Iāve worked in EA operations and EA content, and Iāve 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/āadjacent to EA, youāre welcome to comment here or email me (though itās possible that my advice will consist of āask these questions to the organizationā or āread this article they wrote about what they wantā).
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I work for CEA, but these views are my own.