This is great. I emphatically agree with almost all of it—and I expect I will send this post to many people going forward.
It’s very unclear if I have good intuitions about how to do career choice well, and so unclear if me agreeing should anyone make more than negligibly more willing to act on this advice—but at the very least I strongly suspect I could have avoided many career choice mistakes if I had read such a post in, say, 2016.
Some things that ring particularly true to me relative to what I perceive to be common attitudes among young people interested in EA:
Focus a lot on achieving success by conventional metrics.
When things are not working well by typical lights (e.g. when judged against things like in the “on track?” sections), quit and try something else. No matter whether you’re on a path, or at an organization, that is typically considered to be “high-impact”.
“Research vs. operations” is not a great question to ask [I’m aware you’re not saying this directly in the post], and people are often better off replacing both “research” and “operations” with more fine-grained categories when thinking about their careers.
When making career decisions, put more weight on intuitions and gut feelings of excitement (in particular when based on actual experience, e.g., a representative work trial of the job you’re considering) - and less on impact estimates.
Put less weight on advice when making concrete job decisions, especially advice from members of the effective altruism community who don’t have much context on you and the options you’re deciding between.
This: “I’d guess that anyone who is succeeding at what they do and developing aptitudes that few can match, while being truly prepared to switch jobs if the right opportunity comes up, has—in some sense—quite high expected longtermist impact (over the long run) via direct work alone. I think this expected impact will often be higher than the expected impact of someone who is in a seemingly top-priority longtermist career now, but isn’t necessarily performing excellently, sustainably or flexibly.”
When making career decisions, put more weight on intuitions and gut feelings of excitement (in particular when based on actual experience, e.g., a representative work trial of the job you’re considering) - and less on impact estimates.
I think you probably mean in relation to types of work, activity, organisation, mindsets, aptitudes, etc., and not in relation to what cause areas or interventions you’re focusing on, right?
I.e., I think I’d often suggest people do focus mostly on impact estimates when choosing cause areas and maybe also interventions, but focus more on comparative advantage (using intuitions and gut feelings of excitement as some proxies for that) when choosing specific jobs, orgs, roles, paths, etc. Would you agree?
I think you probably mean in relation to types of work, activity, organisation, mindsets, aptitudes, etc., and not in relation to what cause areas or interventions you’re focusing on, right?
Basically yes. But I also think (and I understand Holden to say similar things in the OP) that “what cause area is most important” is perhaps less relevant for career choice, especially early-career, than some people (and 80k advice [ETA: though I think it’s more like my vague impression of what people including me perceive 80k advice to say, which might be quite different from what current 80k advice literally says if you engage a lot with their content]) think.
This is great. I emphatically agree with almost all of it—and I expect I will send this post to many people going forward.
It’s very unclear if I have good intuitions about how to do career choice well, and so unclear if me agreeing should anyone make more than negligibly more willing to act on this advice—but at the very least I strongly suspect I could have avoided many career choice mistakes if I had read such a post in, say, 2016.
Some things that ring particularly true to me relative to what I perceive to be common attitudes among young people interested in EA:
Focus a lot on achieving success by conventional metrics.
When things are not working well by typical lights (e.g. when judged against things like in the “on track?” sections), quit and try something else. No matter whether you’re on a path, or at an organization, that is typically considered to be “high-impact”.
“Research vs. operations” is not a great question to ask [I’m aware you’re not saying this directly in the post], and people are often better off replacing both “research” and “operations” with more fine-grained categories when thinking about their careers.
When making career decisions, put more weight on intuitions and gut feelings of excitement (in particular when based on actual experience, e.g., a representative work trial of the job you’re considering) - and less on impact estimates.
Put less weight on advice when making concrete job decisions, especially advice from members of the effective altruism community who don’t have much context on you and the options you’re deciding between.
This: “I’d guess that anyone who is succeeding at what they do and developing aptitudes that few can match, while being truly prepared to switch jobs if the right opportunity comes up, has—in some sense—quite high expected longtermist impact (over the long run) via direct work alone. I think this expected impact will often be higher than the expected impact of someone who is in a seemingly top-priority longtermist career now, but isn’t necessarily performing excellently, sustainably or flexibly.”
I think you probably mean in relation to types of work, activity, organisation, mindsets, aptitudes, etc., and not in relation to what cause areas or interventions you’re focusing on, right?
I.e., I think I’d often suggest people do focus mostly on impact estimates when choosing cause areas and maybe also interventions, but focus more on comparative advantage (using intuitions and gut feelings of excitement as some proxies for that) when choosing specific jobs, orgs, roles, paths, etc. Would you agree?
Basically yes. But I also think (and I understand Holden to say similar things in the OP) that “what cause area is most important” is perhaps less relevant for career choice, especially early-career, than some people (and 80k advice [ETA: though I think it’s more like my vague impression of what people including me perceive 80k advice to say, which might be quite different from what current 80k advice literally says if you engage a lot with their content]) think.