I think there are questions about the premise of this post:
I’m uncertain about the compensation/signaling/networking value for the research tech role. It’s not clear why it offers more returns than available to a few years in industry, even as a non-prestigious, entry level graduate.
In addition to the fact that many academic labs are exploitative (as the OP does touch on), I am concerned that even good and kind academic labs can give an off-color work experience/incentives/worldview, as I think they are not quite “real world environments”. I think a technician will get the worst of this while losing a lot of the positives?
I don’t have a strong model of how this approach can lead to research that many in the EA community think is most valuable—”lead researchers with field leading potential”.
I think this post is great as it departs from previous patterns of EA advice
A lot of EA advice seems to presume that the reader is already a top-tier student or young professional who just needs to have their endless font of potential pointed in the right direction.
Yes, I think a lot of canonical career advice/strategy in EA following this pattern.
Such advice often is missing a lot of content, and particularly lacks operational details.
This falls into the trap where such advice can be uninformative/unmotivating to these top candidates, while at the same time, is useless or even harmful to the large majority of readers.
There’s a lot more context (very well presented in the link above) but a theme is:
“Be very careful about following career advice at all.”
Let’s say that you picked a skill that’s never going to get you a direct-work effective altruism job, but you kicked a bunch of ass, and you know a bunch of other people who kick ass.
So now you have this opportunity to affect people you know, and get them to do a lot of good.
And they are not the people you would know if you hadn’t kicked ass.
I think this post is great
As suggested above, it’s hard to communicate specific strategies/tactics to enter a career, yet this post gives a lot of detailed operational advice. These show a lot of thought, strong models of how to apply this approach, and a lot of real world experience.
There is a lot of great advice, e.g. against repetitive cookie cutter emails, the value of informal chats, the reasoning against formal programs for the specific candidates involved.
It has truth and honesty. It’s not afraid to give opinions and in doing so it exposes a lot of surface area, to make productive, object-level disagreements.
Most importantly, it focuses on the much harder challenge of making an impact for 95% of people who might be interested in EA.
Thanks for this wonderful comment! Let me try and address your questions:
I’m uncertain about the compensation/signaling/networking value for the research tech role. It’s not clear why it offers more returns than available to a few years in industry, even as a non-prestigious, entry level graduate.
I think actually a few years in industry is almost certainly better, though I think there’s a lot of overlap, and of course heavily depends on the field/industry. Major cruxes include I would say that if you have a substantial interest in later pursuing a PhD, that probably indicates being a research tech
The reason I recommend these roles is explicitly because they are easy to get. I remember how I felt nearing the end of my undergraduate physics degree. I had no idea how to even begin applying to industry jobs. It all seemed terribly scary and overwhelming; the returns on spending countless hours applying to jobs seemed low. If your counterfactual role to working as a research tech is going into industry, I would say you should probably go to industry.
But if your counterfactual sort of feels like it’s going to be just getting through classes, or going for unpaid internships, or sitting on the couch panicking about the future, then consider sending some emails to smart interesting people absolutely desperate for labor. Particularly, if you are contacting people at the university you currently attend, it’s pretty much part of the professor’s job to train you, even if they don’t really need labor.
If you’re still a student, an academic lab is also likely to be more flexible about letting you do interesting part time work. It’s all about accessibility.
In addition to the fact that many academic labs are exploitative (as the OP does touch on), I am concerned that even good and kind academic labs can give an off-color work experience/incentives/worldview, as I think they are not quite “real world environments”. I think a technician will get the worst of this while losing a lot of the positives?
“Technician” is sort of an imprecise title. I’ve designed and lead research projects as a “research assistant”/”research tech.” I find this is heavily dependent on the lab, and something that you should absolutely try to feel out during the interview. I’ll edit the post with some advice on this front.
The nice thing about roles like these is that they are relatively informal so that if it sucks it will not be that hard to just leave.
That said, while a lab is more like a “real world” environment than a class, this is a real weakness. Again, if you can easily get an industry job (or paid internship), that is probably a better choice, unless you are explicitly trying to boostrap yourself into a PhD without running the application gauntlet.
I don’t have a strong model of how this approach can lead to research that many in the EA community think is most valuable—”lead researchers with field leading potential”.
I’m not sure I entirely understand this point. Probably roles like this are not going to be in terribly directly impactful areas. I think the value of this approach is for bootstrapping yourself into an impactful role if you had a rough start—or more generally, doing better than just going to class and sitting around panicking about the future. I think this approach offers a good package deal for young EAs who don’t feel very effective or impressive and have absolutely no idea what to do next, or how.
I think there are questions about the premise of this post:
I’m uncertain about the compensation/signaling/networking value for the research tech role. It’s not clear why it offers more returns than available to a few years in industry, even as a non-prestigious, entry level graduate.
In addition to the fact that many academic labs are exploitative (as the OP does touch on), I am concerned that even good and kind academic labs can give an off-color work experience/incentives/worldview, as I think they are not quite “real world environments”. I think a technician will get the worst of this while losing a lot of the positives?
I don’t have a strong model of how this approach can lead to research that many in the EA community think is most valuable—”lead researchers with field leading potential”.
I think this post is great as it departs from previous patterns of EA advice
Yes, I think a lot of canonical career advice/strategy in EA following this pattern.
Such advice often is missing a lot of content, and particularly lacks operational details.
This falls into the trap where such advice can be uninformative/unmotivating to these top candidates, while at the same time, is useless or even harmful to the large majority of readers.
A great departure from the above pattern is Holden Karnofsky’s points in the interview below:
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-building-aptitudes-kicking-ass/
There’s a lot more context (very well presented in the link above) but a theme is:
I think this post is great
As suggested above, it’s hard to communicate specific strategies/tactics to enter a career, yet this post gives a lot of detailed operational advice. These show a lot of thought, strong models of how to apply this approach, and a lot of real world experience.
There is a lot of great advice, e.g. against repetitive cookie cutter emails, the value of informal chats, the reasoning against formal programs for the specific candidates involved.
It has truth and honesty. It’s not afraid to give opinions and in doing so it exposes a lot of surface area, to make productive, object-level disagreements.
Most importantly, it focuses on the much harder challenge of making an impact for 95% of people who might be interested in EA.
Thanks for this wonderful comment! Let me try and address your questions:
I’m uncertain about the compensation/signaling/networking value for the research tech role. It’s not clear why it offers more returns than available to a few years in industry, even as a non-prestigious, entry level graduate.
I think actually a few years in industry is almost certainly better, though I think there’s a lot of overlap, and of course heavily depends on the field/industry. Major cruxes include I would say that if you have a substantial interest in later pursuing a PhD, that probably indicates being a research tech
The reason I recommend these roles is explicitly because they are easy to get. I remember how I felt nearing the end of my undergraduate physics degree. I had no idea how to even begin applying to industry jobs. It all seemed terribly scary and overwhelming; the returns on spending countless hours applying to jobs seemed low. If your counterfactual role to working as a research tech is going into industry, I would say you should probably go to industry.
But if your counterfactual sort of feels like it’s going to be just getting through classes, or going for unpaid internships, or sitting on the couch panicking about the future, then consider sending some emails to smart interesting people absolutely desperate for labor. Particularly, if you are contacting people at the university you currently attend, it’s pretty much part of the professor’s job to train you, even if they don’t really need labor.
If you’re still a student, an academic lab is also likely to be more flexible about letting you do interesting part time work. It’s all about accessibility.
In addition to the fact that many academic labs are exploitative (as the OP does touch on), I am concerned that even good and kind academic labs can give an off-color work experience/incentives/worldview, as I think they are not quite “real world environments”. I think a technician will get the worst of this while losing a lot of the positives?
“Technician” is sort of an imprecise title. I’ve designed and lead research projects as a “research assistant”/”research tech.” I find this is heavily dependent on the lab, and something that you should absolutely try to feel out during the interview. I’ll edit the post with some advice on this front.
The nice thing about roles like these is that they are relatively informal so that if it sucks it will not be that hard to just leave.
That said, while a lab is more like a “real world” environment than a class, this is a real weakness. Again, if you can easily get an industry job (or paid internship), that is probably a better choice, unless you are explicitly trying to boostrap yourself into a PhD without running the application gauntlet.
I don’t have a strong model of how this approach can lead to research that many in the EA community think is most valuable—”lead researchers with field leading potential”.
I’m not sure I entirely understand this point. Probably roles like this are not going to be in terribly directly impactful areas. I think the value of this approach is for bootstrapping yourself into an impactful role if you had a rough start—or more generally, doing better than just going to class and sitting around panicking about the future. I think this approach offers a good package deal for young EAs who don’t feel very effective or impressive and have absolutely no idea what to do next, or how.
Thanks for the reply!
I like and I agree with these ideas!