First, I’m sorry you’ve had this bad experience — we don’t want EA groups to be like this! I do notice that sub-areas within the same community can develop pretty different cultures, and I’m sorry you’ve ended up in an area where the culture is so discouraging.
There are options for professional networking in EA outside your local group if you decide you still want to, for example:
You’ve likely already considered this, but if you leave your field to avoid needing to interact with these people, there’s a question of whether other fields are significantly better. Basically any field will include some people who do shady things — sites like Ask A Manager are full of people behaving badly in professional contexts. But interacting with a shady person in the same professional field is different from needing to work closely with them, and it’s much more possible to choose to work for a team or an organization you generally feel good about.
You mentioned you don’t feel that comfortable talking to the community health team — in case it’s helpful, you can ask us questions about how we work, or raise things anonymously via this form. (Please leave a burner email or something if you’d like us to get back to you!) You may want to talk to someone else at CEA, even if you don’t want to talk to our team — for example someone on the groups team if you have concerns about a group organizer.
Hi, some thoughts from the community health team.
First, I’m sorry you’ve had this bad experience — we don’t want EA groups to be like this! I do notice that sub-areas within the same community can develop pretty different cultures, and I’m sorry you’ve ended up in an area where the culture is so discouraging.
There are options for professional networking in EA outside your local group if you decide you still want to, for example:
EA Anywhere online group
EA Global and EAGx conferences, especially meetups for specific fields
There may be an online group for your career area
You’ve likely already considered this, but if you leave your field to avoid needing to interact with these people, there’s a question of whether other fields are significantly better. Basically any field will include some people who do shady things — sites like Ask A Manager are full of people behaving badly in professional contexts. But interacting with a shady person in the same professional field is different from needing to work closely with them, and it’s much more possible to choose to work for a team or an organization you generally feel good about.
You mentioned you don’t feel that comfortable talking to the community health team — in case it’s helpful, you can ask us questions about how we work, or raise things anonymously via this form. (Please leave a burner email or something if you’d like us to get back to you!) You may want to talk to someone else at CEA, even if you don’t want to talk to our team — for example someone on the groups team if you have concerns about a group organizer.