TL;DR: Even though 80k talk about personal fit: In practice EA software developers neglect their personal fit within the domain of software, which is a concept I recommend adding.
Example very common things that happen:
People pick a domain (for example, Software Engineering vs ML) based ONLY on the domain’s expected impact or on what this person already has experience with, with no consideration of how fun/exciting this domain is for them. I think this is bad.
Someone doesn’t enjoy their job, but this is due to “having a bad boss” or “having nobody to learn from”, and not due to having a bad personal fit to software engineering in general
You said “gain a really deep understanding of the basics”—I wouldn’t put this in an EA Software Career guide without serious disclaimers
TL;DR: I think EAs spend too much time “learning the basics” rather than “doing something productive and scrappy”, and it is a bad idea to push them more towards the “learning the basics” side.
I have a ton to say about this and I’ve deleted several too-long-drafts already, but feel free to ask/disagree of course.
A similar example: I wouldn’t tell the EA community that they’ve got to write even longer documents. ;)
Just as I’m trying to tell myself to not make this comment even longer. This is really hard. Ok sending!
TL;DR: Even though 80k talk about personal fit: In practice EA software developers neglect their personal fit within the domain of software, which is a concept I recommend adding.
Example very common things that happen:
People pick a domain (for example, Software Engineering vs ML) based ONLY on the domain’s expected impact or on what this person already has experience with, with no consideration of how fun/exciting this domain is for them. I think this is bad.
Someone doesn’t enjoy their job, but this is due to “having a bad boss” or “having nobody to learn from”, and not due to having a bad personal fit to software engineering in general
You said “gain a really deep understanding of the basics”—I wouldn’t put this in an EA Software Career guide without serious disclaimers
TL;DR: I think EAs spend too much time “learning the basics” rather than “doing something productive and scrappy”, and it is a bad idea to push them more towards the “learning the basics” side.
I have a ton to say about this and I’ve deleted several too-long-drafts already, but feel free to ask/disagree of course.
A similar example: I wouldn’t tell the EA community that they’ve got to write even longer documents. ;)
Just as I’m trying to tell myself to not make this comment even longer. This is really hard. Ok sending!