I feel like as a general rule of thumb, and this doesn’t really fall on the gov/not gov axis but can be applied, too many EAs work in intellectual pursuits and not enough in power/relationship pursuits.
This isn’t based on a numerical analysis or anything, just my intuition of the status incentives and personal passions of group members.
So e.g. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the amount of EAs in government to be too low but maybe those working directly in partisan politics/organizing/fundraising to be too low. If I had to guess we are ~properly allocating towards policy makers both within think tanks and within executive branch orgs.
Yes, I think there is something to this. We might have suboptimal talent distributions from a social POV if EAs are naturally attracted to certain kinds of work in a way that unconsciously/consciously influences career calculuses.
I feel like as a general rule of thumb, and this doesn’t really fall on the gov/not gov axis but can be applied, too many EAs work in intellectual pursuits and not enough in power/relationship pursuits.
This isn’t based on a numerical analysis or anything, just my intuition of the status incentives and personal passions of group members.
So e.g. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the amount of EAs in government to be too low but maybe those working directly in partisan politics/organizing/fundraising to be too low. If I had to guess we are ~properly allocating towards policy makers both within think tanks and within executive branch orgs.
Yes, I think there is something to this. We might have suboptimal talent distributions from a social POV if EAs are naturally attracted to certain kinds of work in a way that unconsciously/consciously influences career calculuses.