I work with really excellent people (both at CEA, and the various people I meet through my Forum/content work).
Good management policy — I feel guided, encouraged, and constantly pushed to do better, but not in a draining or net-negative stressful way.
Lots of ways to do the job — many projects could be a good fit for my goals, there’s a constant flow of new options and ideas I can try to implement.
Negatives:
Lots of ways to do the job (the dark side) — I’m aware that some optimal version of me could probably have 10x the impact in exactly this role, and it’s difficult to find enough time and focus to move closer to being that person. I’m acutely aware of the skills I lack, and the way my personal preferences can push me towards work I enjoy rather than work I expect to have the best possible long-term impact.
The sense of being a “public face” — no matter how many epistemic statuses I employ, it’s still easy for my personal views to be taken as CEA’s (or the community’s in general, when I write things for public consumption).
The level of meta I often work at — it’s easy to lose contact with the purpose of my job, and my love for EA, when I’m spending most of my time copyediting or testing Mailchimp formatting or counting engagement hours, rather than feeling directly responsible for any specific person being helped (or any useful longtermist initiative being launched, etc.)
I genuinely like and trust my colleagues. I really enjoy working with people who care about very similar things and are deeply into the same ideas/culture. I’ve learned a lot from them.
Being able to (somewhat) shape the role to what I enjoy and am good at (e.g. I hate public speaking but love writing—others at CEA are the opposite, so I can write speeches for them). This is something that we try to do for everyone at CEA: to find a role that really plays to their strengths.
Facing a lot of open-ended and challenging projects, and having feedback (either from colleagues, stakeholders, or reality) on them. I think this is a great way to learn (and again, I think this is maybe pretty common at CEA).
When I feel like we’re making progress, it’s amazing. It’s so good to invest deeply in something and see it pay off.
Negatives: (I think this basically boils down to “when it goes wrong, it’s stressful”)
The flip side of shaping the role around me is that I can’t always shape the role to my interests and personal likes! I gave a talk at the EA Coordination Forum and that really stressed me out (I think probably it was a mistake to give the talk).
The flip side of the progress is that I feel pretty bad when we mess up or I fail at some project I’ve been working on.
The flip side of the open-endedness is that it’s often unclear whether I’m doing the right thing. I spend a lot of time reflecting on this sort of thing. It’s a bit stressful.
I feel like I was able to create a role that played to my strengths, and I feel excited about the expected value of my career.
I care a lot about my work.
I really like my colleagues.
Negatives:
It can be stressful. I feel like I’m working on important things, and care a lot about how they go. When things don’t go well or there’s something time-sensitive and important to get right, it can feel stressful. This might be particularly related to my role (I handle risky situations a lot).
It can be hard to take my brain off of work. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but it’s a concerted effort I have to make. (e.g. my partner will remind me not to look at my work computer, I’ve uninstalled my work slack from my phone)
For me it might be two sides of the same coin (particular to my role on the community health team).
The positive is getting to serve a community I really believe in, and supporting people who feel very much on the same team as me as far as big life goals.
The negative is that there’s less separation between work life and community life than there would be in a lot of jobs. I’m not a normal community member in the way I was before I worked here—there are more things I have to try to be neutral on, etc. Facebook is mostly a work space for me.
I love my job a lot. I think the biggest positive for me is hearing impact stories from the events where people get some amazing connection or opportunity as a result of attending. From a pure enjoyment standpoint I am a sucker for the feeling when an event starts and I get to see all of the excited EAs who have come to attend this thing that my team worked so hard to make for them. There are moments when people start streaming in and it is so busy with activity during registration and everyone looks so happy… it feels like when you buy someone a present that you know they will like and you get to watch them open it!
I used to find the criticism from the community to be a bit hard, but now I have a much thicker skin and better relationship with the feedback. I think part of that comes from having more time, so that if we get negative feedback about something it is a data point about something where we made a decision to do one way or the other. I still feel stress when I think I underperform on something because the stakes feel so high.
In the past I traveled quite a bit for work. At the time that was a positive for me. I’m not sure if it will be as much of a positive now that I have two kids. We will see pretty soon!
What are the most positive and/or negative aspects of your work at CEA?
Positives:
I work with really excellent people (both at CEA, and the various people I meet through my Forum/content work).
Good management policy — I feel guided, encouraged, and constantly pushed to do better, but not in a draining or net-negative stressful way.
Lots of ways to do the job — many projects could be a good fit for my goals, there’s a constant flow of new options and ideas I can try to implement.
Negatives:
Lots of ways to do the job (the dark side) — I’m aware that some optimal version of me could probably have 10x the impact in exactly this role, and it’s difficult to find enough time and focus to move closer to being that person. I’m acutely aware of the skills I lack, and the way my personal preferences can push me towards work I enjoy rather than work I expect to have the best possible long-term impact.
The sense of being a “public face” — no matter how many epistemic statuses I employ, it’s still easy for my personal views to be taken as CEA’s (or the community’s in general, when I write things for public consumption).
The level of meta I often work at — it’s easy to lose contact with the purpose of my job, and my love for EA, when I’m spending most of my time copyediting or testing Mailchimp formatting or counting engagement hours, rather than feeling directly responsible for any specific person being helped (or any useful longtermist initiative being launched, etc.)
I love my job, and feel very lucky.
Positives:
I genuinely like and trust my colleagues. I really enjoy working with people who care about very similar things and are deeply into the same ideas/culture. I’ve learned a lot from them.
Being able to (somewhat) shape the role to what I enjoy and am good at (e.g. I hate public speaking but love writing—others at CEA are the opposite, so I can write speeches for them). This is something that we try to do for everyone at CEA: to find a role that really plays to their strengths.
Facing a lot of open-ended and challenging projects, and having feedback (either from colleagues, stakeholders, or reality) on them. I think this is a great way to learn (and again, I think this is maybe pretty common at CEA).
When I feel like we’re making progress, it’s amazing. It’s so good to invest deeply in something and see it pay off.
Negatives: (I think this basically boils down to “when it goes wrong, it’s stressful”)
The flip side of shaping the role around me is that I can’t always shape the role to my interests and personal likes! I gave a talk at the EA Coordination Forum and that really stressed me out (I think probably it was a mistake to give the talk).
The flip side of the progress is that I feel pretty bad when we mess up or I fail at some project I’ve been working on.
The flip side of the open-endedness is that it’s often unclear whether I’m doing the right thing. I spend a lot of time reflecting on this sort of thing. It’s a bit stressful.
Positives:
I feel like I was able to create a role that played to my strengths, and I feel excited about the expected value of my career.
I care a lot about my work.
I really like my colleagues.
Negatives:
It can be stressful. I feel like I’m working on important things, and care a lot about how they go. When things don’t go well or there’s something time-sensitive and important to get right, it can feel stressful. This might be particularly related to my role (I handle risky situations a lot).
It can be hard to take my brain off of work. I’m a lot better than I used to be, but it’s a concerted effort I have to make. (e.g. my partner will remind me not to look at my work computer, I’ve uninstalled my work slack from my phone)
For me it might be two sides of the same coin (particular to my role on the community health team).
The positive is getting to serve a community I really believe in, and supporting people who feel very much on the same team as me as far as big life goals.
The negative is that there’s less separation between work life and community life than there would be in a lot of jobs. I’m not a normal community member in the way I was before I worked here—there are more things I have to try to be neutral on, etc. Facebook is mostly a work space for me.
Positive: The people I work with, both at CEA as well as the wider EA community, are often impressive, talented, and kind.
Negative: I’m not a morning person, and living in Pacific time while working with Brits means I have to be up early a lot
I love my job a lot. I think the biggest positive for me is hearing impact stories from the events where people get some amazing connection or opportunity as a result of attending. From a pure enjoyment standpoint I am a sucker for the feeling when an event starts and I get to see all of the excited EAs who have come to attend this thing that my team worked so hard to make for them. There are moments when people start streaming in and it is so busy with activity during registration and everyone looks so happy… it feels like when you buy someone a present that you know they will like and you get to watch them open it!
I used to find the criticism from the community to be a bit hard, but now I have a much thicker skin and better relationship with the feedback. I think part of that comes from having more time, so that if we get negative feedback about something it is a data point about something where we made a decision to do one way or the other. I still feel stress when I think I underperform on something because the stakes feel so high.
In the past I traveled quite a bit for work. At the time that was a positive for me. I’m not sure if it will be as much of a positive now that I have two kids. We will see pretty soon!