One thing you don’t mention in your article are the many existing organisations that aren’t labelled as “Effective Altruist” but could take thousands of talented new staff each year.
International development charities, governments around the world, academia, information security organisations, specialising in improving relations between the West and countries with newly powerful economies… there are a lot of places where people can make a difference!
I believe this only applies for certain causes, mainly global poverty. If you want to work on existential risk, movement building, or cause prioritization, basically no organizations are working on these except for EA or EA-adjacent orgs. Many non-EA orgs do cause prioritization, but they generally have a much more limited range of what causes they’re willing to consider. Animal advocacy is more of a middle ground, I believe EAs make up somewhere between 10% and 50% of all factory farming focused animal advocates.
(This is just my impression, not backed up by any data.)
I think most x-risk organisations aren’t explicitly EA, right? Like if you’re interested in AI, you might work at OpenAI or DeepMind; nuclear safety you might work in the International Nuclear Safety Group; bioweapons you might work at the Implementation Support Unit for the Bioweapons Convention at the UN.
We could certainly use a lot more EA x-risk people in governmental and intergovernmental bodies (easily a thousand), as well as some in think tanks and academia.
I don’t know much about cause prioritisation; I thought that a lot of them were in academia. I agree that EA movement building by definition will only involve working for and with EAs!
Why do you think orgs labelled ‘effective altruist’ get so much talent applying but those orgs don’t? How big do you think the difference is? I am somewhat informed about the job market in Animal Advocacy. It does not seem nearly as competitive as the EA market. But I am not sure the magnitude of the difference in the replaceability analysis.
I think organisations labelled ‘Effective Altruist’ are more prestigious amongst our friends. People like to work places that are widely recognised and hard to get in to, don’t they? I’m not sure how many applicants these other organisations receive, though.
One thing you don’t mention in your article are the many existing organisations that aren’t labelled as “Effective Altruist” but could take thousands of talented new staff each year.
International development charities, governments around the world, academia, information security organisations, specialising in improving relations between the West and countries with newly powerful economies… there are a lot of places where people can make a difference!
I believe this only applies for certain causes, mainly global poverty. If you want to work on existential risk, movement building, or cause prioritization, basically no organizations are working on these except for EA or EA-adjacent orgs. Many non-EA orgs do cause prioritization, but they generally have a much more limited range of what causes they’re willing to consider. Animal advocacy is more of a middle ground, I believe EAs make up somewhere between 10% and 50% of all factory farming focused animal advocates.
(This is just my impression, not backed up by any data.)
I think most x-risk organisations aren’t explicitly EA, right? Like if you’re interested in AI, you might work at OpenAI or DeepMind; nuclear safety you might work in the International Nuclear Safety Group; bioweapons you might work at the Implementation Support Unit for the Bioweapons Convention at the UN.
We could certainly use a lot more EA x-risk people in governmental and intergovernmental bodies (easily a thousand), as well as some in think tanks and academia.
I don’t know much about cause prioritisation; I thought that a lot of them were in academia. I agree that EA movement building by definition will only involve working for and with EAs!
Why do you think orgs labelled ‘effective altruist’ get so much talent applying but those orgs don’t? How big do you think the difference is? I am somewhat informed about the job market in Animal Advocacy. It does not seem nearly as competitive as the EA market. But I am not sure the magnitude of the difference in the replaceability analysis.
I think organisations labelled ‘Effective Altruist’ are more prestigious amongst our friends. People like to work places that are widely recognised and hard to get in to, don’t they? I’m not sure how many applicants these other organisations receive, though.