Great post! Been meaning to comment for a while—better late than never than suppose.
One thing I wanted to add—I’ve talked with ~50 people who are interested in working at EA orgs over the last six months or so, and it seems like a lot of them come to the decision through process of elimination. Common trends I see:
They don’t feel well-suited for policy, often because it’s too bureaucratic or requires a high level of social skills.
They don’t feel well-suited for academia, usually because they have less-than-stellar marks or dislike the expected output or bureaucracy of academia.
And they aren’t interested in earning-to-give, almost always because of a lack of cultural fit. (They want to have colleagues who are also motivated to do good in the world.)
Per 80,000 Hours recommended career paths, that pretty much leaves working at effective nonprofits as the only option. And conveniently, nonprofit work (especially non-research roles) doesn’t usually come with a high bar of qualifications. A lot of positions don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Depending on the role, it’s not uncommon to find a year of vaguely-defined experience as the only minimum qualification for an entry-level job. So that seems like a reasonable choice for a lot of people… except that hundreds of other EAs also see this as a reasonable choice, and the competition grows very quickly.
I’ve certainly met EAs who seem really well-suited for direct work at EA orgs. But, in part because of the reasons mentioned above, I think the majority of people would be better off focusing their jobseeking efforts somewhere else. I do worry about swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, where talented people stop applying for EA organizations.
I guess my recommendation for people interested in direct work would be to apply to EA organizations that interest you and that you think fit your skillset, but, at the same time, to also apply for EA-aligned organizations and/or impactful non-EA jobs where replaceability is likely to be lower. I also think, if you’re uncertain about whether to apply for or accept an EA direct work role, you can usually talk to the hiring manager about what they feel like your counterfactual impact might be. The nice thing about applying EA orgs is that they understand those concerns, and it likely won’t negatively affect your application—in fact, it might reflect positively on you for thinking critically and altruistically (for lack of a better word) about your career.
Great post! Been meaning to comment for a while—better late than never than suppose.
One thing I wanted to add—I’ve talked with ~50 people who are interested in working at EA orgs over the last six months or so, and it seems like a lot of them come to the decision through process of elimination. Common trends I see:
They don’t feel well-suited for policy, often because it’s too bureaucratic or requires a high level of social skills.
They don’t feel well-suited for academia, usually because they have less-than-stellar marks or dislike the expected output or bureaucracy of academia.
And they aren’t interested in earning-to-give, almost always because of a lack of cultural fit. (They want to have colleagues who are also motivated to do good in the world.)
Per 80,000 Hours recommended career paths, that pretty much leaves working at effective nonprofits as the only option. And conveniently, nonprofit work (especially non-research roles) doesn’t usually come with a high bar of qualifications. A lot of positions don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Depending on the role, it’s not uncommon to find a year of vaguely-defined experience as the only minimum qualification for an entry-level job. So that seems like a reasonable choice for a lot of people… except that hundreds of other EAs also see this as a reasonable choice, and the competition grows very quickly.
I’ve certainly met EAs who seem really well-suited for direct work at EA orgs. But, in part because of the reasons mentioned above, I think the majority of people would be better off focusing their jobseeking efforts somewhere else. I do worry about swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, where talented people stop applying for EA organizations.
I guess my recommendation for people interested in direct work would be to apply to EA organizations that interest you and that you think fit your skillset, but, at the same time, to also apply for EA-aligned organizations and/or impactful non-EA jobs where replaceability is likely to be lower. I also think, if you’re uncertain about whether to apply for or accept an EA direct work role, you can usually talk to the hiring manager about what they feel like your counterfactual impact might be. The nice thing about applying EA orgs is that they understand those concerns, and it likely won’t negatively affect your application—in fact, it might reflect positively on you for thinking critically and altruistically (for lack of a better word) about your career.