I agree that a quick and decisive input from someone very knowledgeable about EA and the topic involved would be very useful and save a lot of time and indecision for people evaluating career options.
I think we can provide a bit of this though through more engaged online communities around given topic areas. Not nearly as good as in person talks but people can at least get some general feedback on career ideas. I’m hoping to host an event later this year that will gather people interested in a cause area and use that as a catalyst to form a more cohesive online community. As far as I can tell (and in my experience) people tend not to engage much in an online community if they don’t really know the people well. Though it’s definitely true that some people are more than happy to engage with people they don’t know.
I don’t know how this could move forward but it seems like someone could potentially make a difference by engineering Facebook or Slack groups focused on certain cause areas to be more active places for general discussion and career advice. This would be so helpful for people who lack close contact with knowledgeable people in EA or within their cause area.
Strongly agreed. I really like Raemon’s analysis why it’s so hard to get EA careers: we’re network constrained. [This isn’t exactly how he frames it, more my take on his idea.]
Right now, EA operates very informally, relying heavily on the fact that the several hundred people working at explicitly EA orgs are all socially networked together to some degree. This social group was significantly inherited from LessWrong and Bay Area rationalism, and EA has had great success in co-opting it for EA goals.
But as EA grows beyond its roots, more people want in, and you can’t have a social network of ten thousand, let alone a million. So we have two options: (a) increase the bandwidth of the social network, or (b) stop relying so much on the social network.
(a) increasing bandwidth looks like exactly what you’re talking about: create ways for newcomers to EA to make EA friends, develop professional relationships with EAs, etc., by creating better online platforms and in person groups.
(b) not relying on personal relationships looks like becoming more corporate, relying on traditional credentials, scaling up until people actually stand a strong chance of landing jobs via open application, etc.
(a) seems to have clear benefits with no obvious harms, as long as it can be done, so it seems very much worth it for us to try.
I agree that a quick and decisive input from someone very knowledgeable about EA and the topic involved would be very useful and save a lot of time and indecision for people evaluating career options.
I think we can provide a bit of this though through more engaged online communities around given topic areas. Not nearly as good as in person talks but people can at least get some general feedback on career ideas. I’m hoping to host an event later this year that will gather people interested in a cause area and use that as a catalyst to form a more cohesive online community. As far as I can tell (and in my experience) people tend not to engage much in an online community if they don’t really know the people well. Though it’s definitely true that some people are more than happy to engage with people they don’t know.
I don’t know how this could move forward but it seems like someone could potentially make a difference by engineering Facebook or Slack groups focused on certain cause areas to be more active places for general discussion and career advice. This would be so helpful for people who lack close contact with knowledgeable people in EA or within their cause area.
Strongly agreed. I really like Raemon’s analysis why it’s so hard to get EA careers: we’re network constrained. [This isn’t exactly how he frames it, more my take on his idea.]
Right now, EA operates very informally, relying heavily on the fact that the several hundred people working at explicitly EA orgs are all socially networked together to some degree. This social group was significantly inherited from LessWrong and Bay Area rationalism, and EA has had great success in co-opting it for EA goals.
But as EA grows beyond its roots, more people want in, and you can’t have a social network of ten thousand, let alone a million. So we have two options: (a) increase the bandwidth of the social network, or (b) stop relying so much on the social network.
(a) increasing bandwidth looks like exactly what you’re talking about: create ways for newcomers to EA to make EA friends, develop professional relationships with EAs, etc., by creating better online platforms and in person groups.
(b) not relying on personal relationships looks like becoming more corporate, relying on traditional credentials, scaling up until people actually stand a strong chance of landing jobs via open application, etc.
(a) seems to have clear benefits with no obvious harms, as long as it can be done, so it seems very much worth it for us to try.