Thank you so much for this post! Though more research can be helpful (as you noted), under ideal conditions, between the analysis in this post and Bill Zito’s more heuristic-y arguments about career capital, the case for tech earning-to-givers working in top startups rather than in BigTech is basically overdetermined.
Speaking for myself, if I was still working at Google and didn’t see either a clear path to much more specialized career capital at Google or a path to direct work elsewhere, I’d consider this analysis and surrounding arguments more-than-sufficient (85%?) to switch into startup work. (And I in fact did join a fast-growing startup in late 2019 based on much vaguer and lower-quality analyses than available now, which has empirically worked out fine for me^).
I’d be very excited for more EAs to consider top startups, though as you’ve noted, there are a number of practical details which anybody reading this post and thinking of changing jobs should do well to read or internalize.
I also think institutionally EA should figure out ways to make this transition smoother for people. I’d be excited for an entrepreneurial person who doesn’t have better projects to do to take this on, though they should of course compare whether doing this is better than their counterfactuals.
(I think a reasonable critique of this whole line of research/inquiry is that a) EA writ large already has a lot of money, and b) earning-to-give is probably better in expectation if people made very high-variance bets like trying to start multi-billion dollar companies. I agree with this, but given that many EAs are trying to do tech earning-to-give anyway, helping them serve that need seems good.)
^ I turned out to be a bad fit for the startup, but after I left I got obsessed with working on covid stuff and the career capital worked out well. Also the money situation went unexpectedly well and I don’t think I burned down too many bridges.
Thank you so much for this post! Though more research can be helpful (as you noted), under ideal conditions, between the analysis in this post and Bill Zito’s more heuristic-y arguments about career capital, the case for tech earning-to-givers working in top startups rather than in BigTech is basically overdetermined.
Speaking for myself, if I was still working at Google and didn’t see either a clear path to much more specialized career capital at Google or a path to direct work elsewhere, I’d consider this analysis and surrounding arguments more-than-sufficient (85%?) to switch into startup work. (And I in fact did join a fast-growing startup in late 2019 based on much vaguer and lower-quality analyses than available now, which has empirically worked out fine for me^).
I’d be very excited for more EAs to consider top startups, though as you’ve noted, there are a number of practical details which anybody reading this post and thinking of changing jobs should do well to read or internalize.
I also think institutionally EA should figure out ways to make this transition smoother for people. I’d be excited for an entrepreneurial person who doesn’t have better projects to do to take this on, though they should of course compare whether doing this is better than their counterfactuals.
(I think a reasonable critique of this whole line of research/inquiry is that a) EA writ large already has a lot of money, and b) earning-to-give is probably better in expectation if people made very high-variance bets like trying to start multi-billion dollar companies. I agree with this, but given that many EAs are trying to do tech earning-to-give anyway, helping them serve that need seems good.)
^ I turned out to be a bad fit for the startup, but after I left I got obsessed with working on covid stuff and the career capital worked out well. Also the money situation went unexpectedly well and I don’t think I burned down too many bridges.