I think this idea is really great ! Since Iām early career, Iām going to share my plans more than my actual work, but hopefully there will be some value to this! (And Iām happy to chat with anyone offline about this topic in more depth as well)
This would probably be most relevant to people interested in operations & management, or if you one day might start and org or join an early-stage org.
Where do you work, and what do you do?
Context: I graduated in May 2019 with a BA in Sociology, and have been working since then.
I work at an enterprise software company (software like SAP, ORACLE & Salesforce), currently focused on marketing and sales in Singapore. Before that I worked at a boutique consulting firm that specialised in accounting software implementation for utilities companies. (Yes, itās all as dull as it sounds :D)
My current plan is to continue at my current company for at least 1.5 more years, possibly more depending on how flexible the hours are/āhow much Iām learning (currently, the learning curve is very steep, and I donāt expect it to plateau for at least that amount of time).
What are a few ways in which you bring EA ideas/āmindsets to your current job?
I mostly have the mindset of skilling up and trying to take ownership of projects, and have been lucky in my current job that I have a lot of flexibility in that regard. I think that if you do have the flexibility, even if your job is boring (reminder: the company I work for essentially sells very fancy accounting software), you can kind of gamify it into āwhat useful skills can I learn today?ā.
Overall, I feel like learning these skills in a low(ish) stakes scenario (at least, impact-wise) is nice, because if I make mistakes, or take longer than I need to itās fine, I have a much longer rope to make mistakes.
A lot of the following skills you could learn at any job, but I think mentally thinking of them as ālearningā rather than āstuff I have to do to get paidā is probably a better framing.
From speaking with a few mid- or late-stage career EAs, Iāve gotten the advice that theyāve been able to contribute a lot from the corporate skills theyāve learnt.
It can be tempting to do EA things full-time, every so often I remind myself that I have at least ~45 good years left in my career, and all the things Iām learning now while earning to save are things that will ultimately make the marginal dollar donated to the org where I may work in the future more valuable because Iāll spend my time better, have a larger network to leverage, or just more wisdom about how to set up a new project, make the right hires etc.
General skills
Attention to detail & organisation (e.g. extremely small things like consistent naming conventions, properly structured if weird-looking emails etc.)
How to interact in a workplace with many different people with different motivations & goals
Realising what needs to be in place in an organisation (this is really vague, but basically, seeing something is mising & realising why it was so importantāe.g. a company intranet, good inbox management systems)
Specific operational skills
Recruiting:
Creating a recruiting process: I used a lot of EA resources to design this and choose the right work tests, although itās definitely something you learn through trial & error
Creating a applicant tracking system: I got an excuse to learn Airtable (itās so cool!) and save me time by automating the process while doing so
Learning how to filter people: This is probably the most important thingāno matter where you work, if you want to get to a mangerial level, you will need to know how to recruit people. This is difficult, especially when youāre trying to evaluate someoneās personality fit for the company (this is harder when the company culture is not fully defined or youāre not aware of it) or recruiting in cultures you havenāt spent a lot of time in.
Marketing:
Iām not a professional marketer, so I had to learn a bunch about the basics of marketing, SEO, and copywriting (enough to distinguish what is good and bad, which is a pretty useful skill when hiring I think)
Iāve also been trying to develop a marketing strategy for the company, which has been an interesting process because thereās definitely
Sales
A lot of sales is really understanding your target audience & being able to speak to them in the right way, and understanding what youāre talking about and knowing it really, really well. I feel like being able to talk to complete strangers and maintain a friendly rapport is a useful life-skill,to have.
What are some things youāve worked on that you consider impactful?
I think Iām too early in my career to have really had a lot of impact, but I work on a few EA community building projects that I think are either low hanging fruit, or important and neglected, specifically focused on careers.
These are done in my spare time, and Iām lucky that I have enough flexibility to work on them as well as my job
I think thereās usually a lot of synergy in what I learn on my EA projects & work, which is nice.
I think this idea is really great ! Since Iām early career, Iām going to share my plans more than my actual work, but hopefully there will be some value to this! (And Iām happy to chat with anyone offline about this topic in more depth as well)
This would probably be most relevant to people interested in operations & management, or if you one day might start and org or join an early-stage org.
Where do you work, and what do you do?
Context: I graduated in May 2019 with a BA in Sociology, and have been working since then.
I work at an enterprise software company (software like SAP, ORACLE & Salesforce), currently focused on marketing and sales in Singapore. Before that I worked at a boutique consulting firm that specialised in accounting software implementation for utilities companies. (Yes, itās all as dull as it sounds :D)
My current plan is to continue at my current company for at least 1.5 more years, possibly more depending on how flexible the hours are/āhow much Iām learning (currently, the learning curve is very steep, and I donāt expect it to plateau for at least that amount of time).
What are a few ways in which you bring EA ideas/āmindsets to your current job?
I mostly have the mindset of skilling up and trying to take ownership of projects, and have been lucky in my current job that I have a lot of flexibility in that regard. I think that if you do have the flexibility, even if your job is boring (reminder: the company I work for essentially sells very fancy accounting software), you can kind of gamify it into āwhat useful skills can I learn today?ā.
Overall, I feel like learning these skills in a low(ish) stakes scenario (at least, impact-wise) is nice, because if I make mistakes, or take longer than I need to itās fine, I have a much longer rope to make mistakes.
A lot of the following skills you could learn at any job, but I think mentally thinking of them as ālearningā rather than āstuff I have to do to get paidā is probably a better framing.
From speaking with a few mid- or late-stage career EAs, Iāve gotten the advice that theyāve been able to contribute a lot from the corporate skills theyāve learnt.
It can be tempting to do EA things full-time, every so often I remind myself that I have at least ~45 good years left in my career, and all the things Iām learning now while earning to save are things that will ultimately make the marginal dollar donated to the org where I may work in the future more valuable because Iāll spend my time better, have a larger network to leverage, or just more wisdom about how to set up a new project, make the right hires etc.
General skills
Attention to detail & organisation (e.g. extremely small things like consistent naming conventions, properly structured if weird-looking emails etc.)
How to interact in a workplace with many different people with different motivations & goals
Managing contractors/āpeople (and writing contracts).
Realising what needs to be in place in an organisation (this is really vague, but basically, seeing something is mising & realising why it was so importantāe.g. a company intranet, good inbox management systems)
Specific operational skills
Recruiting:
Creating a recruiting process: I used a lot of EA resources to design this and choose the right work tests, although itās definitely something you learn through trial & error
Creating a applicant tracking system: I got an excuse to learn Airtable (itās so cool!) and save me time by automating the process while doing so
Learning how to filter people: This is probably the most important thingāno matter where you work, if you want to get to a mangerial level, you will need to know how to recruit people. This is difficult, especially when youāre trying to evaluate someoneās personality fit for the company (this is harder when the company culture is not fully defined or youāre not aware of it) or recruiting in cultures you havenāt spent a lot of time in.
Marketing:
Iām not a professional marketer, so I had to learn a bunch about the basics of marketing, SEO, and copywriting (enough to distinguish what is good and bad, which is a pretty useful skill when hiring I think)
Iāve also been trying to develop a marketing strategy for the company, which has been an interesting process because thereās definitely
Sales
A lot of sales is really understanding your target audience & being able to speak to them in the right way, and understanding what youāre talking about and knowing it really, really well. I feel like being able to talk to complete strangers and maintain a friendly rapport is a useful life-skill,to have.
What are some things youāve worked on that you consider impactful?
I think Iām too early in my career to have really had a lot of impact, but I work on a few EA community building projects that I think are either low hanging fruit, or important and neglected, specifically focused on careers.
These are done in my spare time, and Iām lucky that I have enough flexibility to work on them as well as my job
I think thereās usually a lot of synergy in what I learn on my EA projects & work, which is nice.