Great post, thank you! This is useful as a guide to what to try and add in to intro fellowships, in particular:
There are a lot of real professional people in EA, and those people are influencing things in the real world – EA is by no means just a philosophy discussion club, even if your local EA club is one (and it does not have to be one forever!)
I think this is a really important realisation to have as someone doing an intro fellowship/getting into EA. My guess is that realising this makes it a lot easier to think seriously about making career choices based on ideas/methods from EA.
So, how can we help new people realise this sooner?
A quick brainstorm:
Include some readings/podcasts in intro fellowships where people talk in the first person about their EA-aligned work
Encourage new members to attend EAG(x)
Have talks/Q&As with people currently doing EA-aligned work
Include a few bios of individuals and their stories of getting into this kind of work
Chat to new members about what previous members of your group have gone on to do (if your group is mature enough)
I think it’d be ideal if, people understand that EA is not just a philosophy discussion group, but a thing that they could shape their career around, from when they first learn about it.
With EA career stories I think it is important to to keep in mind that new members might not read them the same way as more engaged EAs who already know what organization is considered cool and effective within EA. When I started attending local EA meetups I met a person who worked at OpenPhil (maybe as a contractor? I can’t remember the details), but I did not find it particularly impressive because I did not know what OpenPhilanthropy was and assumed the “phil” stood for “philosophy”.
I was going to suggest the last point, but you’re way ahead of me! In the next couple of years, the first batch of St Andrews EAs will have fully entered the world of work/advanced study, and keeping some record of what the alumni are doing would be meaningful. [As highlighted in the thread post, we are two EAs who know each other outside the forum.]
Great post, thank you! This is useful as a guide to what to try and add in to intro fellowships, in particular:
I think this is a really important realisation to have as someone doing an intro fellowship/getting into EA. My guess is that realising this makes it a lot easier to think seriously about making career choices based on ideas/methods from EA.
So, how can we help new people realise this sooner?
A quick brainstorm:
Include some readings/podcasts in intro fellowships where people talk in the first person about their EA-aligned work
Encourage new members to attend EAG(x)
Have talks/Q&As with people currently doing EA-aligned work
Include a few bios of individuals and their stories of getting into this kind of work
Chat to new members about what previous members of your group have gone on to do (if your group is mature enough)
I think it’d be ideal if, people understand that EA is not just a philosophy discussion group, but a thing that they could shape their career around, from when they first learn about it.
With EA career stories I think it is important to to keep in mind that new members might not read them the same way as more engaged EAs who already know what organization is considered cool and effective within EA. When I started attending local EA meetups I met a person who worked at OpenPhil (maybe as a contractor? I can’t remember the details), but I did not find it particularly impressive because I did not know what OpenPhilanthropy was and assumed the “phil” stood for “philosophy”.
I was going to suggest the last point, but you’re way ahead of me! In the next couple of years, the first batch of St Andrews EAs will have fully entered the world of work/advanced study, and keeping some record of what the alumni are doing would be meaningful.
[As highlighted in the thread post, we are two EAs who know each other outside the forum.]