The trigger for me to make this open thread post was this comment thread. As I wrote there:
Your comment makes me think that something that might be really easy and really valuable is to just have an online space where people are encouraged to share docs outlining their career ideas, plans, and uncertainties [...], in order to get feedback and advice.[1]
Obviously people can already take the initiative to do that in ad hoc ways, either in public spaces (like youāve done) or via reaching out to specific people. And thatās already useful. But I expect a lot of people who could benefit from this sort of thing would be too shy to do that, or just not think to do it, or be held back by not having enough of a network of relevant people.
Four options come to mind for how to do this:
Create an āopen threadā on the EA Forum for people to share such things
Does anyone have thoughts on which of these options might be best? Maybe as a first step someone should just make an open thread and see how it goes?
[...]
[1] This also reminds me of Rob Wiblinās comments about how having a line manager can be surprisingly beneficial, and how it may be possible to capture a lot of those benefits by just having pairs of junior people who want more line management act as each otherās line managers.
Michelle Hutchinson replied:
This sounds great to me! Iād be tempted to try out things in existing infrastructure first, like trying it out in the careers discussion fbook group, or the open thread you mentioned.
Other options that come to mind:
Look at the EA London community directory for people who would likely have relevant comments on your plan and reach out to them. This seems like it might be more likely to get a reply than a general call, and the person might have more relevant comments than a random person would. But they would likely have less time because theyāre not selected by being keen to look over a career plan.
Talking to other EAs at your local meet up about looking through your plan, or if there isnāt a group in your area joining EA Anywhere
Iāve been surprised how much peopleās preferences on how to give comments on career plans differs. For example, I find it takes me ages to read through a plan so I end up putting it off for ages. Whereas I really like talking to people, so Iām much happier to chat to someone for half an hour. By contrast a friend of mine finds answering questions on the spot really stressful, so far prefers reading over things. So it seems worth giving people an option about whether to read through something (and if so how much) or whether to chat.
In the longer run, I think it would be cool to have a facebook group or slack for EA job seekers to keep each other motivated and accountable, because itās so hard to apply for jobs and deal with the uncertainty. That might also be a good place for people sharing and commenting on career plans.
I like all of Michelleās suggestions. And Discord sounds like it could work too, though I havenāt tried the platform at all myself. I think itās very possible that one of these ideas other than an EA Forum open thread would be better, or should be used as well. But I figured I may as well experiment with this open thread first.
The trigger for me to make this open thread post was this comment thread. As I wrote there:
Michelle Hutchinson replied:
And the user gkaufman27@gmail.com suggested a Discord server.
I like all of Michelleās suggestions. And Discord sounds like it could work too, though I havenāt tried the platform at all myself. I think itās very possible that one of these ideas other than an EA Forum open thread would be better, or should be used as well. But I figured I may as well experiment with this open thread first.
EA Global Reconnect will probably have a slack/ādiscord. That might be a convenient place to try out chat format