[My personal opinion here; not speaking on behalf of 80k, where I work]
if you go to EA Global and introduce yourself as an FHI researcher, you’ll have an easier time finding potential collaborators than if you work in a non-EA think tank, even if you are equally committed and nuanced in your understanding of EA concepts, and possibly even if your think tank is more influential than FHI.
Fwiw I personally get particularly excited when I meet somebody who’s working on a problem I consider a priority and/or shares my values but is working towards them from outside of an EA org. Somebody at a place like a non-EA think tank is particularly likely to able to teach me a lot because their network and knowledge of whatever area they’re working on is less likely to overlap with my own than that of somebody working at an EA org.
I strongly second this view. Based on my experience working at a foundation (and talking to many global health/development researchers outside the “core” of EA), and my experience meeting many people at EA Global, MIRI workshops, etc., I find that I’m especially excited to meet someone from outside who has a fresh perspective on an old topic, or helps me learn about some new corner of the high-impact research world.
(Also, they sometimes have a lot more raw experience; a magazine editor just learning about EA may know more about effective public communication than people who work in communications within EA orgs, because they’ve been working in that field since before EA existed in contexts where they were exposed to an audience 100x the size of what most EA orgs deal with.)
If I were to meet a fairly new UN employee at EA Global, I’d have just as many questions for them as for, say, a fairly new GiveWell researcher. The latter may work in an organization that is more tightly aligned with my values, but the former may have a sharper view of what the world looks like “up close”.
[My personal opinion here; not speaking on behalf of 80k, where I work]
Fwiw I personally get particularly excited when I meet somebody who’s working on a problem I consider a priority and/or shares my values but is working towards them from outside of an EA org. Somebody at a place like a non-EA think tank is particularly likely to able to teach me a lot because their network and knowledge of whatever area they’re working on is less likely to overlap with my own than that of somebody working at an EA org.
I strongly second this view. Based on my experience working at a foundation (and talking to many global health/development researchers outside the “core” of EA), and my experience meeting many people at EA Global, MIRI workshops, etc., I find that I’m especially excited to meet someone from outside who has a fresh perspective on an old topic, or helps me learn about some new corner of the high-impact research world.
(Also, they sometimes have a lot more raw experience; a magazine editor just learning about EA may know more about effective public communication than people who work in communications within EA orgs, because they’ve been working in that field since before EA existed in contexts where they were exposed to an audience 100x the size of what most EA orgs deal with.)
If I were to meet a fairly new UN employee at EA Global, I’d have just as many questions for them as for, say, a fairly new GiveWell researcher. The latter may work in an organization that is more tightly aligned with my values, but the former may have a sharper view of what the world looks like “up close”.