As everyone who has posted so far has mentioned Bill’s article in the Harvard Law Record, I just wanted to respond in this one comment.
His article is definitely fiery, and probably overstates the case for earning-to-give. When Bill and I gave a presentation at the law school last semester, we included advice on how public interest/government lawyers can maximize impact by choosing high-priority causes and gaining leverage by changing policy.
There are a few comments on his article that were positive. I think people who already wanted to go into BigLaw were more receptive to it than those who already wanted to go into public interest/government.
Bill and the other members of HLS EA have accomplished a lot over the past semester—they’ve gotten around 40 people to sign the 2L Pledge ( https://www.facebook.com/events/1388997771424219/ ), over 5% of the 2L class. It’s a pledge to donate 1% of summer internship earnings to highly effective charities, which they hope to grow and turn into a post-graduation pledge next year.
We could definitely use more human-to-human connection in the EA community!
I think some of the posts here assume that people who are new to EA will reach out to local EA groups or ask to be connected to people. I think that most people are kind of shy.
It’s better if we can create a system that pulls people in, rather than waiting for them to reach out. 80,000 Hours used to have this kind of setup—you reached out for career advice, and then we would try to get you on Skype to connect socially and introduce you to other EA’s (even if they didn’t have time to do full coaching). Unfortunately, that funnel doesn’t exist anymore.
However, maybe we could set it up that when people create a new profile/account on some of the EA websites, we can have a volunteer team reach out to them and connect them to people in the same area or field of interest. I call it the EA Welcoming Committee.
Thoughts?