Operations Generalist with 3.5 years of experience running operations in a $1–2M revenue organization. Took on shared leadership during an unplanned absence of company leadership, maintaining continuity and supporting operational and financial priorities. Experienced in process improvement, cross-functional coordination, and building structure in low-structure environments.
I recently completed CEA’s Career Pivot Bootcamp and I am determined to take my operations skills and experience to a high-impact organization. Reading about the operations bottleneck (“Operations management in high-impact organisations” on 80,000 Hours) confirmed this is where I can most likely add the most value right away- I can multiply the impact of an effective org by making it run even better.
Hi Emily! Thank you for articulating what I know so many people (including me) are struggling with. Personally, I’ve been trying to land a high-impact operations role for over 6 months now (been unemployed for 15 months), and talking to other people in the CEA bootcamp further confirmed that the EA/ non-profit / high-impact world (including AI Safety/governance) is so incredibly tough to break into. There are so many talented people committed to contribute their time and skills to make the world better through their daily work, and aren’t given the chance to do so. We all have bills to pay- I refuse to give up, but don’t judge people who (have to) do at some point.
If people genuinely want to dedicate their careers to EA-aligned, impactful work, we should make it easy for them! Don’t we want more people working on the worlds biggest problems? I’ve thought about possible solutions- one being that more people who’ve gained experience in the high-impact space should (be encouraged and trained to) branch out and start their own orgs, so that the old role could be filled again, plus new ones created over time in the newly formed organization.
I also read that about 70% of roles are now being filled through referrals (non-EA specific, source: https://jobgether.com/job-seekers-guide#the-market), and hear referrals to be of importance within EA as well. Similar to @Mark Aiken’s sentiment, while signaling alignment is important, we need to be cautious to not let the EA ecosystem be a somewhat closed loop. On a side note, I have similar feelings about EAG events too (I would have loved to attend and volunteer at the one in my city, but was not approved)- but that’s a whole other topic.