I have been consistently donating a significant portion of my income since I started full time employment at 17 out of self-derived principles of charity that, in hindsight, were reflexively utilitarian—although I didn’t have the language for it then.
I’ve spent 90% of my career working in the public service, primarily out of a desire to help other people and the community at large. My recent time working in private finance has highlighted that although the pay is better, I am far less motivated to work for the profit of entities that don’t operate in alignment with my ethical principles.
I’ve spent the last few years educating myself on effective approaches to getting things done—the mechanics of project delivery, policy construction, and high level negotiations in Government as well as in some business arenas. I’m now trying to figure out how to put the skillset I have—project and program management, creating organisational workflows, managing medium-sized remote teams, and clear inter-group and intra-skateholder communication, to use in the EA field.
Alternate, potentially high-impact paths I am considering taking include entrepreneurship, something I have some experiences in, and operational or policy work in AI governance spaces. I do not presently have undergraduate-level education as I left home and started full time work quite young.
My current uncertainties are that I am not highly confident I have the raw intelligence to usefully contribute in a technical field, but I’m also not sure whether my more managerial and operational skills are of high enough quality for critical role hires. I’d like to have some guidance in clarifying those uncertainties!