Navigating Career Choices Post-University

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Maybe let the non-EA world train you, published by ElliotT on June 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
This post is for EAs at the start of their careers who are considering which organisations to apply to, and their next steps in general.
Conclusion up front: It can be really hard to get that first job out of university. If you don't get your top picks, your less exciting backup options can still be great for having a highly impactful career. If those first few years of work experience aren't your best pick, they will still be useful as a place where you can 'learn how to job', save some money, and then pivot or grow from there.
The main reasons are:
The EA job market can be grim. Securing a job at an EA organisation out of university is highly competitive, often resulting in failing to get a job, or chaotic job experiences due to the nascent nature of many EA orgs. An alternative, of getting short-term EA grants to work independently is not much better, as it can lead to financial instability and hinder long-term professional growth.
Non-EA jobs have a lot of benefits. They offer a stable and structured environment to build skills, learn organisational norms, get feedback, etc.
After, you'll be better placed to do directly impactful work. After a few years at a non-EA job, you'll be better placed to fill a lot of roles at EA orgs. You might also be able to start something yourself.
Caveats: Of course, take everything with a grain of salt.
For every piece of advice, there is someone who needs to hear the opposite, and the advice in here is no exception.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to the following people for giving some great feedback on an a draft of this post and making it better: David Nash, Matt Reardon, Chana Messinger, Karla Still, Michelle Hutchinson. All opinions are my own. All mistakes are chatGPT's.
What's the problem? Three failure modes of trying to get an EA job
It seems like a lot of people who are motivated by the ideas of effective altruism, use 'get a job at an 'EA org' as shorthand for 'how to have an impact with my career' (this includes me, but more on that later). By EA org I mean the kind of organisation where most people working there are EAs. This is understandable. Figuring out how to have a positive impact with your career is really hard.
It's a reasonable heuristic that orgs within the EA community are more likely to have a big positive impact in the world than the average non-profit. Finally, we're all sensitive to status in our community, and in some parts of EA, working at an EA org is definitely considered pretty darn cool.
One issue with this that I want to briefly flag is that 'working at an EA org' and 'doing impactful work' are not interchangeable (Michelle at 80,000 Hours covers that well
here). But the other thing that you probably know is that EA jobs are really hard to get. They are really, really, competitive. Some jobs get hundreds of high-quality applications. I think this leads to a few failure modes.
Story 1 - Lots of rejections: An ambitious, smart, highly engaged EA, fresh out of uni, applies to a lot of EA organisations. They make it far in the hiring rounds, maybe even to trial periods. But, after many disheartening months of applications, trial tasks, and interviews, they don't get an EA job at an EA org.
Story 2 - Chaotic EA Job: Alternatively, maybe they get the job at an impactful organisation, thinking they've made it past the hard bit. However, many EA orgs are very young. This can lead to things like a chaotic onboarding, a lack of HR practices, inexperienced managers, and sudden changes in funding or strategy that can leave them without a job. And if that isn't enough, EA branding does not guarantee an org is doing impactful work.
Both of these stories are pretty bad. These situations are psychologically and...