Summary
- My sense is some EAs act like/hope they will be assigned the perfect impactful career by some combination of 80,000 Hours recommendations (and similar) and ‘perceived consensus views in EA’.
- But, your life is full of specific factors, many impactful jobs haven’t yet been spotted by other EAs and career advice is importantly iterative.
- Instead of simply deferring, I recommend a combination of:
- Your own hard work figuring out your path to impact.
- (Still) Integrating expert advice.
- Support from the community, and close connections who know your context.
Thank you for the thoughtful feedback from Alex Rahl-Kaplan, Alix Pham, Caitlin Borke, Claude, Matt Reardon, and Michelle Hutchinson for making this post better. Claude also kindly offered to take the blame for all the mistakes I might have made.
Introduction
Question: How do you figure out how to do the most good with your career?
Answer [...]
---
Outline:
(00:03) Summary
(01:06) Introduction
(02:58) Why there isn’t an EA sorting hat
(03:24) 1. Your life is full of specific factors to incorporate (aka personal fit)
(05:04) 2. EA-branded jobs are scarce and many impactful jobs aren’t on EA job boards
(05:59) 3. You need to have your own internal model of how to do good
(07:00) 4. Career advice isn’t once-and-done, it's iterative.
(07:55) Why do we expect a sorting hat?
(08:12) 1. Choosing an impactful career is hard, deferring is tempting
(08:48) 2. The 80,000 elephants in the room
(09:41) 3. Givewell and other charity recommendations
(10:33) What are we supposed to do instead?
(10:56) 1. Your own hard work
(11:20) 2. Advice from experts
(12:10) 3. Support from community
(13:09) Final thoughts
The original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
December 18th, 2024
Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5zzbzbYZcocoLnLif/there-is-no-sorting-hat-in-ea
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
