The Nonlinear Library EA - My circuitous, undirected path to an EA job by Seth Ariel Green
Jul 7, 2024
09:49
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: My circuitous, undirected path to an EA job, published by Seth Ariel Green on July 7, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Last week, I started a full-time position at the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab, and I've been reflecting a bit on how convoluted and indirect my path here was. I thought that journey might be worth sharing.
In the genre of "Well, how did I get here?," I appreciate Johannes Haushofer's CV of failures for helping compensate for selection bias in career stories. If we only see the things that go right and the outcomes that emerge from them, we'll have a very truncated sense of what actually leads to what. So here's my story.
Stage 1 (2006-2010): Aiming to be a political science professor
I went to a small US college whose graduates are overrepresented in EA and in PhD programs. Most of my friends ended up getting PhDs and were pretty serious academically. I liked them, and I liked my professors, so I opted to board the same train.
I majored in political science, which was the path of least resistance. In those classes, I got good grades without having to grind too much, and I found an environment in which, as Timothy Burke observes, professors would "pat you on the head and tell you how wonderfully smart you are for sassing them."
Stage 2 (2010-2013): Trying other paths for a few years
As a senior in college, I had an intuition that 21 was a bit young to start a PhD,[1] so I did other stuff for a while:
An Americorps program where I worked as a teacher's aide in a kindergarten classroom in D.C.
Taught English in Thailand to middle and high schoolers
A two-semester internship at a think tank at which I produced approximately zero output.
I wanted to see if any job seemed like a better fit than"professor at Swarthmore/Middlebury/Pomona/etc.,[2]" but nothing seemed more compelling.[3] I applied to political science PhD programs in fall 2012 and chose Columbia because I wanted to be in NY and because there were professors I wanted to work with. I enrolled in fall 2013.
Stage 3 (2013-2015): Grad school is not a good fit
My first year in graduate school -- again as Timothy Burke would have predicted-- was very challenging and not at all like college. I took survey courses with giants in the field and was bored senseless. The required stats classes were total drink-from-the-firehose experiences. I thought I was picking up enough to get by, but I wasn't, a fact I was alerted to when I got a letter from the department chair saying that my academic performance was not meeting expectations.
So I wouldn't say grad school went very well.
I did however, fall in with a dyed-in-the-wool dyexperimentalist as my advisor who I really like and with whom I'm still friends. I took a few classes with him and we had some projects I was excited about. However, when people in the department looked at these projects, they often asked: how does this fit into our discipline?
At the end of my second year, I failed my comprehensive exams in American Politics. At the beginning of what would have been my third year, I failed them again, this time in both American and Comparative politics. I just wasn't cut out to be a political scientist, and I was told to leave the program and venture into the real world. (I got a consolation M.A.)
Stage 4 (2016-2017) Transitioning to tech
This was a difficult period in my life. My first job, at a well-regarded international development NGO, fell apart after a few months. The organization was going through a serious restructuring amidst some troubling budget irregularities, and I was among those who fell somewhere on the spectrum between "left" and "asked to leave." (I still don't have total clarity into what happened behind the scenes.[4]) At that point, I felt like a total failure, like no job would ever work out.
One morning in spring 2016, ...
Last week, I started a full-time position at the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab, and I've been reflecting a bit on how convoluted and indirect my path here was. I thought that journey might be worth sharing.
In the genre of "Well, how did I get here?," I appreciate Johannes Haushofer's CV of failures for helping compensate for selection bias in career stories. If we only see the things that go right and the outcomes that emerge from them, we'll have a very truncated sense of what actually leads to what. So here's my story.
Stage 1 (2006-2010): Aiming to be a political science professor
I went to a small US college whose graduates are overrepresented in EA and in PhD programs. Most of my friends ended up getting PhDs and were pretty serious academically. I liked them, and I liked my professors, so I opted to board the same train.
I majored in political science, which was the path of least resistance. In those classes, I got good grades without having to grind too much, and I found an environment in which, as Timothy Burke observes, professors would "pat you on the head and tell you how wonderfully smart you are for sassing them."
Stage 2 (2010-2013): Trying other paths for a few years
As a senior in college, I had an intuition that 21 was a bit young to start a PhD,[1] so I did other stuff for a while:
An Americorps program where I worked as a teacher's aide in a kindergarten classroom in D.C.
Taught English in Thailand to middle and high schoolers
A two-semester internship at a think tank at which I produced approximately zero output.
I wanted to see if any job seemed like a better fit than"professor at Swarthmore/Middlebury/Pomona/etc.,[2]" but nothing seemed more compelling.[3] I applied to political science PhD programs in fall 2012 and chose Columbia because I wanted to be in NY and because there were professors I wanted to work with. I enrolled in fall 2013.
Stage 3 (2013-2015): Grad school is not a good fit
My first year in graduate school -- again as Timothy Burke would have predicted-- was very challenging and not at all like college. I took survey courses with giants in the field and was bored senseless. The required stats classes were total drink-from-the-firehose experiences. I thought I was picking up enough to get by, but I wasn't, a fact I was alerted to when I got a letter from the department chair saying that my academic performance was not meeting expectations.
So I wouldn't say grad school went very well.
I did however, fall in with a dyed-in-the-wool dyexperimentalist as my advisor who I really like and with whom I'm still friends. I took a few classes with him and we had some projects I was excited about. However, when people in the department looked at these projects, they often asked: how does this fit into our discipline?
At the end of my second year, I failed my comprehensive exams in American Politics. At the beginning of what would have been my third year, I failed them again, this time in both American and Comparative politics. I just wasn't cut out to be a political scientist, and I was told to leave the program and venture into the real world. (I got a consolation M.A.)
Stage 4 (2016-2017) Transitioning to tech
This was a difficult period in my life. My first job, at a well-regarded international development NGO, fell apart after a few months. The organization was going through a serious restructuring amidst some troubling budget irregularities, and I was among those who fell somewhere on the spectrum between "left" and "asked to leave." (I still don't have total clarity into what happened behind the scenes.[4]) At that point, I felt like a total failure, like no job would ever work out.
One morning in spring 2016, ...