This post is venting. It should not be considered Discourse or taken seriously. But…
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jmbP9rwXncfa32seH/after-one-year-of-applying-for-ea-jobs-it-is-really-really makes me feel some kind of strong emotion. Maybe vindication?
Part of me wants to say something like “I feel like EA is sending the message that you have to do direct work or else you’re not serious.” I want to avoid actually saying that, because every time I hear someone else say “I feel like my community is sending the message that [bad, stigmatizing thing]”, those people sound totally wrong to me. Every week I see Tumblr posts on my dash that look like “It’s so gross how society constantly sends the message that if you don’t go shark-hunting every September you can’t be a valuable human being”, and I just stare at them and wonder how one world can contain so many different experiences. So I assume most of these messages are imaginary, most of these people are oversensitive, and most of these statements have more to do with the writer’s insecurities than with social messages per se. Still, my insecurities are what they are, and I feel like EA keeps sending the message that you have to do direct work or else you’re not serious.
And I know, using Intuition, that if I were to try to do direct work, that guy’s experience would happen to me. Or worse, I would get some kind of position through nebulous social credit, do a mediocre job, and lock some sort of amazing top-0.0001% candidate like that guy out.
(this is not fishing for compliments, I know what I’m good at and I think I’m very good at it, but it’s not super-EA-relevant)
It just really sucks to constantly have one lobe of my brain thinking “You have to do this thing, everybody is so desperate for your help and you’ll be letting them down if you don’t”, and the other lobe thinking “If you try to do the thing, you’ll be in an uphill competition against 2,000 other people who want to do it, which ends either in time wasted for no reason, or in you having an immense obligation to perform at 110% all the time to justify why you were chosen over a thousand almost-equally-good candidates”.
(remember, all of this originally started with lots of arguments for why becoming a doctor doesn’t really save lives, because you’d just be displacing other doctors who would probably be equally good)
So instead I earn-to-give, and am constantly hit with messages (see above caveat! messages may not be real!) of “Why are you doing this? Nobody’s funding-constrained! Money isn’t real! Only talent constraints matter!” while knowing that if I tried to help with talent constraints, I would get “Sorry, we have 2,000 applicants per position, you’re imposing a huge cost on us by even making us evaluate you”.
(this isn’t actually my true objection, which also has something to do with a feeling that even if I fill the marginal position, I’ll spend it writing weird white papers that vanish into the void and the research won’t matter, or some kind of tool to raise awareness of thinking strategically about how to think strategically about awareness-raising, or directing resources from some worthy-seeming cause to some other worthy-seeming cause I’m not really confident is better. Even though all these things are important, I can’t make my brain *feel* they’re important and so I would hate every minute of doing them. Probably I’m just totally unsuited for direct work in general. But I would like to be able to think of myself as the sort of person who *would* do direct work, in some situations.)
(I also realize that if I were really impressive, I could just found my own organization, which would solve all these problems and more. I think maybe this is a symptom of under-agentiness, where if other people haven’t created a nice career slot for you to fit into, there’s nothing you can do. But I know I’m under-agenty. This was never in doubt.)
I don’t want EA to stop saying talent is by far the most important constraint, if that’s what they feel is true. I don’t want them to miss out on valuable useful resources just to avoid hurting my (ridiculous and probably just using this as an excuse for other hangups) feelings. But for some reason I read articles like this and think “AHA! THE GIG IS UP!”
EDIT: Should also acknowledge the possibility that “talent-constrained” means the world needs more clean meat researchers, malaria vaccine scientists, and AI programmers, and not just generic high-qualification people applying to EA organizations. This wasn’t how I understood the term but it would make sense.
i have never been able to get fully on board with the way EA does job recommendations, i think partly because they take careers on a hyper-individual level rather than aggregates, and partly because i feel like they undervalue biomed or natural resource research compared with economic research, which also means undervaluing university and natl labs research compared with their own organizations’ work. i’m not saying they’re wrong about their own effectiveness, but i think whoever’s putting together the career recs just doesn’t care very much about how science works, large-scale.
here’s what i mean: mostly, scientific research success is a function of skill and of luck (assuming you work in a good lab that can get funding). the first person to figure out the polio vaccine is Jonas Salk. everyone else is “not Jonas Salk.” BUT SALK DOESN’T EXIST IN A VACUUM. how much research did other people have to do before him before the vaccine could exist? how many people were searching at the same time as him, making the odds ever better that it would be found? Salk was the necessary person to figure it out at THAT moment in history, and this is no disrespect to him–he’s one of my greatest heroes. but being involved in the scientific research community has shown me the importance of the aggregate. literally nobody’s research can stand alone anymore. the solo act of science is long gone. the most random, niche papers get cited and built upon. and Salk was brilliant, but he was also lucky. there were probably a lot of researchers who could’ve been Salk.
that was the thing that struck me most about that article, and it really made me ache for the author. his CV was an incredible list of biomed credentials–and he was applying to random data jobs at various EA orgs because EA pushes their own. that guy could be the next Salk–or he could be the next “guy who isn’t Salk,” but nobody knows for sure. if you have the skill and passion, you should try! everything HAS to be taken in aggregate. i’m talking about science research very specifically, partly because of the article author’s background and partly because of my familiarity with the scientific system, but i’m pretty sure that the importance of the aggregate is true for other career options too. and it seems like it’s not even on EA radars.
they should start analyzing more careers rather than keep pushing the thing about how their applicant pool isn’t big enough. fine, you can’t or don’t want to work at an EA org. (analyzing data with no hands-on component would make me cry.) what’s the relative benefit of studying biomed versus climate science, if you’re early enough in your education to choose? what’s the impact of working in various levels of local politics? heck, if you’re a high school teacher, what should you consider when you’re picking the school district you’d want to work in?
i hope EA takes a good hard look at that article, and i REALLY hope that guy finds a fulfilling career. whoever the next Salk is, they’re probably not taking career advice from EA right now.