The career and the community
This was originally posted on the effective altruism forum , and is aimed at those already involved in the movement. tl;dr: for the first few years of their careers, and potentially longer, most effective altruists should focus on building career capital (which isn’t just 'skills’!) rather than doing good or working at EA organisations. However, there are social dynamics which push new grads towards working at EA orgs, which we should identify and counteract. Note that there are a lot of unsubstantiated claims in this post, and so I’d be grateful for pushback on anything I’m incorrect about (throughout the post I’ve highlighted assumptions which do a lot of work but which I haven’t thoroughly justified). This post and this post point at similar ideas less lengthily. Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Advantages of working at EA organisations. 3. Advantages of external career pathways. 4. Social dynamics and implicit recommendations. 5. Building a community around moonshots. 6. Lo