EA Forum Reader

yeah, you could make the argument that your counterfactual impact in local community building might be higher than working at EA org X... I didn't (mean to) propose anything to contradict that assessment and I agree given the right circumstances. I just meant to mention that people who could reasonably expect to work at EA org X will likely do so as it IS a more prestigious thing to do than community building at the moment and will likely continue to be in the near future. I don't necessarily like this situation, I am just calling out how I see it.

I very much agree that community building is a worthwhile opportunity (that's why I am engaging in it myself) and I never said it's easy... it is just less specialized than some other things one would consider to be high-value. I think that's what you allude to in your third paragraph.

To argue a little bit more FOR community building, I would propose it's a very useful general skill set to have for any job. It's a lot about project and people management which is quite useful regardless the specific field you want to get into. Thus, I would be quite happy to see a more systematic approach to and support of community building than we generally see at the moment (although that might just be biased and based on my personal experiences in Germany so far).

One good place to start might be Animal Charity Evaluators.

It actually might be more complicated than what you say here, alexherwix. If a research analyst role at the Open Philanthropy Project receives 800+ job applications, then you might reasonably think that it's better for you to continue building a local community even if you were a great candidate for that option.

In addition, for the reasons that you mention, every possible local community builder might be constantly looking for new job options in the EA community making someone who doesn't do that a highly promising candidate. Furthermore, being a community builder is actually a surprisingly difficult job.

Another consideration is that preparation and training for a specific job at an EA organization and gaining skills leading a local group might be quite different. It might suit you more to do tasks related to community building in a local context.

This is slightly relevant, in a recent 80,000 Hours' blog post they suggest the following for people applying for EA jobs:

We generally encourage people to take an optimistic attitude to their job search and apply for roles they don’t expect to get. Four reasons for this are that, i) the upside of getting hired is typically many times larger than the cost of a job application process itself, ii) many people systematically underestimate themselves, iii) there’s a lot of randomness in these processes, which gives you a chance even if you’re not truly the top candidate, and iv) the best way to get good at job applications is to go through a lot of them.

Do “software for good” have a online presence? Hadn’t heard of them and would be interested to read more. Thanks!

Not really. I just think that we should be careful when using CEEs. Hopefully, this post can help with that. I think it contains little new info for people who have been working with CEEs for a while. I imagine that these are some of the reasons why GiveWell and ACE give CEEs only limited weight in recommending charities.

Maybe I’d like some EAs to take CEEs less literally, understand that they might be misleading in some way, and perhaps analyze the details before citing them. I think that CEEs should start conversations, not end them. I also feel that early on some non-robust CEEs were overemphasized when doing EA outreach, but I’m unsure if that’s still a problem nowadays.

Thanks for the post! Good to see what other EA groups are up to and I generally like your network-centric and self-organizing approach to community building. Empowering people to engage in meaningful projects seems like a good way to keep people aligned and engaged in the long-term.

I have two questions:

1. To me the plan reads a little bit like "let's do more of what works" is that a fair characterization? Do you maybe also have some more concrete plans to "take EA London to the next level" or do you think that innovation is not needed at the moment?

2. Just a selfish request... I would be really curious to get your perspective/feedback on our plans for community building in Germany [1]. It seems like you are further along on a similar trajectory looking for a network-centric and self-organizing approach to community building. While we are on a national level and obviously much more distributed than EA London, I think a lot of things carry over. Would also be happy to schedule a call at some point if that's more convenient :)

1: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9sCvoRupwK9xdiSPw/announcing-plans-for-a-german-effective-altruism-network

Thank you for the feedback.

When I was talking about academia I wasn't imaging a student that is almost sure to steer a field, but more of a "regular" PhD student. For example I will be finishing a PhD in environmental science soonish. I think I am doing a good job there, but when I see who is applying for EA orgs it seems somewhat unlikely that I will get into one of the main EA orgs anytime soon (or ever^^). Therefore, trying to infuse EA ideas into the general discourse in my field might be one of the few things I can do while in academia.

Regarding what local groups could do, I am still a bit unsure what is the best approach (which is why I did not include it in the post). But a few ideas floating in my head are:

• Creating more opportunities for people in local group become friends, as this ensures long time engagement:
• Create additional events that are only meant for people to connect with each other
• Push for more 1 on 1 talks in the group, so all people in the group know each other well
• Using local groups as a support network:
• Help each other finding meaningful jobs
• Maybe even create something like a local group fund. So everyone in the group gives some money every month and when a member of the group needs financial leeway to create something EA related he/she can get money from that fund.
• Creating a tighter network in your country:
• Have more and longer coutry wide networking events
• Basically all the things GEAN is trying to implement

Probably some of those ideas (or all?) are already included in the bigger EA groups. However, the smaller groups that I have met so far (in Germany) are not yet so sophisticated.

Not the author but still tempted to reply as I was somewhat involved in the discussion leading to this post :)

Regarding your first point:

I somewhat disagree to your assessment of the situation. Most PhDs seem to don't even try to steer any stream but simply try to get through their studies. Imho there is no harm in trying to inject new thoughts and ideas through a paper here and there and hope for other researchers to pick up on it.

For example, I am by no means in a special position in my field but wrote a small workshop paper about what my field could learn from EA and have send that around quite heavily and now I am in a collaboration working to make it into a conference and then a journal paper. Time investment so far was maybe a week of fun work. Still I am by no means a sure hire at any of the top EA orgs and have trouble getting funding from anything EA related.

All in all, I think that trying to leverage what you already have and can influence is undervalued compared to trying to "hitchhike" impact (that's obviously "tongue-in-cheek"). A word one could use for this may be: micro-entrepreneurship.

Regarding your second point:

I guess you have a good point here, the post doesn't really add much in the role of concrete advice to local groups but I also think that it doesn't have to. Just highlighting that there is a connection between the role of local groups and what kind of careers we value is something which I haven't seen much discussion about.

As you highlight student groups are a specific form of a local group which is quite common but doesn't really respond to the needs outlined in the post. Thus, it would be interesting to start thinking about the systematic coordination of local groups in specific regions. Right now, it seems like groups are popping up and dwindeling along somewhat spontaneously. Some EA hotspots like Oxford, London, Boston, BayArea, etc. might be in a phase with more systematic networking and coordination going on but the vast majority of local groups is just starting to think about connecting and coordinating more systematically.

What I take away from this post is that this kind of regional coordination is important if we want to ensure motivation of EAs in the medium- and long-term. This perspective seems (at least based on personal experience) underdeveloped at the moment. Thus, I am quite happy about this post and your thoughtful engagement with it :)

I guess the position that this might be slightly controversial in the EA movement is based on the measures that are generally used to assess the quality of EA community building through EA grants. There is still a heavy emphasis on career plan changes [1] with a strong focus on the highest impact EA organizations.

While maybe nobody would generally disagree with the stated position, the systems in place seems to make it quite difficult to cater to these groups. At least based on personal experience and exchanges, CB grant recipients feel often somewhat constrained in what they think they can do. Moreover, again based on personal experience, it seems quite difficult to get funding for things that aim to tackle the outlined challenge directly.

1: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/RZrikMAuTwt4e9Fs4/ea-community-building-grants-update