Crossposted from LessWrong.
TL;DR: Figure out what needs doing and do it, don't wait on approval from fellowships or jobs.
If you...
- Have short timelines
- Have been struggling to get into a position in AI safety
- Are able to self-motivate your efforts
- Have a sufficient financial safety net
... I would recommend changing your personal strategy entirely.
I started my full-time AI safety career transitioning process in March 2025. For the first 7 months or so, I heavily prioritized applying for jobs and fellowships. But like for many others trying to "break into the field" and get their "foot in the door", this became quite discouraging.
I'm not gonna get into the numbers here, but if you've been applying and getting rejected multiple times during the past year or so, you've probably noticed the number of applicants increasing at a preposterous rate. What this means in practice is that the "entry-level" positions are practically impossible for "entry-level" people to enter.
If you're like me and have short timelines, applying, getting better at applying, and applying again, becomes meaningless very fast. You're optimizing for signaling competence rather than actually being competent. Because if you a) have short timelines, and b) are honest with yourself, you would come to the conclusion that immediate, direct action and effect is a priority.
If you identify as an impostor...
..applying for things can be especially nerve-wrecking. To me, this seems to be because I'm incentivized to optimize for how I'm going to be perceived. I've found the best antidote for my own impostor-y feelings to be this: Focus on being useful and having direct impact, instead of signaling the ability to (maybe one day) have direct impact.
I find it quite comforting that I don't need to be in the spotlight, but instead get to have an influence from the sidelines. I don't need to think about "how does this look" - just "could this work" or "is this helpful".
And so I started looking for ways in which I could help existing projects immediately. Suddenly, "optimize LinkedIn profile" didn't feel like such a high EV task anymore.
Here's what I did, and recommend folks to try
Identify the risk scenario you'd most like to mitigate, and the 1-3 potentially most effective interventions.
Find out who's already working on those interventions.[1]
Contact these people and look for things they might need help with. Let them know what you could do right now to increase their chances of success.[2]
What I've personally found the most effective is reaching out to people with specific offers and/or questions you need answered in order to make those offers[3]. Address problems you've noticed that should be addressed. If you have a track record of being a reliable and sensible person (and preferably can provide some evidence to support this), and you offer your time for free, and the people you're offering to help actually want to get things done, they're unlikely to refuse[4].
(Will happily share more about my story and what I'm doing currently; don't hesitate to ask detailed questions/tips/advice.)[5]
This work was supported by the EA Hotel, which offers free or low-cost food and accommodation to people working to improve the world, which happens to be an excellent place to visit if you'd like to extend your runway and be surrounded by great people who are mostly working towards AI safety. They do have applications for free, or you can pay to be there very affordably.
Relatedly, the EA Hotel is in urgent need of funding despite being extremely cost effective and having incubated multiple organizations in AI safety. Consider donating, they are blocked on basic maintenance for lack of funds and will run out of money in a few months by default.
You can also help by voting for CEEALAR in the EA Forum Donation Election before December 7, and donating to the Fund.
- ^
If nobody seems to be on the ball, consider starting your own project.
- ^
Here it's quite helpful to focus on what you do best, where you might have an unfair advantage, etc.
- ^
As a general rule, assume the person you're messaging or talking to doesn't have the time to listen to your takes - get straight to the point and make sure you've done the cognitive labor for them.
- ^
I should add that in order to do this you need to have developed a bit of agency, as well as understanding of the field you're trying to contribute to. I'm also assuming that since you have the capacity to apply for things, you also have the capacity to get things done if you trade the time.
- ^
Post encouraged and mildly improved by @plex based on a conversation with Pauliina. From the other side of this, I'd much rather take someone onto a project who has spent a few months trying to build useful things than spending cycles to signal for applications, even if their projects don't go anywhere. You get good at what you practice. Hire people who do things and go do things. e.g. I once gave the org Alignment Ecosystem Development, which runs all the aisafety.com resources, to a volunteer (Bryce Robertson) who'd been helping out competently for a while. Excellent move! He had proved he actually did good stuff unprompted and has been improving it much more than I would have.
Also! I'd much rather work with someone who's been practicing figuring out inside views of what's actually good to orient their priorities rather than someone looking for a role doing work which someone else thinks is good and got funding to hire for. Deference is the mind-killer.
It's great to hear that being on the front foot and reaching out to people with specific offers has worked for you.
I actually want to push back on your advice for many readers here. I think for many people who aren't getting jobs, the reason is not because the jobs are too competitive, but that they're not meeting the bar for that role. This seems more common for EAs with little professional experience, as many employers want applicants who have already been trained. In AI Safety, it also seems like for some parts of the problem, an exceptional level of talent or skill is needed to meaningfully contribute.
In addition to applying for more jobs or reaching out to people directly, I'd also recommend:
I realise short timelines makes this all much harder, but I do think many people early in their career do their best work in the environment of an organisation, team, manager, etc.
I agree with this.
It seems to me that people are spending a lot of time (as in months and months!) applying for extremely oversubscribed things that they hope will gain them experience and a track record. EA is getting bottlenecked by application evaluation.
The huge personal resource investment needed to make you look good and succeed on a really competitive resume, interview, application process etc - can probably be better spent on effective volunteering, assuming you're *actually* relatively good at the work. The counterfactual difference in world impact is huge - rather than being a resource investment you're a resource contributor. And it will also gain you experience and a track record.
On a related note re: CEEALAR, anyone who wants to do some fundraising for effective charities is welcome to come upskill, connect, and get productive at CEEALAR for the Effective Giving Organiser Retreat 6th-9th February 2026 at the EA Hotel, Blackpool, UK. This retreat is free, with all meals and accommodation included. Run by me, with appearances from One for the World and Giving What We Can. https://forms.gle/E4Kqp32TUnG4DcVa7 to sign up. Disclaimer: I paid CEEALAR for this event out of my pledge money because it's part of the work I'm doing to get effective giving volunteer fundraising back on the EA community map.
Lastly I want to agree that CEEALAR is amazingly cost-efficient and impactful, and the fact that they have to go through this song and dance every single year it seems (thereby distracting their organisers from cracking on with the object-level work of training and incubating EAs and EA organisations) is clearly a major red flag about the short-termist nature of EA's grantmaking systems for anyone looking to set up physical EA infrastructure in future. I would like CEEALAR to be able to stop applying and get to work.
Solid advice, concisely put!
I think you may have chosen this title for emphasis, but I would say that applying for jobs can still work and I wouldn't recommend people to just stop completely, but I agree it's longer timelines and much lower chances. If I were looking for a job now, I think I would spend 10% applying for jobs and all the rest of the time increasing my surface area for serendipity and doing directly what you're talking about.
Great post, strongly agree. Here are 3 posts I share with people who are in a similar position to what you describe, but yours will be the 4th one from now on!
How Unofficial Work Gets You Hired: Building Your Surface Area for Serendipity
There is No EA Sorting Hat
Why experienced professionals fail to land high-impact roles (FBB #5)
I second the point about the EA Hotel, its a great place to get work done if you don't have a financial runway! (Though people should pay for at least part of their stay unless they absoluately can't)