10jwahl
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Hey @Kat Woods 🔶 ⏸️
I am curious how this project went! I also have noticed that while EA job boards surface strong candidates, many small EA-aligned orgs (e.g. Ashgro, Safe AI Forum, and similar teams) simply don’t have the bandwidth to run a full recruiting process—timely follow-ups, structured screening, proactive sourcing, etc. That can create avoidable friction for both candidates and teams, even when there’s real mutual interest.
Because of that, I’m exploring whether there’s room for a small, opt-in recruiting/sourcing service that sits downstream of these job boards—focused on execution and candidate experience for hard-to-fill roles at capacity-constrained orgs.
Not thinking of this as a replacement for the job board or advising, just a complement. I see that this was already attempted and looks like nothing stuck, so curious to understand what the failure points were. There seems to be a strong need for this within the community in my opinion.
I agree that earning to give can be a very valid and high-impact path, especially when there isn’t a clear personal fit for direct work.
My hesitation is that this often gets framed as an “easier” or more available alternative, when in practice the same structural dynamics frequently apply. Careers that genuinely offer strong earning potential—beyond what someone would likely donate anyway—are often just as competitive, credential-dependent, and constrained as EA-aligned roles themselves (e.g. top tech, finance, or specialized professional tracks). So for many people, the bottleneck simply shifts rather than disappears.
I also think this intersects with your point about funding constraints. If the ecosystem is funding-constrained rather than talent-constrained in many areas, then earn to give makes a lot of sense at the margin. But if access to high-earning roles is itself limited, we may still be leaving a large amount of motivated human capital underutilized—both in direct work and in earning to give.
That’s why I keep coming back to the possibility that the core issue isn’t just individual career choice, but a mismatch between motivation, available roles, and the systems we’ve built to translate one into the other.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. When I refer to EA-aligned here -- I am mostly referring to jobs posted on the EA Job Board, 80k Hours Job Board and the Probably Good job board.
I agree it’s possible that part of the issue is how EA-aligned career paths are defined, signaled, and encouraged. That said, I’d be genuinely interested to see concrete examples of high-impact roles that are both neglected and currently unfilled, particularly in areas like animal welfare. My understanding is that the major EA job boards do not discriminate against animal welfare projects or roles outside explicitly EA-branded organizations, as long as the impact case is strong.
Where I’m more skeptical is the idea that lack of success for many candidates is primarily driven by individual shortcomings (e.g. qualifications, interview skills, or application quality). What I’ve observed instead looks like a fairly classic supply-and-demand imbalance: a large pool of highly motivated, qualified applicants competing for a very small number of roles. Positions on the 80,000 Hours job board routinely receive hundreds or thousands of applications for a single opening, which mirrors broader trends in the general job market.
Given that dynamic, it seems likely that many capable candidates will fail to land roles simply due to competition and limited hiring capacity, rather than because they are not a good fit in absolute terms. That’s why I’m interested in whether ecosystem-level interventions—beyond individual career advice—could help better absorb and deploy this surplus of motivated talent.
This is incredible and I fully agree with your line of thinking here. This is the single most impactful mode of positive change in my mind-- I actually wrote my senior thesis on this if you would be interested in reading it. Some of my favorite organizations who are thought leaders in this space are B Corps and Imperative 21.
The marriage between profit and purpose allows us to reform our current economic system without having to tear the whole thing down. Having the mentality of stakeholder capitalism as opposed to shareholder capitalism seems like it aligns with EAs view of longtermism.
If you are actively working on anything in this space, I would love to contribute wherever I can.
There actually is an organization doing this (that I won't name) which I had a horrible experience with. I think they are focused on doing hiring better from an organizational standpoint as opposed to advocating for the candidates.
This is clearly a problem across all industries, the hiring process is extremely out of touch right now. I was just hoping for better from EA.
I do agree that EA does sort of take an elitist approach which shuns people who don't come from an academic background -- which is a shame because it definitely stifles creativity and innovation. Even though I am from am elite American institution, finding an EA career has been incredibly difficult because the community is quite closed off. In my experience, if you are not a researcher within one of their pre selected fields, you are not worth their time. There is a significant drive to have positive impact paired with a significant lack of empathy. Again, these are just my experiences but I know many people agree with this point. Definitely something to look into for EA from a culture perspective. Inclusivity and adding more world views can only add value. There is a place for everyone here
I also think this ties back to the broader question I was raising. If a large share of motivated people end up defaulting to earn-to-give not because it’s their best fit, but because pathways into direct impact work are bottlenecked or unclear, that may still point to a structural issue—even if earn-to-give remains net positive in expectation.
So yes, I think the question of “would you be satisfied with a normal job and donating 10%?” is a crucial one. My concern is less about whether that option is impactful in theory, and more about whether the ecosystem is doing enough to help people find durable, high-fit ways to contribute—whether through direct work, earning to give, or something in between.