I have thoughts on how to deal with this. My priors are this won't work if I communicate it through text (but I have no idea why). Still, seems like the friendly thing would be to write it down

My recommendation on how to read this:

1. If this advice fits you, it should read as "ah obviously, how didn't I think of that?". If it reads as "this is annoying, I guess I'll do it, okay...." - then something doesn't fit you well, I missed some preference of yours. Please don't make me a source of annoying social pressure
2. Again, for some reason this works better when speaking than in writing. So, eh, ... idk.. imagine me speaking?? get a friend to read this to you?
   1. (whatever you chose, consider telling me how it went? this part is a mystery to me)

So,

TL;DR:

1. The goal of interviews is not to pass them (that's the wrong goal, I claim). The goals I recommend are:
   1. Reducing uncertainty regarding what places will accept you. (so you should get many rejections, it's by-design, otherwise you're not searching well)
   2. Practicing interviews. Interviews are different than actual work, and there's skill to build there. So after interviews, I'll review stuff I didn't know, and I'll ask for feedback about my blind spots. I have some embarrassing stories about blind spots I had in interviews and would never notice without asking for feedback. Like, eh, taking off my shoes and walking around the room including the interviewer 🫣 these are actual blind spots I had which are absolutely unrelated to my profession of software development
2. Something about the framing of "people who interview a lot beat others in getting better jobs" - and motivation to be one of those
3. Get yourself ice cream or so after interviewing
   1. Important sub point: Positive reinforcement should be for "doing good moves" (like scheduling an interview, or like reviewing what you could do better), and NOT for passing interviews (which imply to your brain that not-passing is negative, and so if your brain has uncertainty about this - it will want to avoid interviewing)
4. Asking a close friend / partner / roommate what they think could work for you. They might say something like "play beat saber, that always makes you feel good" which I couldn't guess
5. Sometimes people spend a lot of time on things like writing cover letters (or other things that I think are a wrong use of time and frustrating (and in my model of people: some part of them knows this isn't a good idea and it manifests as stress/avoidance, though I'm no therapist)). I'd just stop doing those things, few things are (imo) worth the tradeoff of having more stress from interviews. It's a tradeoff, not a game of "do interviews perfectly and sacrafice everything else"

Seems to me from your questions that your bottle neck is specifically finding the interview process stressful.

I think there's stuff to do about that, and it would potentially help with lots of other tradeoffs (for example, you'd happily interview in more places, get more offers, know what your alternatives are, ..)

wdyt?

TL;DR: The orgs know best if they'd rather hire you or get the amount you'd donate. You can ask them.

I'd apply sometimes, and ask if they prefer me or the next best candidate plus however much I'd donate. They have skin in the game and an incentive to answer honestly. I don't think it's a good idea to try guessing this alone

I wrote more about this here, some orgs also replied (but note this was some time ago)

(If you're asking for yourself and not theoretically - then I'd ask you if you applied to all (or some?) of the positions that you think are really high impact. because if not - then I think once you know which ones would accept you, and once you can ask the hiring managers things like this, then your dillema will become much easier, almost trivial)

The main reason for this decision is that I failed to have (enough) direct impact.

Also, I was working on vague projects (like attempting AI Safety research), almost alone (I'm very social), with unclear progress, during covid, this was bad for my mental health.

Also, a friend invited me to join working with him, I asked if I could do a two week trial period first, everyone said yes, it was really great, and the rest is (last month's) history

Yeah, I think maybe seeing a post like this would have helped me transition earlier too, now that you say so

I might disagree with this. I know, this is controversial, but hear me out (and only then disagree-vote :P )

So,

1. Some jobs are 1000x+ more effective than the "typical" job. Like charities
2. So picking one of the super-impactful ones matters, compared to the rest. Like charities
3. But picking something that is 1x or 3x or 9x doesn't really matter, compared to the 1000x option. (like charities)
4. Sometimes people go for a 9x job, and they sacrifice things like "having fun" or "making money" or "learning" (or something else that is very important to them). This is the main thing I'm against, so if you can avoid this, great. For example, if you're also excited to work on ethereum, and they have a great dev community that mentors you and so on
5. I do think it's important to work on something that you enjoy
   1. So I do think you should have a bar of "do enough good to have a good time", but this is a super subjective bar, and I wouldn't lose track of the ball that is "your motivation" (super under rated btw)
   2. I'll also note that (imo) most (though not all) companies are net positive. So having a bar of "net positive", if it works for you emotionally, won't reduce many options and I think it's great
6. (and I recommend sometimes checking if there's a high impact job that could use your skillset and applying)
   1. (I'm also not against doing high-risk high-reward things, or projects that aren't "recognized" by EA orgs. Such as open source stuff)
7. I do personally think I have a bar of not taking harmful jobs, not ruining coordination, things like that.
8. Oh, and: While you're working on something fun, learning and making money, I do think (in the typical case) you could see yourself as "preparing" for a potential very high impact job you might have in the future, and I think our community would be better off if people would take this path happily and without guilt. Just don't forget to check for the high impact jobs sometimes.

I have many many thoughts about this topic and I could go on forever, so I'll arbitrarily stop here but feel free to ask followup questions or tell me I'm wrong

I quit trying to have direct impact and took a zero-impact tech job instead.

I expected to have a hard time with this transition, but I found a really good fit position and I'm having a lot of fun.

I'm not sure yet where to donate extra money. Probably MIRI/LTFF/OpenPhil/RethinkPriorities.

I also find myself considering using money to try fixing things in Israel. Or maybe to run away first and take care things and people that are close to me. I admit, focusing on taking care of myself for a month was (is) nice, and I do feel like I can make a difference with E2G.

(AMA)

Thank you very much for splitting this up into sections in addition to posting the linkpost itself

Hey, is it a reasonable interpretation that EAIF is much much more interested in growing EA than in supporting existing EAs?

(I'm not saying this is a mistake)

P.S

Here are the "support existing EAs" examples I saw:

• "[funding a] PhD student to attend a one-month program" [$100k tier] - this seems like a very different grant than the other examples, I'm even surprised to see this under EAIF rather than LTFF
• "A shared workspace for the EA community" [$5M tier] - totally supports existing EAs
• "an open-source Swapcard alternative" [$10M tier] - I'm surprised this isn't under CEA

Hey, just saying explicitly that I linked to opinions of other people, not my own.

(and I'm suggesting that you reply there if you have questions for them)