I have work experience in HR and Operations. I read a lot, I enjoy taking online courses, and I do some yoga and some rock climbing. I enjoy learning languages, and I think that I tend to have a fairly international/cross-cultural focus or awareness in my life. I was born and raised in a monolingual household in the US, but I've lived most of my adult life outside the US, with about ten years in China, two years in Spain, and less than a year in Brazil.
As far as EA is concerned, I'm fairly cause agnostic/cause neutral. I think that I am a little bit more influenced by virtue ethics and stoicism than the average EA, and I also occasionally find myself thinking about inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in EA. Some parts of the EA community that I've observed in-person seem not very welcoming to outsides, or somewhat gatekept. I tend to care quite a bit about how exclusionary or welcoming communities are.
I was told by a friend in EA that I should brag about how many books I read because it is impressive, but I feel uncomfortable being boastful, so here is my clunky attempt to brag about that.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, opinions are my own, not my employer's.
I'm happy to give advice to people who are job hunting regarding interviews and resumes, and I'm happy to give advice to people who are hiring regarding how to run a hiring round and how to filter/select best fit applicants. I would have no problem running you through a practice interview and then giving you some feedback. I might also be able to recommend books to read if you tell me what kind of book you are looking for.
the suggested role models are all thinkers rather than doers
At least some of the people listed are either doers, or are a sort of combination of thinkers and doers. I'm do view these people mostly as thinkers, but I also have a sort of bias in that I didn't know about Hans Rosling in the 80s or about Paul Farmers work in the 90s. These people have done much more than simply give talks and write blog posts; they have also done things to directly improve the world.
Some of the people on the list
What do you have in mind when you're thinking of those who are not "able to donate"?
I was thinking about people who don't have any income, or who have significant uncertainty/stability in their futures, or who have large financial burdens/commitments.
More broadly, if you want to read more of my thoughts on this topic, I've made a few comments over the years about living in high cost of living areas, about general feelings of financial insecurity/instability, and about not pledging to donate. Those might provide a bit more insight into my throught and perspectives.
this allows them to accumulate moral status and recognition more easily than those of us without such advantages.
This feels very salient to me. I've seen EA job applications ask about how much money I donate, and that feels like evaluating people on outcomes rather than on inputs. I've definitly noticed the status/recognition given to people that are able to donate.
Conversely, I've definitly chosen to not pursue opportunities that advertise low payment; those have felt vaguely similar to the culture of unpaid (or poorly paid) internships in publishing: often only people who have other sources of money or similar safety nets are able to pursue them.
I may benefit from taking an online training bootcamp, is there something specific I should look out for, something in the project bit?
The appropriate advice would depend on what your career goals are.
Most online courses (such as through Coursera, EdX, or other platforms) will involve some level of projects, but these will usually be very small and somewhat artificial projects. I suggest that you search for ways to combine the skills you are learning/developing with real world situations. Maybe your sister runs a bakery and you can use your new CSS and HTML skills to make a little website. Maybe you can use the spreadsheet skills for a class project in your Anthropology 101 in college to display the word frequency of a religious text and compare two different translations. So as you do these things, think of two different ideas: 1) am I learning a useful skill, and 2) how will I be able to describe this in a job interview or in a cover letter or in a resume so that it sounds impressive.
I'm having trouble joining the book club that you host; could you please help me?
I don't think I can help you, because I don't know what sort of a problem or difficulty you are encountering. 😂 This is the link to the Google Doc, which has all of the information: descriptions, links and instructions on how to join, links to lists of books, etc.
where I need experience to get opportunities, but need opportunities to gain experience
This is a very real issue, and it is a bit of a catch-22. The core of the advice is really to start with little steps.
You need to have experience with projects, employers, or volunteer opportunities. These needs to be good enough that you can describe them on a resume or in a cover letter and they sound decently impressive. They also need to give you stories that you can use to answer questions like "what is the most logistically complex event or project you've been involved in" and "a time when you had to solve a difficult problem." Ideally, these experiences will be at least somewhat relevant to the context/industry of the organization you are applying for, such as if you volunteered for a vegan advocacy organization and later you apply to the Good Food Institute.
Basically, you need to be able to (honestly) appear as an impressive candidate. The details of what 'impressive' means will vary in different contexts: an impressive candidate for event management for existential risk organizations will be different than an impressive candidate for a researcher role focused on animal welfare. But there are general commonalities (clear communication, time management, teamwork, etc.) that exist for almost all roles.
There are also some limited opportunities for building a network if you aren't located in New York, San Francisco, London, or some other city with a good EA network. CEA runs some online programs, I run a couple of book clubs, and many EAG and EAGx conferences offer heavy discounts for people who are students, unemployed, travelling, etc. I think that it isn't as good as living in an EA hub, but there are some options that help a bit. I also perceive a big location-focused bias.
There might also be other skills that could be helpful for professional growth:
Finally, I want to argue that a large number of small steps are more realistic than a small number of big steps. Rather than getting some experience, then getting an impressive job, think of it like an incremental process in which you get a little experience, and then you get a low-quality job, and that job allows you to build your experience a little more, which allows you to get a slightly better job, etc. Here is my sloppy attempt at a visualization from MS Paint.
To a certain extent, I think that local/city groups might fit this description. The EA communities in NYC, DC, and Chicago each have their own Slack workspace, and they also do in-person events. For people not in big cities, EA Anywhere's Slack workspace offers a discussion space. None of those are perfect substitutes for the EA Forum, but my vague impression is that each of them is less AI-focused than the EA Forum. There is also an EA Discord, but I haven't interacted with that much so I can't speak to it's style or quality.
As far as events go, there is an online book club in the EA Anywhere's Slack workspace (full disclosure: I organize it, and I think it is great).
Depending on what you are looking for, there is also an Animal Advocacy Forum, although it is far less active than the EA Forum.
A bit of nice discussion/exploration about longtermism over on the AskPhilosophy subreddit. The short summary might be something like 'don't conflate longtermism with caring about future generations.' Since the EA forum seems to be mostly focused on things other than helping people understand philosophy, I thought it might be nice to share some stuff focused on that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1ktiqm8/i_dont_get_the_controversy_with_longtermism
This somewhat related to mainanence and operations and how credit/respect is apportioned, but often the people doing the work are lower level employees who aren't famous or well-known. They aren't necessarily acknowledged at an annual organizational celebration, or in the local media. As an example, we might think that Rob Mather is great for founding/running the Against Malaria Foundation, but we don't know the names of the people who manufactured or delivered those anti-malaria bednets.
But here are some examples of people that I sort of, vaguely [1] consider moral role models:
Generally I don't really have role models. I've seen enough people express good traits and bad traits that I try to focus on specific behaviors/actions rather than on people as a whole. Think of all the people who work in virtuous fields/vocations who are also real assholes.
For example, Jeff Kaufman seems like a great guy from what I've read. But imagine that he has really bad emotional regulation, or he is really rude to strangers, or he isn't considerate to others, or he is a compulsive liar. If any of those things were true, that wouldn't change the fact that his earning to give is admirable. I try to not boil people down to a simple god/bad judgement, and instead look at people as a collection of their actions.