If you put a substantial amount of time into something, I think it’s worth considering whether there’s an easy way to summarize what you learned or repurpose your work for the EA Forum. 

I find that repurposing existing work is quick to write up because I already know what I want to say. I recently wrote a summary of what I learned applying to policy schools, and I linked to the essays I used to apply. The process of writing this up took me about three hours, and I think the post would have saved me about five hours had I read it before applying. And I’m just one reader! 

I get the sense that there are a lot of Forum readers who don’t vote or comment on posts, but still get value from what they read. Benefits from Forum posts are diffuse, and I think authors can find it difficult to internalize the full social value of their writing. I also expect that the residual value of certain posts (e.g., those with timeless, original, practical advice) may be underrated. I’ve been sending this post (and its previous iteration) to friends for years, and I’m pretty confident that next year it will still be my favorite piece of writing encouraging perseverance in pursuit of impactful work.

I find it handy to be able to send a bunch of people a link, rather than having the same conversation multiple times. For example:

• I’ve sent the “writing about my job” posts I’ve written to a couple hundred jobseekers who’ve reached out about an informational call. I think this helped make the time we spent on the phone much more productive.
   
• I sent an information-dense post I wrote about high-value ways to help loved ones with their finances to a few hundred people in my life. If one person takes action to augment a family member’s finances due to the post, the post will have been worth writing. 
   

Finally, it feels really cool to have a collection of your writing out in the world! EA is a pretty tight-knit professional community, and putting your writing out there can be a great way to build a reputation.^[1] 

1. ^{^}

   I feel unabashedly proud when someone I meet asks “wait, are you the guy from the sportsbetting post?” 

Woah, huge congratulations on getting 80 pledges! That’s a really incredible achievement - I hope you all feel proud :)

I would guess that established uni groups at big schools don’t get 80 pledges per year; you might consider reaching out to GWWC (community@givingwhatwecan.org) to brainstorm how to make the most of this momentum.

I don’t have experience in student group organizing (not starting an EA group at my college is my biggest regret in life), but I’d recommend looking into whether your campus career center is open to co-hosting events and working with students on applying to high-impact roles.

At the liberal arts school I went to, events hosted by the career center tended to be pretty well-attended. Plus, you can lean on the job boards from 80k, Probably Good, and Animal Advocacy Careers to direct students to real world opportunities.

Another idea is to look into whether you can teach a student forum about EA for college credit! It really lowers the bar for students to commit to weekly meetings/readings if they can substitute it for another class.

And if students in your club are ever interested in talking to someone about entry-level operations or grantmaking work, I’m always excited to call!

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Sawyer. I agree that haggling can be zero sum in many (though not all) cases, and I understand the sentiment of your note.

In my personal experience, haggling hasn’t felt particularly adversarial or deceptive. It feels less like the Pawn Stars guy ripping off antiquers, and more like marketing, campaign finance, professional poker, standardized test prep, quant trading, or another type of legal and socially acceptable form of working for a bigger piece of a fixed pie.

I think Robi raises a good point. Despite transaction costs, I would guess that haggling creates societal surplus on net by enabling more trades. In much (maybe most) of the world, haggling for daily goods is common; I’ve been a fly on the wall at outdoor markets in a handful of LMICs, and my impression is that haggling helps customers and vendors send valuable signals about their willingness to buy/sell.

This isn’t exactly getting at what you wrote, but I feel uncomfortable negotiating when my counterparty seems like they need the money. E.g., if a taxi driver in another country quotes a “tourist” price where it’s pretty clear that locals would haggle and I’m (literally) getting taken for a ride, I pay sticker. 

When it comes to contracts with a San Francisco landlord, a big university, or DocuSign, I feel motivated to haggle. Not because I see my counterparty as "the bad guy”, but because haggling is a standard practice following social norms that helps me direct more resources to important projects making the world a better place.

I also got an error when I tried a credit card, but my debit card (Bank of America) went through on the first try.

Fwiw I was able to sign up by using the nine digit alphanumeric code on my German passport. 

Thanks for trying, fingers crossed you're able to join - signing up seems high leverage!

Mathias, I hope you feel proud of what you did at CEAP. I have a lot of respect for the thought and effort you put into this project, and I thought your decisionmaking was well-reasoned throughout. A number of people in the field and at CE have told me they feel the same way.

Running an organization with such a broad remit and weak feedback loops is a challenge. Doing so by yourself with waning morale is an uphill battle. You were in a tough position and I thought you handled it well. And as Jason wrote, you may have had more success developing Dutch, Danish, and British champions than you know.

I’m looking forward to following what you do next :)

Interesting! Thanks for adding this.

Thanks for asking, and I want to caveat again that this is not intended as financial advice. 

Unfortunately I think relatively little of this material would be relevant outside the US. The section on finding fee-for-service financial professionals is probably helpful across borders, but the rest of the post is based on US tax laws.

Thanks for writing this, Elijah. I agree that it’s really difficult to get an “EA job” (it took me five years). I wish this felt more normalized, and that there was better scoped advice on what EA jobseekers should do. I wrote about this last year and included a section on ways to contribute directly to EA projects even without an EA job. I'd also recommend Aaron Gertler's post on recovering from EA job rejection, probably my favorite ever EA Forum post.

On Aaron Bergman's comment about finding a higher paying role, certain tipped positions can be surprisingly lucrative and require very little training. Dealing poker pays $40-60/hour (tips + min wage) in the Seattle area, and I’ve heard that some high stakes baccarat dealing jobs in the greater Seattle area pay $200-400k/year (also tips + min wage) for 40 hour weeks. I imagine bartending jobs at pricey/busy bars would be a similar story, as would waiting tables at expensive restaurants (perhaps an upscale vegetarian/vegan spot).

You may find that substitute teaching and working special education students is more fulfilling than these types of jobs; I think it was a great decision to withdraw your application from a job that may have triggered loneliness-induced depression. You shouldn’t feel compelled to take a job you’ll dislike in order to give more, but hopefully there are small steps you can take to grow your lifetime impact without sacrificing your happiness. Some ideas could be:

• Looking at higher education, certifications, coding bootcamps, training programs or apprenticeships to have a better shot at more lucrative or impactful work.
  • It may be tough to afford the fees or time off work right now. If so, consider investing in yourself by saving up some money you would have donated. In expectation, you’ll be able to help more animals in the long run by doing so.   
     
• Reaching out to Probably Good or 80,000 hours for careers advising. It’s completely OK if this doesn’t lead to a career call, it's still a good idea to apply in expectation.
   
• Talking to friends and family who have jobs or connections to jobs you would be interested in and seeing what they’d recommend.

You might set a goal of making a little progress each month, be that applying to a few jobs, asking for advice from other EAs, or getting closer to a new skill or credential, as an intermediate step to growing the impact you'll be able to have five years from now. If you want someone to spitball with to kick things off, I'm happy to be that person https://calendly.com/sam-anschell/30min

Careers are long, and the impact one can have at the beginning of their career is usually a rounding error compared to what they can do later in their career anyway. I hope you remain ambitious about the difference you can make for animals, and proud of the good you've already done :)