Link to original article

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: My EA Failure Story, published by semicycle on July 11, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Content warning: depression, failure. ...If you want to do as much good in expectation as possible, ideally you should be aiming for those best-case, [high risk, high return] outcomes. And probably, you’ll fail — more likely than not.¹ An Engineer's Attempt at a Sales Pitch Do you worry that selection effects are blinding you to the reality that most ambitious EA's have mediocre careers? Worry no more as you hear the depressing story of how I did not become like Sam Bankman-Fried or the Moskovitz's. "If you shoot for the moon..." At some point in early childhood development, well-adjusted children realize that the phrase, "you can do anything you set your mind to," isn't meant to be taken literally. Yes, you should take "personally responsibility" for cleaning your room, but you could not have stopped -- nor are you "personally responsible" for -- the mess caused by the collapse of the Twin Towers.² Poorly-adjusted over-achiever that I was, I decided to bear the entire world's suffering on my shoulders. Somewhere in my teens, I concluded that my path to ameliorate suffering was earning-to-give: I would become a billionaire entrepreneur and give my money away. The only way to fail was to not try hard enough -- reasonable expectations, amirite? "...you land on your head and break your neck" Shockingly, I didn't become a billionaire college dropout like I planned. Nor did I do well enough in undergrad to pursue my MBA, so the backup plan was shot too. However, by working harder than everyone else, I managed to make slightly more money than my engineering peers. In 2013, a few years into my career, I discovered GiveWell. Fortunately, I could now save people's lives even before becoming a billionaire. Unfortunately, every frivolous purchase sentenced someone to death-by-malaria. The upshot was that I found it easy to live below my means, donate 10-20% of my earnings, and save up for the day when I would launch a successful start-up. (If anyone is still reading this, you're probably thinking: this guy needs professional help. More on that later.) I learned the hard way that most people don't want to risk their life's savings on a start-up, and I failed to find a co-founder.³ Undeterred, I struck out on my own. With 13 months of hard work, I built a thriving business had absolutely nothing to show for it. Apparently, I inherited my family's "entrepreneurial spirit," but my phenotype was 100% engineer and 0% salesman (which you guessed from my sales pitch above... or not because you're not reading this...). It took me a surprisingly long time, but eventually I learned that, At this point in the story, I'm on the backup plan of the backup plan of my earning-to-give strategy, but I thought maybe I could climb the ladder as a manager. I loved leading teams and always did right by them. Two years and two "Manager" titles later, I was forced to conclude that either (a) I was incapable of politics or (b) I hated politics too much to try. Regardless, my career had peaked in my 30's, and the path to billionairedom had officially dried up. Failed Attempts at Direct Work Meanwhile EA funds continued to grow, and 80k kept talking about talent constraints and how some donors had more money than opportunities, so I began considering direct work more seriously. However, I don't live in an EA hub like SF or London, and pre-COVID very few EA jobs were remote-friendly. I interviewed with one organization anyway, but they confirmed that I would need to move, which wasn't possible for family reasons. (Did I mention I got married and had kids? They're great!) I tried contributing some bio-security research on my own, but I couldn't get anyone's attention, which in retrospect wasn't surprising. Post-pan...