“How good it is to donate and how hard it is to get a job” by Elijah Persson-Gordon

EA Forum Podcast (Curated & popular)

In this post, I hope to inspire other Effective Altruists to focus more on donation and commiserate with those who have been disappointed in their ability to get an altruistic job.

First, I argue that the impact of having a job that helps others is complicated. In this section, I discuss annual donation statistics of people in the Effective Altruism community donate, which I find quite low.

In the rest of the post, I describe my recent job search, my experience substituting at public schools, and my expenses.

Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized

• Doing a job that helps others seems like a good thing to do. Weirdly, it's not as simple as that.
  • While some job vacancies last for years, other fields are very competitive and have many qualified applicants for most position listings.
    • In the latter case, if you take the [...]

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Outline:

(00:42) Having a job that helps others might be overemphasized

(02:07) Donations are an amazing opportunity, and I think they are underemphasized

(03:42) I used to really want an animal welfare-related job. Then I wanted to donate more. Now I am a substitute at a public school

(06:13) I live frugally and donate

(08:06) I have been disappointed in my ability to find a job that would allow me to donate more

(09:52) Its okay

(10:24) Additional reading

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First published:
April 16th, 2024

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/G9ocwYA2LpLqC4vmq/how-good-it-is-to-donate-and-how-hard-it-is-to-get-a-job

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.