Living in the Bay

In Summer 2022, local organizers wrote a post on living in the Bay as an EA. Some information is outdated, but we find it’s still a useful read.

Learn About Effective Altruism

Effective altruism is a philosophical movement and practical community that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of resources you can use to learn more about it!

  • Read the EA Handbook
  • Join a Virtual Program
  • View this 12 minute TED Talk about Effective Altruism
  • Check out the Effective Altruism Forum, the main hub of communication for EAs around the world.
  • The 80000 Hours Podcast has two 10-minute episode compilations to help listeners find the most relevant episodes for them:
    • Effective Altruism: An Introduction describes what Effective Altruism is, goes over some key disagreements in the field, and covers ways you can adopt tools from EA thinking and apply them to make your biggest contribution to solving the world’s most pressing problems.
    • Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems describes ten pressing problems the world faces that the effective altruist community is currently working to solve, including climate change, nuclear war, factory farming, global pandemics, and artificial intelligence.

Donating

An easy and effective way to make a meaningful difference in the world is by donating. However, different charities can have vastly different impacts for the same amount of money, and it can be hard to tell the difference without prohibitively time consuming research. Giving What We Can has aggregated a list of top charities and expert-managed funds, pulling from organizations like GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, and Giving Green.

You can also choose to take the Giving What We Can Pledge, a non-binding public pledge to give a meaningful portion of your income to effective charites of your choice.

Career Planning

Another way to make an impact in the world is with your career. However, it can be hard to balance impact and personal fit and fulfillment in deciding on a career path. Fortunately, there are a lot of resources to help:

  • 80,000 Hours is an effective altruist organization that provides research and support to help people switch into careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems. They also offer an in-depth career planning guide and 1-on-1 advice.
  • Probably Good provides a high impact career guide independent of 80,000 Hours.
  • Effective Thesis provides ideas and mentorship to university students working on theses of any kind
  • Animal Advocacy Careers provides advising calls and an online course for people looking to work on animal welfare.
  • Magnify Mentoring provides mentorship programs to a global community who are working to make a positive impact through their careers.
  • Successif (formerly EA Pathfinder) offers career advising for professionals with 5+ years of professional experience.

EA Job Boards

These job boards list high impact job opportunities. Though please note that these roles may have a wide range of expected impact given your own moral calculus, your tolerance for uncertainty, and many other factors. You should use your own discretion when considering each opportunity.