EA - Writing about your job is (still) great - consider doing it by Lizka

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: Writing about your job is (still) great - consider doing it, published by Lizka on September 9, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Many of us know very little about what people in different roles actually do or how they got there. There's a good chance that you have experience that other Forum users would be interested in; so consider writing about your job! (Especially since Career Conversations Week is starting.)Here are some existing "job profile" posts that you can explore.(This post is somewhat redundant with Aaron's, but I hope it's a useful reminder.)Why write about your jobI can present my experience as evidence for this claim. When I was finishing college, I was pretty clueless about my post-college options and kind of defaulted to graduate school (which was the main thing I knew). I had realized my lack of knowledge was a problem, so I asked friends for advice. Someone told me to go on LinkedIn and check people's backgrounds - and to reach out to people and ask for meetings. I did the former and found it helpful, but it could only do so much; I still didn't understand the day-to-day of what an "analyst" did and whether it would be a good fit. And I was too worried about wasting people's time to reach out for calls (except in my more limited personal network, which was heavily skewed towards academic mathematicians and adjacent crowds). I still had a picture-book understanding of jobs. The thing that really helped was talking to people at conferences and informal events later - asking about their backgrounds, what they liked, etc.The fact that jobs are mysterious to you (especially jobs that are somewhat plausible given your values, strengths, etc.) hampers your career.You probably won't apply to jobs you know little about, won't know how to build relevant skills, might end up in jobs you dislike, etc. And I expect jobs that EA Forum users have are often more likely a good fit for another Forum user than a random job would be (if only because many Forum users share some values, like wanting to use their careers or resources in significant part to have a positive impact on the world), so hearing about other Forum users' careers can be particularly helpful.Some specific ways an "about my job" post can help:Improve someone's longer-term career planYou might write about a job that's a great fit for one of your readers (or that they hadn't realized was very useful), but that they hadn't even considered as an option.You might share that you think certain skills are particularly useful for your type of career, and interested readers can try to test those skills.You can share what you like and dislike about your job, and how much you care about those things, which can inform someone who's not sure if they'd enjoy a certain type of work.Etc.Make someone feel a lot betterWhen someone can't see themselves in the jobs that they're familiar with, they can feel like they will never "fit" a job, or like they'll never have an impact.For instance, before I encountered EA, I was probably on an academic path, but pretty sad about this fact. My skills were much more generalist than those of some of the mathematicians I knew, and I knew few real generalists. I thought that my lack of highly specialized interests/skills (or my generalist quality) was almost entirely a disadvantage (until I worked at Rethink Priorities and talked to people there).Impostor syndrome and fear of failure also grow because we rarely talk about the lower points in our past; "about my job" posts can provide useful and encouraging context (e.g. by showing that "successful" people have felt like they weren't succeeding in the past).Connect with someoneFor instance, a reader could be interested in collaborating with you and might reach out after you post.Or people in your network will ...