Perhaps the key question is what does research on burnout in general say, and are there things about the EA case that don’t match that?
Also to what extent is burnout specifically a problem, vs pepole from different places bouncing and moving onto different social groups (either wihtin a year or two, or after a long relationship)?
For the former, my guess is that right around now (after having done some original seeing) is the time in Logan’s MO when they typically go see what preexisting research says.
For the latter, anecdata: I’ve had something on the order of twenty conversations with EAs on this topic in the past five years, and those conversations were generally with officer-class EAs rather than enlisted-class EAs (e.g. people who’ve been around for more than five years, or people who have careers in EA and are highish in EA orgs) and I’ve never had someone say that burnout seemed not a problem and I’ve had lots of people say that they themselves struggled with burnout on the level of “wrecked at least a year of my life” and the rest are only one degree away from someone who did, which seems higher than base rate out in genpop.
Social narratives can run away with us, and people do catastrophize, but my personal sense is that it’s a real and prevalent problem.
I know very little about other sorts of charity work, but i heard social workers complaining about burnout a lot.
I tend to assume that encounter harsh reality s hard, and working in unappreciated work that lack resources is hard.
It may be interesting to see what is the baseline burnout level in some fields is, to look both on variation and to how similar or dissimilar EA to other charities is. It may help to understand who big part different elements play in burnout—true values alignment, Heroic Responsibility, encountering discouraging reality, other things (like simply too many working hours).
This makes me think it is more likely that there is some problem specifically with EA that is driving this. Or maybe something wrong with the sorts of people drawn to EA? I’ve burned out several times while following a career that is definitely not embedded in an EA organization. But it seems more likely there is something going on there.
The way i see it, something wrong with people EA attract and some problem with EA are complimentary hypotheses. dysfunctional workplaces tend to filter for people that accept those dysfunctionalities.
Perhaps the key question is what does research on burnout in general say, and are there things about the EA case that don’t match that?
Also to what extent is burnout specifically a problem, vs pepole from different places bouncing and moving onto different social groups (either wihtin a year or two, or after a long relationship)?
For the former, my guess is that right around now (after having done some original seeing) is the time in Logan’s MO when they typically go see what preexisting research says.
For the latter, anecdata: I’ve had something on the order of twenty conversations with EAs on this topic in the past five years, and those conversations were generally with officer-class EAs rather than enlisted-class EAs (e.g. people who’ve been around for more than five years, or people who have careers in EA and are highish in EA orgs) and I’ve never had someone say that burnout seemed not a problem and I’ve had lots of people say that they themselves struggled with burnout on the level of “wrecked at least a year of my life” and the rest are only one degree away from someone who did, which seems higher than base rate out in genpop.
Social narratives can run away with us, and people do catastrophize, but my personal sense is that it’s a real and prevalent problem.
I know very little about other sorts of charity work, but i heard social workers complaining about burnout a lot.
I tend to assume that encounter harsh reality s hard, and working in unappreciated work that lack resources is hard.
It may be interesting to see what is the baseline burnout level in some fields is, to look both on variation and to how similar or dissimilar EA to other charities is. It may help to understand who big part different elements play in burnout—true values alignment, Heroic Responsibility, encountering discouraging reality, other things (like simply too many working hours).
This makes me think it is more likely that there is some problem specifically with EA that is driving this. Or maybe something wrong with the sorts of people drawn to EA? I’ve burned out several times while following a career that is definitely not embedded in an EA organization. But it seems more likely there is something going on there.
The way i see it, something wrong with people EA attract and some problem with EA are complimentary hypotheses. dysfunctional workplaces tend to filter for people that accept those dysfunctionalities.