Do you think you'll actually be effective at working on a cause area if you're in a miserable environment with destroyed mental health ,where you're liable to be actively sabotaged? 

I'd encourage you to report the behaviour anyway, but if it persists you should not stay in that environment! It sounds like your options are:

a) move away and try your luck in a different location (and risk the new group being toxic as well)

b) Forge your own non-EA path in the area 

c) stop working full-time in the cause area (you could earn-to-give, say, and contribute on the side if you feel like it). 

You don't need to be "in EA" to do good effectively! If your "EA" environment is shit, either change the environment or leave. 

Hi, some thoughts from the community health team.

First, I’m sorry you’ve had this bad experience — we don’t want EA groups to be like this! I do notice that sub-areas within the same community can develop pretty different cultures, and I’m sorry you’ve ended up in an area where the culture is so discouraging.

There are options for professional networking in EA outside your local group if you decide you still want to, for example:

• EA Anywhere online group
• EA Global and EAGx conferences, especially meetups for specific fields
• There may be an online group for your career area

You’ve likely already considered this, but if you leave your field to avoid needing to interact with these people, there’s a question of whether other fields are significantly better. Basically any field will include some people who do shady things — sites like Ask A Manager are full of people behaving badly in professional contexts. But interacting with a shady person in the same professional field is different from needing to work closely with them, and it’s much more possible to choose to work for a team or an organization you generally feel good about. 

You mentioned you don’t feel that comfortable talking to the community health team — in case it’s helpful, you can ask us questions about how we work, or raise things anonymously via this form. (Please leave a burner email or something if you’d like us to get back to you!) You may want to talk to someone else at CEA, even if you don’t want to talk to our team — for example someone on the groups team if you have concerns about a group organizer.

Hi Polkashell,

There are indeed questionable people in EA, as in all communities. EA may be worse in some ways, because of its utilitarian bent, and because many of the best EAs have left the community in the last couple of years.

I think it's common in EA for people to:

• have high hopes in EA, and have them be dashed, when their preferred project is defunded, when a scandal breaks, and so on. 
• burn out, after they give a lot of effort to a project. 

What can make such events more traumatic is if EA has become the source of their livelihood, meaning, friendships, etc., i.e. their whole life. 

I think this risk can be reduced by expecting less from EA, and being less invested in it.

The fact that you're already noticing discomfort with your local group suggests that it might be good to step away from EA, or at least hedge your bets in some way. That does not necessarily mean shying away from a cause area X just because there are some EA assholes in it. There are assholes everywhere, after all. But rather to figure out what kind of work, and what kind of life makes sense for you, rather than just from an EA perspective. Also, to maintain connections and support structures outside of EA.

I hope that helps

Is continued membership of the local group at all necessary for the career? Ultimately if you don't like people, you probably don't want to network with them to have the best possible chance of working alongside them.  I know some EA cause areas are niche, but I think there are generally more people working in them who won't be attending your local group than are, and ultimately developing your technical skill and getting good references from your colleagues is going to matter more.

I don’t feel so comfortable talking to community health at the moment.

Can you say why? That seems like the obvious first step, so it would make it easier to offer a useful alternative if you could share some part of your hesitation. I don't know if it would feel any safer to message a stranger, but feel free to DM me your concerns if you prefer (or you can email me if you don't want them stored on the EA forum). I'm not a support professional, but maybe have enough detachment from but also skin in the EA community to help you figure out next step.

Fwiw I've never meaningfully interacted with the community health team, but everyone I know who has has found the experience extremely sensitively dealt with. You certainly won't be the first person to have had bad experiences with a community manager (and, not to place this on you as a burden, but there's the extra upside that if other people report similar 'minor' concerns as you do that they might add up to someone taking action.) 

I would also echo what others have said about being willing to step away from the community. Early career, if you have reasonable alternatives, I suspect you'll do better personally, and possibly do most good overall if you work for a regular company and build up some skills for a while.