TLDR: How to tell when it's time to leave the private sector for non-profits?
Background: I'm starting a software job at a big firm, and I'm pretty motivated to reduce x-risk. This job should give me the opportunity to learn/improve generally useful skills such as coding, management, and recruiting.
Based on 80K's articles, I think it's generally reasonable to start in the private sector and later move to non-profits. But, I'm worried that I'm just doing the convenient thing and sticking on my path.
Under what timelines does it make sense for me to leave my job now, in 2 years, in 5 years? I do worry about becoming joining the "cadre of depressed rationalists" in Berkeley; it's not obvious that I can just outwork / outcompete these other people, so what should I do?
Have you considered reaching out to someone like Andrew Critch, or other experts in the X-risk space, to ask?
There are quite a few people in your position (early-career people thinking of diving into X-risk/AI safety), but I don't think there are so many that X-risk professionals are deluged with more questions than they can answer. If you have even a slight track record of demonstrated interest/understanding of these issues, I imagine you could get a phone call set up with one of the people you might eventually want to work for.
Rather than thinking about the choice in the sense of "outworking/outcompeting", it seems better to consider comparative advantage; if you add a skillset that's in short supply, competition won't be so important. I don't know whether management/recruiting is in shorter supply than coding/academic work, or which of those you're more naturally inclined toward, but answering those questions should be a good start.
Thanks for the word of warning -- I'm not sure what anyone's schedule is like, and it's good to know who wouldn't be a good target for an email. But I still think that sending an email to a few different people, and noting that you don't expect a response if they're too busy, is valuable in this scenario.