This post was prompted by the fact that so many EAs I think could be promising have not applied for 80k coaching yet even though they want to and intend to.
This is your reminder to go apply. Yes, right now. Otherwise, there is far too big of a chance that it will end up on your eternal to-do list, and you might even develop an ugh field around it, and that would be terrible because many more people should go talk to 80k.
From my understanding, they can do a lot more than just career advice - like connecting you to relevant people, or opening your mind to entirely new tracks you hadn't considered before.
Go apply here if this is a relevant call-to-action. This post is meant to get this task off your to-do list—so getting it done ASAP is probably a good idea.
I suggest you change the title to say 80K advising rather than consulting, since that's what they refer to it as. I was wondering if 80K launched a new consulting service!
Ah, good point. Done!
I second this! Initially I was of the opinion that it wouldn’t be helpful to me, but the advisor pointed out a few things I was missing which led me to significantly change my plans :)
That's really nice to hear!
Request for mods to just repost this every month (80% kidding)
Agreed (and only 20% kidding.) Having an 80k post pinned seems wonderful.
Thank you for this prompt Devansh! We really look forward to hearing from people :-)
Although I think 80k consulting would be very useful for me right now, I worry that it might be even more useful in the future and that they won't accept me then if I would do it now. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I've done 80k coaching ~3 times. If you think your context has changed enough for it to be useful again, then 80k will probably agree. Giving you a coaching session is pretty low cost relative to the outputs (from their perspective).
Fwiw I didn't find the coaching very useful but the advisors are lovely, I enjoyed our chat, and the time investment is low. Since I last spoke to 80k there has been more of a push on 'being ambitious' so maybe their advice would be more useful for me now? Idk.
At least in my case, they asked me to reach out directly in the future if I wanted further help. I have the impression that they’re trying to help us in the long-term, and not as a one-off favour.
(Would be curious if anybody else has had a different experience!)
Yep, this is my understanding as well!
While we do typically speak to people only once, as we find that we can help most with those initial conversations, it's certainly not a hard rule, and some of the most valuable seeming calls I've had so far have been with people who spoke to 80k a few years ago. I think Caleb was describing a good heuristic - if your circumstances/plans change significantly, meaning that you're facing a different decision to when we first spoke, it's fairly likely to be useful to speak again.
In general, I think that if you think a call would be useful for you right now, it would be a mistake not to apply because of fear of losing your 'shot'.
Thanks for your comment!