I first got interested in Effective Altruism in 2011, before CEA or Anthropic existed. Over the past 13 years, I've been rejected from jobs at Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, DeepMind, and the Forethought Foundation. I work at a core EA org now, so I don't know if my perspective is what you're looking for. But it still might be useful to think about the EA community from a historical perspective.

Back in ye olden days, EA was a philosophy more than a career plan; you could agree with the core concepts--we should care about how efficiently we can convert resources to helping people; we should care about all people equally, even people we will never meet--but there were very few EA orgs/jobs. So many of the super hardcore EAs were just doing normal things in their daily lives, then thinking hard about where to donate relatively small amounts of money. 

This seems great. People got to meet their personal obligations/follow their passions, and then make a difference via donations. Some people took EA principles extremely seriously by deciding to go vegan, massively cutting back on personal consumption to donate more, or totally changing their career to optimize for earning to give. But none of this was necessary to remain a member of good standing in the community. I myself didn't really change my career trajectory until about 10 years after I first heard about EA. None of my EA friends seemed to judge me for this. 

If you also care about people across the world (not just those in your tribe), consider the effectiveness of different charitable programs, and take weird ideas seriously if they're logically sound, then I think you too qualify as a valued member of the EA community, if you want that affiliation. 

To be honest, I am actually excited about people who share these values to be active participants in the normal/real world, instead of all sequestered away in insular EA orgs. Your career path could be: "I do normal things at my normal job, but I vote and donate in ways guided by my principles, and I talk to my social network about problems that I think are really important in the world. I raise the sanity level of my company and social network, and make it easier for the world to coordinate around important issues by signaling that citizens care about this stuff and will support policies that protect the future. I save a life in expectation every year via my donations." That seems pretty great! People who do stuff like that are welcome in the community. 

I think maybe this sort of “normal” trajectory seems disappointing because there are more EA opportunities available now than there used to be. But I think the “normal” route is still the right path for many (most?) people who agree with EA principles.