Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AMA: Ben West, former startup founder and EtGer, published by Ben West on November 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Hey everyone! I'm Ben, and I will be doing an AMA for

Effective Giving Spotlight week. Some of my relevant background:

In 2014 I cofounded a company for earning to give (EtG) reasons (largely

inspired by 80k), which was later

successfully acquired.

Since late 2018 I have been doing direct work, currently as Interim Managing Director of CEA.

(With a brief side project of founding a TikTok-related company which was

similarly acquired, albeit for way less money.)

I've had some other EtGish work experience (eight years as a software developer/middle manager, a couple months at Alameda Research) as well

Additionally, I've talked to some people deciding between EtG and direct work because of my

standing offer to talk to such folks, so I might have cached thoughts on some questions.

You might want to ask me about:

Entrepreneurship

Trade-offs between earning to give and "direct work"

Cosmetics and skincare for those who (want to) look masculine

TikTok

Functional programming (particularly Haskell)

Or one of

my less useful projects

Anything else (I might skip some questions)

I will plan to answer questions Thursday, November 9th. Post them as comments on this thread.

See also

Jeff's AMA, which is on a similar topic.

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