The Impact Case for Taking a Break from Your Non-EA Job

By SarahPomeranz, Jona, Sanjana Kashyap @ 2023-10-04T07:47 (+79)

Epistemic status: Speculative opinion piece mostly based on anecdotal evidence from running workplace and professional groups (especially the EA Consulting Network) and hiring. We might be overestimating the value of leaves based on our small sample size, but thought it would be useful to share the idea, some sample case studies, and considerations on when not to take a leave of absence. 

Executive Summary

More professionals should consider taking a leave of absence - a paid or unpaid break from their day job. Leaves of absence provide space to reflect on life, recharge, explore EA, and evaluate high-impact career opportunities in a low-risk and intentional way. We know a few people who’ve found these breaks to be useful in their careers and think they could be useful for more people in similar situations. 

Call to action

1. Consider taking a leave of absence yourself and take one if it’s the right fit for you
2. Share this post with someone who should consider taking a leave of absence

An impact-motivated person who spends time in San Francisco to upskill on AI, connect with the AI community and enjoy the city, courtesy of DALL-E 2. 

The problem - it’s hard to consider switching while you are working

Working in a job such as consulting, a tech start-up, or a policy role is excellent for gaining career capital and building aptitudes.

It could be the case that you should stick with that job for the long-term - perhaps you have the opportunity to influence policy or you have a lucrative path for earning-to-give. But it’s likely that at some point it will be your best option to switch to higher impact work.

However, there are key barriers that make it hard to switch careers while working:

1. Barriers to considering the questions of “should I switch?” and “what should I switch to?”
   1. Not having the headspace, time, or support to consider your long-term career or cause prioritisation 
2. Barriers to making the best decision
   1. Status quo bias towards the option you’re most familiar with as you have much more information on your current role than any other options. You may not even know what other options there might be, and may not be realising how valuable your skills could be in other roles
   2. Cultural influences from your colleague’s values and preferences (e.g. valuing job security, job legibility or prestige more and impact less)
3. Barriers to making a switch
   1. Not having time to upskill in new areas, build your network or apply for jobs (especially EA jobs, which often involve work tests and trials) while you’re working full-time
   2. Personal and financial risk of quitting without a new role secured 

One solution - take a leave of absence

What is a leave of absence?

A leave of absence is any opportunity that frees up significant time from your day job like unpaid vacation, an educational leave, a secondment, an externship, a sabbatical etc.

Leaves are a great tool for overcoming the barriers to switching into higher impact work. They take you out of your day-to-day environment and can give you both the time and headspace to consider your career, make decisions, and switch if you want to. 

Many organisations offer paid or unpaid leaves of absence (e.g. Bain’s social impact “externships”, PwC’s unpaid leave, the UK civil service career breaks). But you may not have even realised it was an option for you.

If your organisation doesn’t have a formal leave policy, you might still want to have a conversation with your employer to see whether they’d be willing to give you several months off. If you’re considering quitting anyway, they might be open to letting you take some time away if the alternative would be you resigning immediately.

Some leaves of absence are unpaid and therefore require some savings or alternative income sources. If the financial cost is too high for you, you may be able to mitigate this at least partly (e.g. taking a short-term role, working part-time, or applying for a grant such as from the EA Infrastructure Fund or the Open Philanthropy career transitions grants)

Why take a leave of absence?

Taking leave is lower risk than quitting outright, as you still have a job to come back to afterwards, and it can be relatively easy to make happen both administratively and psychologically. 

If you think that there’s a chance that you could be doing something 10x more high impact with your career, it seems particularly valuable to spend a few months exploring if that’s the case.

On top of leaves being good for your career and impact, you might find it’s fun and healthy for your well-being too.

What to do on your leave of absence?

Here are some concrete things you could consider doing during your leave of absence:

• Explore which causes you believe to be most important and how you can contribute significantly 
  • Take an EA Intro class
  • Read books or articles on the world's most pressing problems
  • Watch talks from previous EA conferences
  • Listen to the 80,000 hours podcast
  • Read and engage with the EA Forum 
  • See if there is an relevant EA workplace or professional group
• Expand your network 
  • Attend an EAGlobal or EAGx conference or other EA events in your region
  • Spend some time in an EA Hub city (such as London or the Bay Area)
  • Sign up for career advising (e.g. 80,000 hours, Probably Good, EA Consultants Network, SuccessIf)
  • Schedule 1-1 coffee chats with domain experts
  • Join EA online events
• Upskill in a new subject or domain
  • Take a course on a cause area (e.g. BlueDot Impact’s courses)
  • Learn an in-demand skill (e.g. ML, Policy Research etc.)
• Figure out your financial needs and assess your donation strategy
  • Determine how much salary you need to live a happy life while also considering other factors like the impact of donations
  • Optimise your potential investments and donations
• Run small experiments to test your fit or apply directly for your dream job
  • Take on a short-term contract role or volunteer for a high impact project  (e.g, check out the EA opportunity board or join a board of an EA organisation) 
  • Start a new project (potentially via Charity Entrepreneurship or funded by the EA Infrastructure Fund)
  • Apply for high impact roles and use interviews and work trials as a way of learning more about an organisation and testing your fit with that type of work

Reasons not to take a leave of absence

There are some circumstances when this might not be the best option for you.

It might be better to stay in your current role:

• If your time has unusually high opportunity costs and is likely best spent on what you are currently doing
  • We think the main way this post could cause accidental harm is by motivating people to take a leave of absence when they are in fact already in an excellent position.
• If you cannot afford it (even after taking the mitigating measures noted above)
  • Not everyone is in the extremely privileged financial position to be able to even think about a leave of absence. Many leaves of absence are unpaid and therefore require some savings or alternative income sources. 
• For other reasons, e.g., if you are currently in a psychologically unstable situation and need more consistency 

It might be better to pivot faster:

• If you really don’t like your current job
  • If you definitely don’t want to go back to your current role, it may make sense to just quit outright.
• If you’re close to landing a great role
  • If you think you can make a bigger leap without having to go via a half-way step then don’t hold yourself back.
• If your employer doesn’t offer this option
  • In this case, you may want to use some of your paid time off as a mini-leave or perhaps quitting outright may make more sense.

Case studies 

We know a number of people who’ve found this useful (including ourselves!)

• Federico Speziali took a couple of months leave from his job at a for-profit start-up to go through the Charity Entrepreneurship incubation program. At the end of the program, he quit his for-profit job and founded the charity High Impact Professionals.
• Jona Glade (one of the authors of this post) was working at BCG as a consultant prior to taking an educational leave to get his PhD. Jona had intended to use the leave to upskill on AI but ultimately decided to deprioritize his PhD altogether. He instead spent his free time exploring career paths and decided to found cFactual, an EA strategy consultancy and think tank, which he believes to be the most impactful (in expectation) and fun career option for him. Had Jona not taken a leave, it seems likely that his journey would have been postponed by 6 months. 
• Patrick Gruban intended to wait until he could sell his company before making a career change but eventually decided to scale back his current work in order to explore options in EA-aligned organisations. Patrick spent 5 months taking on consulting projects, applying for jobs, going to EA global conferences and networking. In the end, he was offered the position of co-director EA Germany. Interestingly, he never sold the company but rather kept it running with minimal personal involvement.
• Sarah Pomeranz (one of the authors of this post) was happily working at Accenture Strategy when the opportunity arose to apply for Managing Director of the EA Consulting Network. Once offered the role, Sarah took a 12-month leave of absence from Accenture to assess her personal fit with the role, determine the impact of the project, and use the time to expand her own professional network. Working in the role gave her the confidence to know that there are nonprofit jobs that can be fast-paced and exciting all while having a much greater impact than her work in consulting. At the end of the leave, Sarah chose not to return to Accenture and has been running the EA Consulting Network full-time since.  
• Simon Asbach took an educational leave from BCG to pursue a PhD in decision-making within the field of human-AI interaction. During his leave, and while working towards his PhD, Simon allocated a considerable amount of time to working in the EA space and exploring high-impact career opportunities. A few highlights include managing the global EA workplace group at BCG and serving as a strategy fellow at cFactual. As of September 2023, he is discussing job opportunities with 5 EA-aligned organisations. 
• Toby Jolly took a year-long leave from the Civil Service to run Impactful Government Careers and in the end decided not to return to the UK Government. He then spent several months unemployed and used that time to organise some events in areas he was interested in and conduct a full career review, which eventually led him to accept his current role as Events Director at Longview Philanthropy. He is very glad he took time off.

We’re excited to hear about other folks who have taken a leave of absence and the value it did (or did not) provide! Leave a comment below and we will add more examples as we learn about them. 

What to do next?

If this post resonates with you, we strongly encourage you to think about whether to take a leave of absence. It may be much easier, more common and more fun than you think and could be the difference of 10x your impact!

1. Look into what leave options your organisation offers
   1. Find information internally on formal policies or schemes (e.g. on your employee intranet)
   2. Scope out the opportunity for an informal option by talking to current or former colleagues
   3. Talk to an EA professional group (e.g. EA Consultants Network) to find out more about what others have done in a similar position to you
2. Make a call about whether this is the right option for you
   1. Brainstorm what you might do on your leave and consider how it might advance your long-term career
   2. Sign up for career advising (e.g. 80,000 hours, Probably Good, EA Consultants Network, SuccessIf) to talk this through with someone if needed
   3. Write up a document on whether to take a leave and share it with people you trust for their input
3. Apply to make the leave happen!

If this post doesn’t apply to you, then consider recommending the idea to someone else, or even share the post with them - perhaps some of your colleagues or potential hires.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to everyone who shared their story and to @Habiba Banu  for reviewing this post! Also thanks to the Forum team for nudging us to finally prioritise this write-up to contribute to the Career Conversations Week, a couple of weeks later. Finally, we want to express our gratitude to everyone who thinks carefully about their career and supports others in doing so!