Agreed - this article would have been a lot better if the author defined what they meant by "EA movement".

It broke my reading flow to have to go and look the term up.

Effective altruism. I had no idea that was a thing.

Also, I don't see what's particularly altruistic about working at Deep Mind or OpenAI - they pay pretty well from what I know.

There probably is a genuine shortage of programmers willing to work full time at a socially or environmentally oriented non-profit in the Bay Area.

> they pay pretty well from what I know

The core point of effective altruism is to maximize the positive impact you have on the world. That doesn't really have any correlation how much you're getting paid.

> There probably is a genuine shortage of programmers willing to work full time at a socially or environmentally oriented non-profit in the Bay Area.

Would that be more impactful than working at high paying job and then donation that money somewhere? I doubt these non-profits are constrained by their lack of programmers.

Given the mention of MIRI, I'm pretty sure EA stands for Effective Altruism.

There's the problem. That niche is so tiny that few outside it know their acronym. And it talks to itself so much that the people inside it think people outside it know their acronym.