[yboris]

Early years of Effective Altruism (EA) was about promoting "earning to give" as it was a straight-forward and simple way for people who are late in their careers to do a tremendous amount of good (by giving to cost-effective charities). But as the movement grew, there are more individuals joining at the beginning of their career and are more flexible with what they can do: enter https://80000hours.org/ (80,000 hours is roughly the amount of hours people will spend during their working life).

There is now a misconception that EA is about "patch fixes" rather than addressing "systemic causes". This is unfortunate, as numerous people within EA are concerned with the far future and broader goals than helping most-in-need individuals immediately. For example, pandemic risk (and decreasing it) has been on the EA radar well before the current pandemic.

One lesson from EA, is that you can't in good faith say "I can't do much good, I'm not working in a non-profit" -- since just about everyone (who is well over the US poverty level) is able to give at least some amounts to charity. And since giving to cost-effective charities can be 1000x the positive impact of average charities, you don't even have to give much to do a lot of good (see https://givewell.org/ for recommendations).

As for people who want systemic change, EA is all in favor of it - connect with others working on the same issues, and focus on effectiveness as you do the best you can with your efforts.