I am not sure if this is really "effective altruism". When I decided to leave a high paying job to start an education startup in order to pursue my passion to make a change through education, I got similar advice. I was told it would be more "effective" to keep my job and donate the money to education related charities instead. But I realized that as an software engineer, my skills could prove much more impactful, and directly so than the relatively meagre money I could donate. As they say money is cheap. I felt, and I still feel I could amplify my impact by using my skills rather than just throwing money at the problem.

Second, I wanted to be more aware and involved in the issues I wanted to contribute to, which I couldn't do unless I dove in. There are a lot of good organization out there that are making great impact, but there are equal number of "bad" ones that are perhaps having a negative impact or are not aligned to ones values. GiveWell and CharityNavigator can only go so far.