There is some evidence, in fact, that markets for highly skilled workers, such as engineers and other specialized professionals, exhibit systematic periods of boom and bust…1
Earnings tend to fluctuate significantly more in highly skilled professions than in others, rising to high levels for a number of years before plunging and, ultimately, rising again. Why is this the case? Here’s the explanation put forward by Harvard economist George Borjas in his leading textbook on Labor Economics.2
Blog post by Benjamin Todd · Published July 2nd, 2015
If you want to make a difference, should you work in marketing? The short answer: probably not. Although marketing may have positive effects through informing consumers, there’s also arguments that marketing is harmful, so it’s overall effect is unclear.
However, marketing is a valuable, transferable skill. So spending several years in marketing keeps your options open and could open up positions in high-impact organisations.
It’s also well paid, so worth considering for earning to give.
Overall, it’s worth considering as an early career option, especially if you’re stronger on verbal rather than quantitative skills, and don’t want to work in consulting (which is also highly paid and keeps your options open).
Blog post by Robert Wiblin · Published July 2nd, 2015
The short answer to this question is ‘very low’. In total there are 535 seats in Congress and 320 million people living in the USA. At any point then, just 1 in 600,000 people living in the USA are members of Congress.
In a competition this insanely selective, only a small share of the population will have what it takes to seriously pursue a career in national politics. Some people who seem like they could be in with a chance – great undergraduate results, high verbal intelligence, charisma and persuasiveness – come to us looking for advice on their career.
If you were one of these people and actually tried to become a member of Congress, your odds would be much higher than 1 in 600,000 – but how much higher exactly?
It’s not straightforward to find a way to make progress. Nevertheless, we think we have found an approach that can get us in the right ballpark for some kinds of people. The method we will use is called reference class forecasting. In reference class forecasting you find a group that you are a member of and see what share of people in that group succeed.
Who makes it to Congress?
If you want to know how closely you resemble existing members of Congress the paper to start with is ‘Membership of the 114th Congress: A Profile‘, from the Congressional Research Service.
However, we generally do not recommend teaching as the best career path to maximize your social impact: if you’re working in a rich country, the impact you have as a teacher is by improving the lives of people who are almost all going to end up in the richest 15% of the world’s population. Moreover, teaching is an area that is already extremely popular among the socially-motivated, so it’s unlikely that you’ll make as big a difference on the margin within education as you could elsewhere. Further, even the most talented classroom teacher can only impact around 30 students at a time, less than is possible using other approaches.
As with all careers, if you think you could be truly exceptional within this career, but not at others, you should strongly consider it.
Career review by Roman Duda · Last updated July 2015 · First published June 2015
Spending a few years doing marketing in the private sector can teach you highly generalizable skills that can later be used in a wide range of industries and causes. You should consider marketing if you have good social and verbal skills, want a decent work life balance and want to keep your options open across causes.
Blog post by Benjamin Todd · Published June 28th, 2015
I recently came across the following question posted by Paul Buchheit (the founder of Gmail):
Assume that I’m going to get rid of $20,000 and my only concern is the “common good”. Which of these is the best use of the money: give it to the Gates foundation, buy a hybrid car, invest it in a promising startup, invest it in the S&P500, give it to the US government, give it to a school, other?
Many of our users donate money as way to do good with their careers, and I liked this way of posing the question – it’s both broad and concrete. So I spent an hour writing out a rough answer.
I’ll take each option in turn and eliminate the worst ones, then compare a shortlist at the end.
The environment in which we’re making decisions is sufficiently predictable
We have enough experience making similar decisions in similar environments
We’ve had good feedback on past decisions
What does all this mean for career choice? For the big questions like “in which career will I be most successful?” and “in which career can I have the most impact?” these conditions do not hold, so we shouldn’t expect our gut instinct to be reliable. Generally career decisions are new, one-off and have unclear feedback, so it’s difficult for our gut to learn how to handle them.
However, our gut instinct should do a good job at some important inputs into career decisions, such as “do I like these people?”, “can I trust this person?”, “am I excited by this work?”. We may also be able to rely on our gut if its tapping into the experience of others. If you’re experiencing a negative gut reaction to a career decision, it may be due to a problem with one of these factors.
To most people, this question sounds like a joke. I think that’s the wrong reaction. (Full career profile on philosophy PhDs here)
I think research into philosophy (certainly, at least, moral philosophy, and some other areas in political philosophy, epistemology and decision theory), is potentiallyextremelyvaluable. The impact of philosophy on the world seems to me to have been vast. Aristotle, Aquinas and Augustine shaped much of Christian ethics. Locke heavily influenced the American constitution. Peter Singer helped give rise to both the animal welfare movement and to the effective altruism community, and Nick Bostrom has catalyzed concern for existential risks, in particular risks from artificial intelligence. If you include aspects of the Bible (such as the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule), the writings of Budda and the writings of Confucius as philosophy, as I think you should, then most people for most of civilization have had large chunks of their lives shaped by the philosophical views of the time…
Blog post by Roman Duda · Published June 25th, 2015
We just completed an exploratory profile on journalism. To write the profile, we interviewed an NPR correspondent and a writer for the New Yorker, and spent a day reading the best advice we could find on the career.
When it comes to having a social impact, journalism might not be the first career you think of, but we think it’s actually a pretty good option, because you can use it as a platform to promote neglected causes to a big audience. The main downside is its competitiveness, which is exasperated by reductions in the number of positions over the last decade. Spending a couple of years in journalism is also better for career capital than it first looks, because you can use it the build a good network.
A computer science PhD offers the chance to become a leading researcher in a highly important field with potential for transformational research. Especially consider it if you want to enter computer science academia or do high-level research in industry and expect to be among the top 30% of PhD candidates.
A computer science PhD offers the chance to become a leading researcher in a highly important field with potential for transformational research. Especially consider it if you want to enter computer science academia or do high-level research in industry and expect to be among the top 30% of PhD candidates.
Most people qualified to do a computer science PhD should seriously consider doing a PhD focussed on Machine Learning, which we cover in another profile.
An economics PhD is one of the most attractive graduate programs: if you get through, you have a high chance of landing a good research job in academia or policy – promising areas for social impact – and you have back-up options in the corporate sector since the skills you learn are in-demand (unlike many PhD programs). You should especially consider an economics PhD if you want to go into research roles, are good at maths (i.e. quant GRE score above 165) and have a proven interest in economics research.
An economics PhD is one of the most attractive graduate programs: if you get through, you have a high chance of landing an impactful research job in academia or policy. In particular, academic economics is one of the best ways of conducting and promoting global priorities research, one of our priority paths. You have back-up options in the corporate sector since the skills you learn are in-demand (unlike many PhD programs). You should especially consider an economics PhD if you want to go into research roles, are good at math (i.e. quant GRE score above 165) and have a proven interest in economics research.
Blog post by Roman Duda · Published June 16th, 2015
We asked someone with a philosophy undergraduate degree from the UK who was applying to economics PhD’s in the US, for advice on how others with a similar background might be able to get into a US economics PhD program.
Blog post by Ryan Carey · Published June 15th, 2015
A new Effective Altruism handbook has been released, which features some of 80,000 Hours’ ideas about high impact careers.
This handbook is made up of blog pieces and essays that are freely available online, and has been compiled by Ryan Carey, and released with some assistance from the Centre for Effective Altruism.
It has 24 mini-chapters altogether, split into five sections What is Effective Altruism, Charity Evaluation, Career Choice, Cause Selection and Organizations. Its foreword by Will MacAskill and Peter Singer, is new, as are concluding letters by seven effective altruist organizations. A lot of discussions have gone into deciding which writings are the best for describing the main concepts of effective altruism, so that’s another reason to check it out.
The rest of the essays are freely available online, and were compiled by Ryan Carey with the support of the Centre for Effective Altruism.
If you have a PhD in a quantitative subject, or if you’re the type of person who would enjoy a quantitative PhD, you should consider data science as an option. You are particularly likely to be well suited if you want to do research that produces immediate and tangible results, and are able to clearly present quantitative findings to people without technical backgrounds.
If you have a PhD in a quantitative subject (or if you’re the type of person who would enjoy a quantitative PhD), but are not sure you want to go into academia, consider data science. It can provide the intellectual satisfaction of research, but with more immediate, tangible results, and more team work. And you’ll get a great skill set that’s increasingly in-demand in a wide variety of important areas.
Blog post by Roman Duda · Published June 11th, 2015
We’ve released a major update to our career profile on software engineering.
See the updated profile here and the full report on which it’s based here.
Our recommendation in the profile:
Software engineering at large tech-firms is a highly promising option that’s especially easy to test out. If you have good analytical skills (even if you are from a humanities background), you should strongly considering testing it.
Topics explored in the full report include:
How to test out your fit for software engineering.
Using software engineering to pursue high-impact projects on the side.
A comparison of US and UK earnings – we found that average salaries are 40% higher in the US than in the UK, 80% higher in Silicon Valley than in London, and starting salaries for bootcamp graduates are around twice as high in Silicon Valley as in London.
What software engineering is like day to day and the key stages of progression.
Blog post by Benjamin Todd · Published June 10th, 2015
It’s said that we live in an increasingly “winner takes all” economy. The following chart provides a nice illustration.
From “The Rich are Getting Richer” by The Investor Field Guide (click image for link)
It shows that from the mid-90s, the companies with the largest profit margins have seen their profit margins expand dramatically – from about 15% to over 20%.
Those at the bottom have seen their profit margins shrink, and the middle 60% have seen little change. The winners are increasingly taking it all.
Last year, more than $28m was donated to Give Directly, AMF, SCI and Deworm the World – the charities recommended by GiveWell and Giving What We Can.1 In contrast, Giving What We Can (GWWC) spent under $200,000. My claim in this post is that if you donate to these top recommended charities, you’ll have even more impact (at the margin) if you donate to Giving What We Can instead.
GWWC is closely affiliated with 80,000 Hours, so I’m likely to be biased in GWWC’s favour. However, I feel strongly enough that I think it’s worth writing on the topic anyway.
