We want to find the best career opportunities in the world. The problem is, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics lists several thousand career profiles, so we need ways to narrow down careers to find the most promising ones.
One way we narrow down careers is by identifying promising ‘strategies’ for impact. A strategy is a general method for having a big impact that applies to many different jobs.
On this page, we outline the main strategies we’ve identified so far and say which paths seem best within each. We’ve found all of these strategies useful for discovering and categorising the high impact paths we’ve investigated so far, as well as analysing career choices with the people we coach. We sketch our reasoning for each individual strategy below.
As part of our how to choose process, you can use these strategies to get ideas for new options and as a checklist to compare the options you’ve already identified. If you’re considering an option fits with two or three of these strategies, that’s a good sign – don’t follow one to the exclusion of all the others.
Strategies for putting you in a better long-term position
Early in your career, it’s normally more important to focus on setting yourself up to have a big impact in the long-term rather than having an immediate impact (see more on our criteria page). In this section, we outline some strategies for building your long-run potential for impact.
The initial priority is to explore your options, so the first two strategies are about doing that. Then the next priority is to invest in your human capital, so the second two strategies are more focused on that.
1. Do something new and challenging that intrigues you
What do we mean by this strategy?
Do something that (i) is difficult, so that it stretches your abilities,(ii) is different to what you’ve done before and (iii) intrigues you, so that you’re motivated to work on it. Some common examples are living abroad somewhere without English speakers, switching sectors or trying a startup.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
- Trying areas outside of your experience will help you explore your options more quickly, which is the key priority when you don’t know much about the world of careers. In particular, it can help you discover ‘unknown unknowns’ – important considerations you didn’t even realise existed.
- If it’s also challenging and intriguing, then it’s more likely to stretch your abilities, which will help you learn more, while also building skills.
- It’s widely regarded as useful for young people to undergo a period of exploration before they settle into a career.
Which options are best within this strategy?
There are many possibilities and it depends on your situation. Often we just stumble across interesting opportunities that are easy to ignore because they seem a little risky – someone offers you a job somewhere you hadn’t considered working; you get given the option to study abroad for a year; or you come up with an idea for an interesting science project. Don’t dismiss these out of hand!
You can also think through the different career worlds and try to explore the ones you know least about, for instance: academia; finance; industry; the entrepreneurial tech community; the policy world; the nonprofit sector; the arts; and working within government. If you’ve never experienced one of these worlds, consider giving it a go – you could start with something small like shadowing someone or doing an internship. Alternatively, consider working within a cause you know very little about.
One potential downside of this strategy is that if you do something completely random it can cut down your opportunities elsewhere. So, don’t act on this strategy to the complete exclusion of the others. As always, it’s also best to start small then scale up your efforts as you learn more. If you’re unsure about switching sector, first speak to people in the career, then volunteer or intern, and only then switch jobs.
2. Learn more about a ‘high-variance’ career
What do we mean by this strategy?
Some career paths have extremely skewed outcomes. For instance, many people drop out of investment banking in the first couple of years, whereas others go on to earn tens of millions of dollars. Sometimes it’s possible to learn more about your how hard it would be for you to succeed in one of these careers by trying them out – perhaps first by doing something small like an internship, and then later working in them for a year or two. Since the potential outcomes are so skewed, this provides valuable information.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
- The value of testing out a path has often been an important consideration among the people we’ve coached.
- We’ve found several career types with skewed outcomes that are possible learn much more about in just a couple of years, providing high value of information.
Which options are best within this strategy?
This strategy is best when long-term outcomes are very skewed, but it’s possible to learn about your prospects relatively quickly and cheaply.
Of the paths we’ve investigated so far, the most high-variance are:
- Valuable academic research
- Tech entrepreneurship
- Founding effective global poverty nonprofits
- Journalism
- Front office finance
- Trading in quantitative hedge funds
- High-end law
Those that seem the quickest and cheapest to test are:
- Front office finance
- Trading in quantitative hedge funds
3. Do something you can excel in
What do we mean by this strategy?
If you’ve discovered an activity in which you have a reasonable chance of being world-class if you work hard at it, consider doing it.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
In our experience, we’ve found that being extremely good at something is often the best way to gain career capital, even if the area doesn’t immediately seem high-impact, because (i) it’s impressive, (ii) gives you access to other influential people, and (iii) means you’re developing world class skills. Being really good at something can also be a way to make a big difference, because in many fields the top performers produce most of the value.
For more reasons, see what we’ve written about the advantages of personal fit.
Which options are best within this strategy?
This depends entirely on the individual. See our ideas on how to find the options with the best personal fit on our personal fit page.
4. Build valuable skills
What do we mean by this strategy?
Find a skill-set that’s in demand and transferable, and spend several years developing expertise in that skill.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
At the start of your career, it’s likely you can significantly boost your abilities to make a difference over the rest of your career by investing in building skills. We think this is common-sense, but it has also been supported by our investigations to date. For instance, we’ve found many examples of people who have been able to boost their income 20-100% within six months by learning to program.
In particular, focus on skills that are (i) in-demand and (ii) transferable. If the skills are in-demand, then you’re likely to have decent employment prospects, and when you’re more established, you’ll be able to direct these skills towards supporting good causes. If the skills are also transferable, then they keep your options open, which is important because it’s hard to predict where the best opportunities will be in the future.
Which options are best within this strategy?
So far, we’ve identified the following skill-sets that seem relatively in demand and transferable:
- Statistics
- Machine learning
- Programming
- ‘Founder skills’ i.e. the ability to autonomously launch a new project.
Other useful, transferable skills include:
- Sales
- Communication
- Management
- Networking
- Personal productivity i.e. the ability to manage your time and motivate yourself.
You learn skills most quickly when you have good feedback, so you can measure your performance. On the job training and supporting, growth minded atmosphere are also important. Of the career paths we’ve investigated so far some that seem particularly good for skill-building include:
- Tech entrepreneurship
- Software engineering
- Trading in quantitative hedge funds
- Economics PhD
- Work in marketing
- Consulting
See all our articles on skills.
This concludes the section on strategies for building your long-run potential.
Strategies for immediate impact
In the last section, we considered strategies for exploring your options and investing in yourself. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to move your focus towards using your skills and knowledge to make a difference. In this section, we consider four strategies for doing that.
1. Take a job at, or found, an effective organisation that’s a good fit for you
What do we mean by this strategy?
There are many nonprofit and for-profit organisations that have a large impact, which are short of specific types of human capital. If you’re a good fit for a high-impact organisation or think you’re in a good position to found one, that’s an option worth considering. By high-impact organisations we mean those that are well-run and work on an effective cause. For more, see here.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
Taking a job at or founding an organisation with a social purpose is probably the most popular way to have an immediate impact with your career. We think there’s a lot of truth in this view. There are many organisations that achieve great things which say they are constrained by an unusual type of human capital. For instance, GiveWell are constrained by people who are able to carry out their research. If you can provide this human capital, then you may have the opportunity to have an outsized impact.
However, it’s important to note some limitations. First, many organisations with a social purpose don’t have much social impact. So, it’s important to focus on working at effective organisations rather than just those with an explicitly social purpose. Second, the organisation may not be heavily constrained by the type of human capital you can offer. That’s why it’s important to focus on organisations where you’re a good fit.
- Taking a job at an organisation with a social purpose is seen as a common-sense way to make a difference.
We think founding organisations – entrepreneurship – is likely to offer even more scope for impact, though with higher risk. That’s because:
- People who are generally regarded as influential or high-impact have often founded effective organisations. For instance, Elon Musk, the founder of Solar City, Tesla and SpaceX. Within the nonprofit sector, we think founders of SCI and Against Malaria Foundation have had a big impact.
- Setting up new organisations involves innovation, which is a public good), so it’s difficult to capture the gains for yourself. This means people are likely underincentivised to build new organisations (it’s a market failure).
- When setting up a new organisation, the chance of failing is high, so people are under-incentivised to pursue it in order to gain personal status.
Which options are best within this strategy?
We haven’t yet formally reviewed any organisations, though we have written about several, and of those we think that working at GiveWell is a particularly attractive option. See all our articles on organisations.
If you’re considering pursuing this strategy, ask yourself:
- Is the organization likely to be particularly effective?
- Does the organization provide excellent training?/Will founding this organisation provide good learning opportunities?
- Does the organisation have a special need for someone with your skills?
- Are your sure that you want to work within this sector in the long-term?
If interested in entrepreneurship, see our profiles on tech entrepreneurship and founding effective global poverty focused nonprofits.
2. If you’re a good fit, do research in a high-potential field
What do we mean by this strategy?
Some people are especially good at and interested in research – attempting to create new knowledge. If this is you, and have you have the opportunity to work in a field that seems particularly important, tractable and neglected, then this could be a way to have a large impact.
Most often, this strategy is carried out within academia, though it could also be in business, government, think tanks, or nonprofit research institutes.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
Doing research is commonly regarded as a way to make a big difference, and we think this is broadly right: there are many areas of research with great humanitarian importance, and some researchers are many times more productive than others.1 This suggests that someone with high-potential as a researcher may be able to have an outsized impact. Some additional evidence includes:
- Many of the most apparently high impact people in history were researchers. such as Norman Borlaug and those in this list.
- New knowledge is a a public good), so it’s difficult to capture the gains for yourself. This means people are likely underincentivised to build do research (it’s a market failure).
- Since the chances of success are low, people are also under-incentivised to pursue it in order to gain personal status (though it’s unclear how much weight to put on this).
However, we think there’s an important qualification to be made to the common sense view. We think it’s important to focus on particularly ‘high-potential areas’. That’s because although every field of research has something to contribute and it’s difficult to predict where the next crucial discoveries will be made, some areas seem to offer significantly more potential for impact than others.
- Doing research seems to be regarded as a common-sense way to have a big impact.
Which options are best within this strategy?
Early career:
We think it’s important to keep your options open, since we’ll have better information about which areas are most promising in the future. This favors entering disciplines that develop strong, transferable skill-sets that are in demand, such as statistics, programming and machine learning. This suggests starting your career within applied maths, physics, economics or computer science if those subjects are a good fit.
It’s important to bear in mind the job prospects. Fields vary dramatically in both the difficulty of getting an academic job post-PhD, and in the difficulty of finding jobs outside of academia. Within philosophy, for example, there are more new PhDs than academic jobs, and a philosophy PhD doesn’t naturally build skills relevant for other sorts of career. This makes it hard to become an academic within philosophy even if you have a PhD from a very good program. In contrast, within economics the number of academic jobs matches the number of applications more closely, and economics PhDs are well-regarded within policy and business.
Another important consideration is the extent to which one can have an impact outside of academia. Again, economics PhDs are well-regarded within policy and business, to a much greater degree than philosophy PhDs are. This is a point in favor of applied maths, economics, certain types of psychology and computer science.
After you’ve done your PhD, you can start to focus more on your immediate impact:
Consider entering fields that will allow you to contribute to high-potential causes. These are fields that seem particularly important, tractable and neglected, thus hold more potential for impact than others.
Within a field, how can you pick the best research question? We’ve listed some ideas for heuristics, and asked this question to four senior biomedical researchers (upcoming).
See all our articles on research. So far, we have identified studying economics as a promising path.
Is this strategy for you?
We think those who are a good fit for research have:
- Particularly high intelligence.
- High levels of grit and self-motivation, to persist for years in the face of a high chance of failure.
- Social skills to build collaborations and secure funding.
- Deep intrinsic interest in the relevant subject matter.
3. Earn to give
What do we mean by this strategy?
Some people have skills that are better suited to earning money than the other strategies. These people can take a higher earning career and donate the money to effective organisations.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
- Some people are unusually well-suited to earning money. They can take a high-earning job and donate enough to pay for several people to replace them in the nonprofit sector. Alternatively, earning to give is a way for anyone to make a difference, even if they don’t want to change which industry they work within.
- This money wouldn’t have been donated otherwise, since people in high-earning careers don’t donate much of their income to charity.2
- This strategy is flexible: money can be readily reallocated to whichever organisation is most in need of funding at the time.
- There’s also solid research into which nonprofits are most effective (for instance, as provided by GiveWell, which you can take advantage of.
- Some wealthy philanthropists have had a huge impact in the past, and it may be possible to replicate their success by pursuing careers in business. Cases of philanthropists who deliberately aimed to make money in order to donate it are rarer, but do exist. For instance, Britain’s largest philanthropist, Chris Hohn, set up a hedge fund with the intention of donating much of the earnings.
Since this path is more unusual, we’ve carried out extensive research into its pros and cons, and have published a paper on the topic. You can see a summary of our findings on our earning to give page.
Which options are best within this strategy?
Of the paths we’ve investigated so far, those that we’ve found to be highest earning (though also often risky and extremely competitive) are, in order:
- Tech entrepreneurship
- Trading in quantitative hedge funds
- Front office finance
- Consulting
- High-end law
- Medicine
Taking into account the level of competition, it’s also worth considering the following options:
- Software engineering
- Marketing
In practice, you shouldn’t only consider the earnings of different paths as they stand today. You should also consider:
- What’s the value of the direct impact of the work? Might you cause harm?
- Which option will provide the best career capital?
- Will you be able to go through with making your donations, or will the culture cause you to give up?
Don’t forget, you may be able to have more impact inspiring others to donate than donating yourself. That suggests it may be better to do something you enjoy where you’ll get along with your colleagues than simply earning the most money.
Is this strategy for you?
Earning to give seems best when:
- You have a strong comparative advantage in a high-earning job.
- You’re particularly concerned to keep your options open about which cause to support.
- You’re at the start of your career and want to build career capital (because high-earning jobs often build good career capital).
- You think you can go through with donating a large percentage of your income, even if your colleagues don’t.
4. Take a job that enables you to advocate for high priority causes
What do we mean by this strategy?
By this strategy, we mean taking a job that gives you the ability to promote and unite people behind important ideas. These jobs often offer a combination of:
- A public platform that can be used to reach a large number of people e.g. a journalist.
- An influential network e.g. a lobbyist.
- Influence over a large organisation e.g. the director of a foundation.
- Credibility so that other people will listen to you e.g. an academic.
However, having one of these positions doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have a large impact. You also need to use the position to promote important, neglected ideas that can have a large impact if they spread.
What’s our evidence this strategy is promising?
Promoting important ideas is commonly regarded as a way to make a big difference, and many of those who are widely regarded as the most significant figures in history (e.g. as compiled by TIME) are political or cultural leaders, who were responsible for shaping the space of ideas. We think this is broadly right, and note some additional reasons in favor:
- This strategy is flexible: you can use your position to promote whichever causes are most effective at the time.
- Although someone else would have the position if you don’t take it, if you’re more motivated by social impact than average, it seems likely that you’ll better use the position to promote high-impact ideas. This is particularly true because there’s no market incentive to advocate effectively.
- We’ve identified other studies of high-impact people who were advocates e.g. Viktor Zhadanov.
- In our experience, it seems you can often achieve more by mobilising others than just acting yourself. See more here.
Which options are best within this strategy?
Of the paths we’ve investigated so far, those that we’ve found to provide the best advocacy potential are:
- Party politics (high risk)
- Journalism (high risk)
- Valuable academic research
- Foundation program officer
- Program manager in international organisations
- Policy-oriented civil service
Note that working at a nonprofit focused on campaigning would fall under the first strategy.
If considering this path, some important questions to ask yourself are:
- How much career capital will I get out of this path, in case my advocacy efforts don’t pay off?
- What causes do I intend to promote that are neglected?
See all our articles on advocacy here.
What other strategies are there, and which are best?
We don’t think the above is an exhaustive list of the best strategies for making a difference with your career. We expect the list to grow and change over time. In particular, we would like to do more historical studies of high impact people and try to better understand what strategies they used. We’re also very unsure which strategies are most promising for different people, and would like to learn more by doing in-depth studies of individual career paths.
Of the strategies above, the first four strategies for immediate impact are very similar to the ‘five types of career’ (earning to give, influencer, improver, innovator and researcher) which we introduced right at the start of 80,000 Hours in 2011, so we feel relatively confident we’ll stick with them. The four strategies for building your long-run potential for impact, however, are newer, so more likely to change.
Another strategy that we’ve heard discussed is the idea of working in influential areas where you’re more focused on social impact than your colleagues, with the hope of spotting neglected opportunities to have a social impact. For instance, if a group of scientists were developing a new technology without much concern for the risk, there could be good opportunities for a socially motivated person to join the group and look out for cheap ways to reduce the risk that aren’t going to be taken otherwise.
We’ve also discussed the idea of taking an unglamorous role near a high-impact person with the idea of facilitating and amplifying their impact.
So far, however, we haven’t come across any concrete, widely applicable career paths that resemble either of these two strategies and are sufficiently distinct from advocacy or working at an organisation with good fit, so we haven’t included them.
Notes and References
