# Learn more:https://80000hours.org/ai-sitemap/ # 80,000 Hours > Research, interviews and case studies on social impact career choice. --- ## AI guide - [How not to lose your job to AI](https://80000hours.org/agi/guide/skills-ai-makes-valuable/): About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. And they’re right to be concerned: AI can... - [The case for AGI by 2030](https://80000hours.org/agi/guide/when-will-agi-arrive/) - [Why AGI could be here soon and what you can do about it: a primer](https://80000hours.org/agi/guide/summary/): I’m writing a new guide to careers to help artificial general intelligence (AGI) go well. Here’s a summary of the... --- ## Career guide pages - [Career Guide (audio version)](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/audio/) - [Summary: How to find a fulfilling career that does good](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/summary/): Just the bottom lines from our career guide. TL;DR: To have a fulfilling career, get good at something and then use it to tackle pressing global problems. - [The end: A cheery final note - imagining your deathbed](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/end/): We summarise our entire career guide in one minute. - [Part 9: All the evidence-based advice we found on how to be more successful in any job](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/): Much advice on how to be successful is wrong, or useless cliches. Here we cover the best advice we've found in the last 10 years that's backed by evidence. - [Part 12: One of the most powerful ways to improve your career -- join a community.](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/community/): Learn about joining a community can help you succeed and have a greater impact. - [Part 3: No matter your job, here’s 3 evidence-based ways anyone can have a real impact](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/making-a-difference/): Three ways to make a big positive impact without changing jobs: 1. Give 10% to effective charities. 2. Use your political influence. 3. Be a multiplier. - [Part 5: The world’s biggest problems and why they’re not what first comes to mind](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/world-problems/): What are the biggest problems and issues in the world that are the most important to solve? Here's what we learned after 10 years of research. - [Why should I read this guide?](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/introduction/): You’ll spend about 80,000 hours working in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. How to spend that time is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. - [Part 11: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-get-a-job/): A step-by-step guide to how to get a job, based on all the best advice we could find and what we've learned coaching thousands of people. - [Part 2: Can one person make a difference? What the evidence says.](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/can-one-person-make-a-difference/): Many common ways to do good don't make as much difference as you first think. But it's possible to have a huge impact by being a little unconventional. - [Part 4: Want to do good? Here's how to choose an area to focus on.](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/): To have the biggest impact, you'll want to work on the world's most pressing problems. This sounds obvious, but people often fail to put it into practice. - [Part 6: Which jobs help people the most?](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/): You don’t need to be a doctor or a charity worker to help people. Drawing on over ten years of research, we outline five types of jobs that help others. - [Part 7: Which jobs put you in the best long-term position?](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-capital/): One mistake many people make is to take jobs that don’t put them in a better long-term position. Why does this happen and how can you avoid it? - [Part 10: How to make your career plan](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/): Detailed long-term career plans can be harmful, but it's still good to have some idea where you're going. Here's how to write out your plan. - [Part 8: How to find the right career for you](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/personal-fit/): Career aptitude tests and gap years don't help you find the right career. Here's a step-by-step process to work out the career that suits you best. - [Part 1: We reviewed over 60 studies about what makes for a dream job. Here's what we found.](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/): We reviewed over 60 studies. We found a dream job isn't highly paid or easy, and need not involve your "passion". Rather, focus on 6 key ingredients. --- ## Problem profiles - [Using AI to enhance societal decision making](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ai-enhanced-decision-making/) - [Risks from power-seeking AI systems](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/risks-from-power-seeking-ai/): The future of AI is difficult to predict. But while AI systems could have substantial positive effects, there's a growing consensus about the dangers of AI. - [Catastrophic AI misuse](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/catastrophic-ai-misuse/) - [AI-enabled power grabs](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ai-enabled-power-grabs/) - [Gradual disempowerment](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/gradual-disempowerment/): Why might gradual disempowerment be an especially pressing problem? Advancing technology has historically benefited humanity. The invention of fire, air... - [Moral status of digital minds](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/moral-status-digital-minds/): We don't know how to assess whether future AI systems will have moral status. Here's why that could be a big problem. - [Factory farming](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/): Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms. Most experience extreme levels of suffering. - [Stable totalitarianism](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/risks-of-stable-totalitarianism/): Why might the risk of stable totalitarianism be an especially pressing problem? Totalitarian regimes killed over 100 million people in... - [Nuclear weapons](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/nuclear-security/): It’s very plausible that there will be a nuclear war this century. As a result, nuclear weapons remain an extremely pressing problem. - [Great power conflict](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/great-power-conflict/): Another great power conflict could cause unprecedented destruction. But there are ways to reduce the risks. - [Immigration restrictions](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/immigration-restrictions/) - [Preventing the spread of false ideas on social media](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-the-spread-of-false-ideas-on-social-media/): Why might the spread of false ideas on social media be a pressing problem? It seems plausible that political discourse... - [Wild animal suffering](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/wild-animal-welfare/): It's easy to imagine that wild animals live harmoniously with one another in a natural 'balance' — but advocates for wild animal welfare argue that this attitude ignores the huge amounts of suffering present in nature. - [Whole brain emulation](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/whole-brain-emulation/): Why might whole brain emulation be a pressing issue? Whole brain emulation is a strategy for creating a kind of... - [Promoting positive values](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-positive-values/): Why might it be high impact to focus on broadly spreading positive values? Over human history, there have been many... - [Risks from malevolent actors](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/risks-from-malevolent-actors/): Why might risks from malevolent actors be an especially pressing problem? An essay by David Althaus and Tobias Baumann argues... - [‘S-risks’](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/s-risks/): Why might s-risks be an especially pressing problem? We’re concerned about impacts on future generations, such as from existential threats... - [Safeguarding liberal democracy](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/liberal-democracy/): Why might safeguarding liberal democracy be a pressing issue? Liberal democracies seem more conducive to intellectual progress and economic growth... - [Civilisation resilience](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/civilisation-resilience/): Why might civilisation resilience be an especially pressing issue? If a catastrophe happens, we might be able to take action... - [Risks from atomically precise manufacturing](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/atomically-precise-manufacturing/): Both the risks and benefits of advances in atomically precise manufacturing could be significant. Shaping the trajectory of this technology is highly neglected. - [More neglected areas in mental health](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/neglected-mental-health/) - [High-leverage ways to speed up economic growth](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/high-leverage-economic-growth/): Why might economic growth be a pressing issue? Speeding up economic growth doesn’t seem as useful as more targeted ways... - [Science policy and infrastructure](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/science-policy-and-infrastructure/): Why might science policy and infrastructure be a pressing issue? Scientific research has been an enormous driver of human welfare.... - [Improving incentives and governance for global public goods](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/global-public-goods/): Why might developing better incentives for global public goods be particularly high impact? Many of the biggest challenges we face... - [Improving individual reasoning or cognition](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/improving-individual-reasoning-or-cognition/): Why might it be particularly high impact to improve individual reasoning and cognition? The case for improving individual reasoning and... - [Voting reform](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/voting-reform/): Why might voting reform be a pressing issue? We often elect our leaders with ‘first-past-the-post’-style voting, but this can easily... - [Climate change](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/): Climate change will affect all our lives and gravely damage livelihoods around the world. But how pressing is climate change compared to other risks? - [Space governance](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/space-governance/): Humanity’s long-run future could lie in space — it could go well, but that’s not guaranteed. What can you do to help shape the future of space governance? - [Preventing catastrophic pandemics](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/): Are we prepared for the next pandemic? Pandemics — and biological risks like bioterrorism or biological weapons — pose an existential threat to humanity. - [Reducing global catastrophic biological risks](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/full-report/): What is our analysis based on? I, Gregory Lewis, wrote this profile. I work at the Future of Humanity Institute... - [Improving decision making in key institutions](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/improving-institutional-decision-making/): Governments and other important institutions frequently have to make complex, high-stakes decisions based on the judgement calls of just a handful of people. - [Building effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-effective-altruism/): Effective altruism is about using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis. - [Land use reform](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/land-use-reform/): Local laws often prohibit the construction of dense new housing, which drives up prices, especially in a few large high-wage urban areas. The increased prices transfer wealth from renters to landowners and push people away from centers of economic activity - [Smoking in the developing world](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/tobacco/): Smoking takes an enormous toll on human health - accounting for about 6% of all ill-health globally according to the best estimates. This is more than HIV and malaria combined. Despite this, smoking is on the rise in many developing countries as people become richer and can afford to buy cigarettes. There appears to be a range of policies which have been shown to reduce smoking rates, which are usually not applied in developing countries. The most natural ways to tackle the problem through your career include becoming a health policy expert, or advocacy through journalism, think tanks and politics. This is a particularly promising cause for people living in a developing country with high smoking rates. - [Global priorities research](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/global-priorities-research/): Global priorities research seeks to use new methods to determine in which causes funding to improve the world can have the biggest impact, and make a convincing case about this to people in a position to redirect large amounts of money. - [Global health](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/health-in-poor-countries/): Every year around ten million people in poorer countries die of illnesses that can be very cheaply prevented or managed, including malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and diarrhoea. --- ## Career reviews - [Diplomacy](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/diplomacy/): While working as a diplomat at the US embassy in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, Andy Weber got an odd question from his... - [Nuclear weapons safety and security](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/nuclear-weapons/): Find out how you could use your career to prevent a nuclear war and reduce the risks posed by nuclear weapons. - [Expert in AI hardware](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/become-an-expert-in-ai-hardware/) - [US policy master's degrees](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/us-policy-masters-degrees/): Working in policy is among the most effective ways to have a positive impact in key fields. Getting a policy master’s degree can be a big help in this path. - [AI governance and policy](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-policy-and-strategy/): Advanced AI systems could have massive impacts on humanity and potentially pose global catastrophic risks. There are opportunities... - [Should you work at a frontier AI company?](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/working-at-an-ai-lab/) - [AI safety technical research](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-safety-researcher/): AI safety research — research on ways to prevent unwanted behaviour from AI systems — generally involves working as a scientist or engineer at major AI labs, in academia, or in independent nonprofits. - [AI Safety technical research](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-safety-technical-research/) - [Information security in high-impact areas](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/information-security/): Organisations with influence, financial power, and advanced technology are targeted by actors seeking to steal or abuse these assets. A career in information security is a promising avenue to support high-impact organisations by protecting against these attacks, which have the potential to disrupt an organisation's mission or even increase existential risk. - [Journalism](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/journalism/): For the right person, becoming a journalist could be very impactful.But the most influential positions in the field are highly competitive... - [Should you go to law school in the US to have a high-impact career?](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/should-you-go-to-law-school/): Law school can be valuable for people pursuing several promising high-impact career paths — but you should avoid some common mistakes. - [Data collection for AI alignment](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/alignment-data-expert/): Many proposals to reduce risks from misaligned AI may need a lot of high-quality data from people that can be used to train machine learning models. - [China-related AI safety and governance paths](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/china-related-ai-safety-and-governance-paths/): China is a leading country in AI. If you have a background in China you may be able to help ensure its development benefits everyone. - [Software engineering](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering/): Software engineers can contribute directly to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. There is a shortage of software engineers at the cutting edge of research into AI safety. - [Founder of new projects tackling top problems](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/founder-impactful-organisations/): Become a founder of an organisation tackling one of the world’s most pressing problems. - [Manager of a long-term philanthropic fund](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/managing-philanthropic-funds/): Why might creating a long-term philanthropic fund be high impact? Some have argued that the best opportunities for making a... - [Investigate a potentially pressing but unexplored global issue](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/explore-a-potentially-pressing-global-issue/): Why might exploring a potentially pressing problem be high impact? There are many neglected global problems that could turn out... - [Research & advocacy promoting impactful climate solutions](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/effective-altruist-approach-to-climate-change/): Why might taking an effective altruist approach to mitigating climate change be high impact? If the effectiveness of different approaches... - [Organise an effective altruism local group](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/organise-an-effective-altruism-group/): Why might organising an effective altruism local group be high impact? As a part of the effective altruism community, we... - [Research management](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/research-management/): Why might research management be high impact? In general, we think that helping others have a greater positive impact than... - [Historian of large societal trends, inflection points, progress, or collapse](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/historian-of-societal-trends/): Find out how to become a historian to help understand how technology and social change could affect the future. - [Policy careers focused on other pressing global issues](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/policy-careers-focused-on-other-pressing-global-issues/): Why might longtermist-oriented policy careers be high impact? There is likely a lot of policy work with the potential to... - [Become an executive assistant for someone doing especially high-impact work](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/executive-assistant-for-an-impactful-person/): Why might being an executive assistant for an impactful person be high impact? Some people may be extraordinarily productive compared... - [Specialist in emerging global powers](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/emerging-global-power-specialist/): Why might becoming a Russia or India specialist be high impact? We’ve argued that because of China’s political, military, economic,... - [Public intellectual](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/public-intellectual/): This is a high risk but potentially very high impact path. Public intellectuals can do a lot of good by spreading important ideas -- when they succeed. - [Expert on formal verification](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/formal-verification-expert/): Why might becoming an expert in formal verification be high impact? ‘Proof assistants’ are programs used to formally verify that... - [Forecasting and related research and implementation](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/forecasting/): You can work on making better predictions of future events in order to guide decision-making by powerful governments and institutions. - [Earning to give in quantitative trading](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/quantitative-trading/): We think most people's highest-impact options involve working directly on solving pressing global problems. But if you want to focus on having an impact by donating part of your income (earning to give) and will thrive in a quantitative trading role - [Biorisk research, strategy, and policy](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/biorisk-research/): Explore how careers in biosecurity research, strategy, and policy can help reduce biorisks like engineered pandemics. - [Research into global priorities](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/global-priorities-researcher/): You can help figure out which global problems are most pressing by working in global priorities research. - [Help build the effective altruism community](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/work-in-effective-altruism-organisations/): Help grow, shape, and support organisations working to address global problems by working in the effective altruism community. - [Grantmaker focused on pressing world problems](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/grantmaker/): In a grantmaking job, you can direct millions of dollars to tackle the world's most pressing problems. - [Philosophy academia](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/philosophy-academia/) - [Academic research](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/academic-research/): Are academic careers a good option if you want to have a positive impact? A review of the pros and cons. - [Congressional staffer](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/congressional-staffer/): Want to get a job in Congress? Here's what it takes to get one — and why it matters. - [UK commercial law (for earning to give)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/uk-commercial-law-for-earning-to-give/) - [Improving China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risks](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/china-specialist/) - [Policy-oriented government jobs](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/policy-oriented-civil-service-uk/) - [Working at effective nonprofits](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/effective-non-profits/) - [Working at effective altruist organisations](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/working-at-effective-altruist-organisations/) - [Machine Learning PhDs](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/machine-learning-phd/): We explain why it’s a high-impact area, how to work out if it’s for you, and exactly how and where to apply. - [Allied health professional](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/allied-health-professional/) - [Product manager in tech](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/product-manager-in-tech/): Product management is one of the best non-programming roles in the tech industry. It pays well and builds skills widely-applicable skills. - [Web designer](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/web-designer/) - [Executive search](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/executive-search/) - [Nursing](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/nursing/): Pros and cons of being a nurse, who should become one, and how to do so. - [Biomedical research](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/biomedical-research/): Interested in understanding how the human body works? Become a biomedical researcher to find new ways to improve people’s health. - [Foundation grantmaker](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/foundation-program-manager/) - [Early-stage startup employee](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/startup-early-employee/) - [Medical careers](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/medical-careers/): If you want to save lives, should you become a doctor? Surprisingly: maybe not. Find out which medical careers we recommend if you want to do good. - [Think tank research](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/think-tank-research/): Working in a think tank for a few years early in your career is a plausible way to influence government policy for the better, and in the meantime gain... - [Actuarial science](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/actuarial-science/) - [Teaching](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/teaching/) - [Pursuing fame in art and entertainment](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/pursuing-fame-in-art-and-entertainment/) - [Marketing (for skill-building & earning to give)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/work-in-marketing/) - [Computer Science PhD](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/computer-science-phd/): Thinking of pursuing a computer science PhD? Read this first to find out whether you should (or shouldn’t). - [Economics PhDs](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/economics-phd/): An econ 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... - [Data science (for skill-building & earning to give)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/data-science/) - [Management consulting (for skill-building & earning to give)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/management-consulting/) - [Trading in quantitative hedge funds (for earning to give)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/trading-in-quantitative-hedge-funds/) - [Front office finance (for skill-building & earning to give)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/front-office-finance/): Front facing finance still offers some of the highest pay available, making it a potential option for earning to give, however, we don't recommend it unless you could develop very strong motivation to succeed. The work load can be brutal, and is often boring. It's highly competitive and has high drop out rates. Moreover, the skills and knowledge you develop seem less useful than alternatives such as (/research/top-careers/profiles/consulting/) and (/research/top-careers/profiles/tech-entrepreneurship/). - [Party politics](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/party-politics-uk/) - [Founding effective nonprofits (international development)](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/founding-effective-global-poverty-non-profits/) - [Program manager in international organisations](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/program-manager-in-international-organisations/) - [Found a tech startup](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/tech-entrepreneurship/) --- ## Career reports - [Management consulting](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/reports/management-consulting/) --- ## Key articles - [Anonymous answers: could advances in AI supercharge biorisk?](https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-answers-could-advances-in-ai-supercharge-biorisk/): This is Part Four of our four-part series of biosecurity anonymous answers. You can also read Part One: Misconceptions, Part... - [Anonymous answers: How can we manage infohazards in biosecurity?](https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-answers-how-can-we-manage-infohazards-in-biosecurity/): This is Part Three of our four-part series of biosecurity anonymous answers. You can also read Part One: Misconceptions, Part... - [Anonymous answers: What are the best ways to fight the next pandemic?](https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-advice-what-are-the-best-ways-to-fight-the-next-pandemic/): This is Part Two of our four-part series of biosecurity anonymous answers. You can also read Part One: Misconceptions, Part... - [Anonymous answers: What are the biggest misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic risk?](https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-misconceptions-about-biosecurity/): Experts give their opinions about common misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic prevention. They were granted anonymity for this piece. - [How many lives does a doctor save? (Part 3)](https://80000hours.org/articles/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save-part-3/): This is Part 3 of an updated version of a classic three-part series of 80,000 Hours blog posts. You can... - [How many lives does a doctor save? (Part 2)](https://80000hours.org/articles/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save-part-2/): Is medicine the most promising career path if you want to do good? This series of posts examines the impact of being a doctor in terms of saving lives. - [How many lives does a doctor save? (Part 1)](https://80000hours.org/articles/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save-part-1/) - [Longtermism: a call to protect future generations](https://80000hours.org/articles/future-generations/): It would be better for the future if we avoid extinction, manage our resources carefully, foster institutions that promote cooperation rather than violent conflict, and responsibly develop powerful technology. - [Anonymous advice: If you want to reduce AI risk, should you take roles that advance AI capabilities?](https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-capabilities/): Should you work on AI capabilities? We put this question to the AI experts we thought most qualified to answer it - and they don't all agree. - [How much do solutions to social problems differ in their effectiveness? A collection of all the studies we could find.](https://80000hours.org/articles/charitable-interventions-differ/) - [What if you lived every human life?](https://80000hours.org/articles/what-if-you-lived-every-human-life/) - [In which career can you make the biggest contribution?](https://80000hours.org/articles/leverage/): Find out how to get more leverage to contribute to pressing world problems in many different career paths. - [What could an AI-caused existential catastrophe actually look like?](https://80000hours.org/articles/what-could-an-ai-caused-existential-catastrophe-actually-look-like/): Arguments for AI being risky are often very abstract. Here we explain several concrete ways an AI system might be able to actually gain power. - [Applying an unusual skill to a needed niche](https://80000hours.org/articles/applying-an-unusual-skill-to-a-needed-niche/) - [Be more ambitious: a rational case for dreaming big (if you want to do good)](https://80000hours.org/articles/be-more-ambitious/): Self-help often says you should be more ambitious. This isn't always good advice. But if you want to do good, here are 4 reasons it makes sense. - [What is social impact? A definition](https://80000hours.org/articles/what-is-social-impact-definition/): Lots of people say having a social impact is one of their key goals. But what does it actually mean to have a social impact? Here's our definition. - [Moral uncertainty: how to act when you’re uncertain about what’s good](https://80000hours.org/articles/moral-uncertainty/): We can be uncertain about matters of fact, like whether it’ll rain tomorrow, but we can also be uncertain about... - [Expected value: how can we make a difference when we're uncertain what’s true?](https://80000hours.org/articles/expected-value/): A brief introduction to what expected value is, how we can use it to work out what's best to do, and some of the main objections to it. - [Cluelessness: can we know the effects of our actions?](https://80000hours.org/articles/cluelessness/): Many people argue that the effects of our actions are so diverse and unpredictable that it’s impossible to know whether... - [Counterfactuals and how they change our view of what does good](https://80000hours.org/articles/counterfactuals/): Imagine you’re at the scene of an accident and you see an injured person. In your enthusiasm to help, you... - [Why some of your career options probably have 100x the impact of others](https://80000hours.org/articles/careers-differ-in-impact/): We believe that some of the career paths open to you likely have over 100 times more positive impact than... - [This could be the most important century](https://80000hours.org/articles/the-most-important-century/): Will the future of humanity be wild, or boring? It’s natural to think that if we’re trying to be sober... - [How to compare global problems for yourself](https://80000hours.org/articles/comparing-problems-yourself/): If you want to do your own research into which problems are pressing, below is a process you can work... - [How to balance impact and doing what you love](https://80000hours.org/articles/do-what-you-love-vs-impact/): Some might say to do what you love means giving up on having as much social impact. We think the two things don’t need to be in tension. - [Career exploration: when should you settle?](https://80000hours.org/articles/career-exploration/): How much career exploration should you do? We draw on research from computer science, psychology and elsewhere to provide a practical answer. - [The best solutions are far more effective than others](https://80000hours.org/articles/solutions/): Most solutions to social problems don’t actually work very well. - [Why the problem you work on is the biggest driver of your impact](https://80000hours.org/articles/your-choice-of-problem-is-crucial/): If you want to help others, should you follow your passion? Probably not. You'll do far more good if you focus on bigger and more problem areas. - [Effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-altruism/): It sounds obvious that it’s better to help two people than one if the cost is the same. However, when... - [How to identify your personal strengths](https://80000hours.org/articles/personal-strengths/): The best advice we’ve found on identifying your strengths, turned into a 3-step process, plus a list of personal strengths used by researchers. - [If you care about social impact, why is voting important?](https://80000hours.org/articles/is-voting-important/): If you care about social impact, why is voting important? It's not just about your civic duty. We examine the research on US presidential elections. - [Research questions that could have a big social impact, organised by discipline](https://80000hours.org/articles/research-questions-by-discipline/): Seeking inspiration for research questions? Discover examples of open questions that could have a big social impact. - [How to use your career to help reduce existential risk](https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-reduce-existential-risk/) - [Anonymous answers: the complete collection](https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-answers/): This collection contains excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Essential Facts and Figures - COVID-19](https://80000hours.org/articles/covid-19-key-facts/): Summary of our understanding of the current science on key questions about COVID-19 (as of 3 April, 2020), as best we can given the state of the evidence and the fast moving situation. - [Options for donating to fight COVID-19](https://80000hours.org/articles/covid-19-options-for-donating/): Many people have been asking about where they can donate to fight COVID-19, so we asked a couple of advisors for their quick thoughts. - [If you want to help the world tackle COVID-19, what should you do?](https://80000hours.org/articles/covid-19-what-should-you-do/): There are five main things we need to tackle the crisis. How to find your best opportunity to help. - [Advice on how to read our advice](https://80000hours.org/articles/advice-on-how-to-read-our-advice/): We’ve found that readers sometimes interpret or apply our advice in ways we didn’t anticipate and wouldn’t exactly recommend. That’s... - [Before committing to management consulting, consider directly entering priority paths, policy, startups, and other options](https://80000hours.org/articles/alternatives-to-consulting/): Many people we advise seem to think that management consulting is the best way to establish their career and gain... - [How useful are longer-term career plans?](https://80000hours.org/articles/career-planning/): There are two main types of mistakes one can make with career plans: having an overly rigid and specific plan,... - [Working in US AI policy](https://80000hours.org/articles/us-ai-policy/): The US Government is likely to be a key actor in how advanced AI is developed and used in society. Learn more about this career path. - [ML engineering for AI safety & robustness: a Google Brain engineer's guide to entering the field](https://80000hours.org/articles/ml-engineering-career-transition-guide/): Technical AI safety is a multifaceted area of research, with many sub-questions in areas such as reward learning, robustness, and... - [Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them](https://80000hours.org/articles/accidental-harm/): Even when you try to do good, you can end up doing accidental harm. But there are ways you can minimise the risks. - [Have a particular strength? Already an expert in a field? Here are the socially impactful careers 80,000 Hours suggests you consider first.](https://80000hours.org/articles/advice-by-expertise/): This list is preliminary. We wanted to publish our existing thoughts on what to do with each skill, but can... - [Doing good together: how to coordinate effectively and avoid single-player thinking](https://80000hours.org/articles/coordination/): When we work together, we can do far more good in the world. We cover the basics of coordination and practical tips for doing it more effectively. - [Should you play to your comparative advantage when choosing your career?](https://80000hours.org/articles/comparative-advantage/): Doing a job where you have the comparative advantage seems like an obviously good idea, but that may not always be the case. - [Operations management in high-impact organisations](https://80000hours.org/articles/operations-management/): We argue that operations management is one of the highest-impact roles in the effective altruism and existential risk communities right now, and address some common misconceptions about the roles. - [Video: The world's biggest problems and why they're not what first comes to mind](https://80000hours.org/articles/video-most-pressing-problems/) - [The case for reducing existential risks](https://80000hours.org/articles/existential-risks/): What experts say are the most likely existential risks, why they're more likely than people think, and what we can do about them. - [Is it fair to say that most social programmes don't work?](https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-social-program/): Image courtesy of A&ETV Beyond Scared Straight. Learn more about the effectiveness of Scared Straight. Lots of government and charity... - [These skills make you most employable. Coding isn’t one -- can that be right?](https://80000hours.org/articles/skills-most-employable/): A data-driven ranking of which job skills make you most employable by 80,000 Hours, a career research group founded by Oxford academics. - [Is it ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good? An in-depth analysis](https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/): Why you should avoid harmful jobs, even if you’ll do more good. We look at how to analyse the situation and common options, like finance, law, and oil. - [Guide to working in AI policy and strategy](https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-policy-guide/): Written by Miles Brundage a researcher who works on AI policy at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute,... - [Which industry has the highest-paying jobs?](https://80000hours.org/articles/highest-paying-jobs/): New tax data lets us accurately estimate which 11 jobs and industries are the highest paying on average, and for top performers. - [College advice](https://80000hours.org/articles/college-advice/): Looking for college advice? Here’s what we know about how to choose a major, and what to do once you start studying. - [Some further resources on high-impact careers](https://80000hours.org/articles/further-reading/): Below is a list of books, essays and resources which we have found helpful in drawing up our career guide,... - [Where's the best place to volunteer?](https://80000hours.org/articles/volunteering/): We talk a lot about where to donate, but people also often ask us about where is best to volunteer.... - [How to choose where to donate](https://80000hours.org/articles/best-charity/): If you want to make a difference, and are happy to give toward wherever you think you can do the... - [AI safety syllabus](https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-safety-syllabus/): This is a syllabus of relevant background reading material and courses related to AI safety. It is intended as a guide for undergraduates in mathematics and computer science. - [The best email scripts for cold-emailing](https://80000hours.org/articles/email-scripts/): Here’s a collection of the most useful email scripts we’ve found for asking for introductions and small favours from people... - [9 ways to put yourself in a better position in any job](https://80000hours.org/articles/career-capital-in-any-job/): This article has been replaced and expanded in a new piece of our career guide: All the evidence-based advice we... - [A framework for comparing global problems in terms of expected impact](https://80000hours.org/articles/problem-framework/): Suppose you’re trying to figure out whether to learn about health in developing countries; or whether to become a researcher... - [Everything you need to know about whether money makes you happy](https://80000hours.org/articles/money-and-happiness/): It's said "money can't buy happiness," but we've all felt the pull of financial success -- so what's the truth? Here's what science has to say. - [What should you look for in a job? Introducing our framework.](https://80000hours.org/articles/framework/): How can you compare two career options in terms of how satisfying and high-impact they’ll be? It can seem near... - [Best existing resources](https://80000hours.org/articles/best-existing-resources/): This page is no longer kept up to date and we may no longer agree with all of the recommendations.... - [Stop worrying so much about long-term career plans](https://80000hours.org/articles/stop-worrying-so-much-about-the-long-term/): So many people are clearly desperate to plan out the next decade of their career, ending up anxious and overwhelmed. But this isn't the best way to approach - [Some causes are better than others](https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-or-not/): We tend to imagine that organised attempts to make the world a better place are almost always successful, at least... - [The difference between true and tangible impact](https://80000hours.org/articles/true-vs-tangible-impact/): When people think about the impact of their actions, they tend to think only of the immediate results – what... - [Reasoning behind our framework](https://80000hours.org/articles/reasoning-behind-our-framework/): On this page we outline why we use a framework and how we selected the factors to go in our framework. - [4 biases to avoid in career decisions](https://80000hours.org/articles/4-biases-to-avoid-in-career-decisions/): Over the last couple of decades, a large and growing body of research has emerged which shows that our decisions... - [Should you wait to make a difference?](https://80000hours.org/articles/should-you-wait/): If you’re committed to making a difference with your career, you may well find that there is a tension between... - [Why and how to keep your options open](https://80000hours.org/articles/keeping-options-open/): Some of the steps you could take in your career open up a greater range of career options than others.... - [Don't go with your gut (but check with it)](https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-go-with-your-gut-instinct/): People often talk about how you should just go with your gut instinct when choosing a career. But how useful is this advice, really? - [Research reports](https://80000hours.org/articles/research-reports/): Here we list some of our most in-depth career research reports that have not been featured on other pages. - [How to make a difference in any career](https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-make-a-difference-in-any-career/): It's possible to make a big difference in any career. On this page, we explain how. - [The effective worker](https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-work/): 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 organization, it’s an option worth considering. - [Framework worksheet](https://80000hours.org/articles/worksheet/): If you’re already familiar with our framework, and want to apply it to compare several options within our how to... - [Self-developer](https://80000hours.org/articles/self-developer/): What do we mean by this strategy? Enter careers that enable you to build a package of generally valuable skills,... - [The experimenter](https://80000hours.org/articles/the-experimenter/): Finding a career that’s the right fit for you is important, but it’s also difficult to do just by thinking about it. It can therefore be a good strategy to try out a number of different areas in order to learn more about your own interests and skills. - [Why and how to earn to give](https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/): 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. - [The entrepreneur](https://80000hours.org/articles/entrepreneurship/): If you’ve got potential as an entrepreneur, attempt to found new effective non-profit organisations or innovative for-profits that benefit their customers and create positive externalities. - [To find work you love, don't (always) follow your passion](https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-follow-your-passion/): Research shows that "follow your passion" is often bad advice. We explain why and how to do better. - [Improving decision making](https://80000hours.org/articles/improving-decision-making/): This page has been replaced with our profile on Improving institutional decision-making. - [Promoting effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/articles/promoting-effective-altruism/): Note that this page has been superseded by our problem profile about promoting effective altruism. What is this cause? Promoting... - [Global priorities research](https://80000hours.org/articles/global-priorities-research/): Since publishing this profile, there has been further research on this cause. See our newer profile of the area. What... - [Job satisfaction research](https://80000hours.org/articles/job-satisfaction-research/): The full results of our literature survey into how to predict job satisfaction. - [Yardsticks: how to compare the scale of different social problems](https://80000hours.org/articles/yardsticks/): What are ‘yardsticks’, and why use them? In order to compare causes, we want to estimate the impact of solving... - [A checklist for making rational career decisions](https://80000hours.org/articles/making-an-assessment/): A list of the best advice we've found on how to assess your career options in the face of high uncertainty. - [7 strategies for having an impact with your career](https://80000hours.org/articles/strategies/): A list of career strategies for making a difference. --- ## Pages - [深度（详细版）职业指南](https://80000hours.org/key-ideas-cn2025/) - [Videos](https://80000hours.org/video/) - [AGI poses extreme risks](https://80000hours.org/agi/) - [Terms of use](https://80000hours.org/terms-of-use/): 80,000 Hours—Terms of Use Last Updated: March 2025 Welcome to 80,000 Hours! 80,000 Hours operates websites and a variety of... - [Website Privacy Notice](https://80000hours.org/privacy-policy/) - [The most useful skills for making a difference](https://80000hours.org/skills/): Early career, (/career-guide/career-capital/#how-can-you-get-the-best-career-capital-get-good-at-something-useful) you focus on building useful skills. So which skills are most useful for solving important global problems?... - [Translations of our content](https://80000hours.org/about/translations/) - [Test skill set page with sidebar](https://80000hours.org/test-skill-set-page/) - [Skill set page template](https://80000hours.org/skill-set-page-template/) - [Share the career guide](https://80000hours.org/career-guide-share/): Sharing our career guide lets us help more people find a fulfilling career that does good. If you know someone who might find the guide useful, consider sharing it. - [Find a fulfilling career that does good](https://80000hours.org/ebook/) - [The 80,000 Hours Podcast on Artificial Intelligence and related topics](https://80000hours.org/podcast/on-artificial-intelligence/): Ten curated episodes of The 80,000 Hours Podcast that quickly get you up to speed on the school of thought known as effective altruism. - [80,000 Hours Cookie Notice](https://80000hours.org/cookie-notice/): 80,000 Hours Limited and 80,000 Hours Foundation (together “80,000 Hours“, “we“, “us” or “our“) use cookies on our websites (“Websites“).... - [What others have said about 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/what-others-say-about-80000-hours/) - [Start here](https://80000hours.org/start-here/): Your career is not only a major driver of your happiness — it’s probably also your biggest opportunity to have a positive impact on the world. - [What We Owe The Future](https://80000hours.org/what-we-owe-the-future/): What We Owe The Future releases August 16th. Read the introduction for free now. - [User stories](https://80000hours.org/stories/): Here are some examples of readers we’re especially excited about, who are using their careers to help tackle the world’s... - [What are the most pressing world problems? [Prob profiles V2]](https://80000hours.org/our-current-list-of-pressing-world-problems/): If you want to do as much good as you can with your career, what world problems should you try to tackle? Get ideas from our list. - [All articles](https://80000hours.org/all-articles/) - [style guide for sharing](https://80000hours.org/style-guide-for-sharing/): This argument seems common to many debates: ‘Proposal P arrogantly assumes that it is possible to measure X, when really... - [80k After Hours Podcast](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/): About the show 80k After Hours is a podcast by the team that brings you The 80,000 Hours Podcast. Like... - [Summary: what makes for a high-impact career?](https://80000hours.org/key-ideas-2023/summary/) - [Speak with us](https://80000hours.org/speak-with-us/): Get free 1:1 career advice from one of our advisors. We can help you choose your focus, make connections, and find a fulfilling job. - [This is your most important decision](https://80000hours.org/make-a-difference-with-your-career/) - [The 80,000 Hours Podcast](https://80000hours.org/podcast/): In-depth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them. - [How to investigate your career uncertainties and make a judgement call](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/feedback-and-investigation/): Find the full career planning series here. The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. ★Step back,... - [What does a fulfilling, high-impact career look like for you?](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/what-does-a-fulfilling-high-impact-career-look-like/): You might be able to use your career to greatly help hundreds of people, reduce the chance of global disasters,... - [Which global problems do you think are most pressing?](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/your-views-of-global-problems/): Find the full career planning series here. The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. ★Why compare... - [How to generate ideas for longer-term paths](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/longer-term-paths/): Find the full career planning series here. The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. Why to... - [Clarifying your strategic focus](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/clarify-your-strategic-focus/): Find the full career planning series here. The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. ★Factors for... - [How to figure out your next career step](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/determine-next-steps/): Find the full career planning series here. The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. Two ways... - [Planning to adapt](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/plan-to-adapt/): Find the full career planning series here. The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. Stay open... - [Putting your plan into action](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/put-your-plan-into-action/): Find the full career planning series here. *The most important sections in each article are marked with ★’s. ★Define next... - [8-week career planning course: career planning template](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-plan-template/): Our 8-step career planner template is designed to help you write an in-depth and actionable career plan. - [Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems — curated episodes from The 80,000 Hours Podcast](https://80000hours.org/podcast/effective-altruism-ten-global-problems/): Ten curated episodes from The 80,000 Hours Podcast explaining a selection of problems the effective altruism community is working to solve. - [Planning a high-impact career: a summary of everything you need to know in 7 points](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/summary/) - [Your biggest opportunity to make a difference: our guide to what makes for a high-impact career](https://80000hours.org/key-ideas-2023/): What makes for a high-impact career? Here's how to compare your options in terms of the difference they make. - [Career planning and decision making — all our best resources](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/): Research-based, practical advice on career planning, decision-making and getting jobs for people who want a fulfilling career with positive impact. - [Effective Altruism: An Introduction — ten curated episodes from The 80,000 Hours Podcast](https://80000hours.org/podcast/effective-altruism-an-introduction/): Ten curated episodes of The 80,000 Hours Podcast that quickly get you up to speed on the school of thought known as effective altruism. - [Career planning series: how to plan your high-impact career](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/): We've taken ten years of research and turned it into a free, in-depth career planning process, to help you make a career plan you feel confident in. - [Contact us](https://80000hours.org/about/contact-us/): Please send feedback and general queries to info@80000hours. org. To submit a job to our job board, please fill out... - [COVID-19: Analysis, resources and how you can help](https://80000hours.org/covid-19/): Analysis and resources to help mitigate COVID-19. - [The Precipice Book](https://80000hours.org/the-precipice/): Toby Ord's new book on existential risk was released in March 2020. Get a free copy now. - [Calibration training](https://80000hours.org/calibration-training/): This app will show whether you can tell how likely things are to be true & help you do better. - [Donate to 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/support-us/donate/): About us At 80,000 Hours, we provide research and support to help people have high-impact careers. Our goal is to... - [Explore our research by topic](https://80000hours.org/topics/) - [Psychology results in top journals - are they true? And can you guess which ones?](https://80000hours.org/psychology-replication-quiz/): Does a heavier clipboard really get job applicants taken more seriously? Try your luck with this quiz. - [What are the most pressing world problems?](https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/): Which problems are the biggest, most tractable, and most neglected in the world - and what can you do about them? - [Find a fulfilling career that does good](https://80000hours.org/book/) - [Career Planning Tool Part 2](https://80000hours.org/career-planning-tool-part-2/): Start Part 2 - [Career Planning Tool](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-planning-tool/): This tool is where we tie everything together from our career guide, and help you make your career plan. - [Make a decision](https://80000hours.org/career-decision/): If you’re facing a decision like ‘which offer should I accept? ’, ‘where should I apply? ’ or ‘which major... - [Find a fulfilling career that does good](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/): This free career guide, based on over 10 years of research alongside academics at Oxford, will help you find fulfilling work that fits your skills and does good. - [Problem quiz](https://80000hours.org/problem-quiz/): Answer 6 questions to filter our list of the world's most biggest problems, based on research with academics at the University of Oxford. - [Annual career review tool](https://80000hours.org/career-planning/annual-career-review/) - [How to make tough career decisions](https://80000hours.org/career-decision/article/): A step-by-step process to help you make career decisions based on decision-making research. - [Community](https://80000hours.org/community/): Joining a community can be a great way to increase your impact — and a rewarding one, too. It can... - [The highest-impact career paths our research has identified so far](https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/): Our list of the most promising high-impact career paths for helping others. - [Financial accounts](https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/reviews/financial-accounts/): General notes This page is updated roughly once a year, most recently in June 2025. For more information about where... - [Research process and principles](https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/research-principles/): A list of the principles we use to guide our research. - [Our mistakes](https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/reviews/mistakes/) - [Our impact and credibility](https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/): Research process and principles We explain the process and principles we use to guide our work here. For each individual... - [Organisational reviews](https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/reviews/): Review for 2023–mid-2025 The review See our financial reports Two-year review 2021–2022 The review See our financial reports Annual review... - [Legal disclaimer](https://80000hours.org/legal/) - [All our research](https://80000hours.org/research/): A list of all our research into careers that make a difference. - [Work with us](https://80000hours.org/about/work-with-us/): The core 80,000 Hours team in summer 2013 We’re looking for bright and ambitious people to help us in our... - [Join our newsletter](https://80000hours.org/newsletter/): Student Groups - [Our donors](https://80000hours.org/about/donors/): We greatly appreciate all the support we receive to keep 80,000 Hours running! The vast majority of our donations come... - [Meet the team](https://80000hours.org/about/meet-the-team/): Meet the team behind 80,000 Hours. - [Support us](https://80000hours.org/support-us/): We wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for all the people who have helped us along the way. We’re... - [About us: what do we do, and how can we help?](https://80000hours.org/about/): We offer career coaching and in-depth research on the careers that do the most to solve the world’s most pressing problems. - [New releases](https://80000hours.org/latest/): Research, interviews and case studies on social impact career choice. - [Home](https://80000hours.org/): You have 80,000 hours in your career. How can you best use them to help solve the world’s most pressing problems? --- ## Blog post - [If we can’t control MechaHitler, how will we steer AGI?](https://80000hours.org/2025/10/if-we-cant-control-mechahitler-how-will-we-steer-agi/) - [Survey results: what AI safety orgs want in a hire](https://80000hours.org/2025/09/survey-results-what-ai-safety-orgs-want-in-a-hire/) - [80,000 Hours review: 2023 to mid-2025](https://80000hours.org/2025/09/80000-hours-review-2023-to-mid-2025/) - [Announcing the 80,000 Hours Substack](https://80000hours.org/2025/09/announcing-the-80000-hours-substack/) - [Content Associate](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/content-associate/) - [Expression of interest: Contracting for Video Work](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/expression-of-interest-contracting-for-video-work/): Help make spectacular videos that reach a huge audience. 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find... - [Early warning signs that AI systems might seek power](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/early-warning-signs-ai/) - [Operations generalists](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/operations-generalists/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [Events Associate/Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/events-associate-specialist/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [People Operations Associate/Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/people-operations-associate-specialist/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [Office Associate/Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/office-associate-specialist/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [Recruiting Associate/Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/recruiting-associate-specialist/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [Video Operations Associate/Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/video-operations-associate-specialist/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [Executive Assistant to the CEO](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/executive-assistant-to-the-ceo/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [IT Security, Data Privacy, and Systems Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/08/it-security-and-data-privacy-specialist/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. After more... - [The AI 2027 scenario and what it means: a video tour](https://80000hours.org/2025/07/the-ai-2027-scenario-and-what-it-means-a-video-tour/) - [Beyond the AI arms race: a case for collective action](https://80000hours.org/2025/06/beyond-the-ai-arms-race/): AI capabilities have been advancing extremely quickly over the last few years, and with increased capability comes increased potential for harm. Already, AI systems can make scammers and hackers more productive. - [[Closed] Expression of interest: Head of Recruiting](https://80000hours.org/2025/06/expression-of-interest-head-of-recruiting/) - [Updates to our list of the world's most pressing problems](https://80000hours.org/2025/06/updates-to-our-list-of-the-worlds-most-pressing-problems/): 80,000 Hours’ aim is to help people find careers that tackle the world’s most pressing problems. To do this, one... - [3 reasons AGI might still be decades away](https://80000hours.org/2025/06/3-reasons-agi-might-still-be-decades-away/): We recently argued that AGI could be here by 2030. And we’re not the only ones — CEOs of leading... - [Technical AI safety upskilling resources](https://80000hours.org/2025/06/technical-ai-safety-upskilling-resources/): Sometimes, our advising team speaks to people who have enthusiasm for technical AI safety and a related skill set but... - [80,000 Hours completes spin-out from Effective Ventures](https://80000hours.org/2025/05/80000-hours-completes-spin-out-from-effective-ventures/): We’re excited to announce that 80,000 Hours has completed its spin-out from Effective Ventures (EV) and is now operating as... - [10 essential resources for understanding advanced AI and its risks](https://80000hours.org/2025/05/10-essential-resources-ai-risk/) - [[Closed] Open position: Engagement Specialist](https://80000hours.org/2025/04/open-position-engagement-specialist/) - [Expression of interest: Shortform Video Editing Contractor](https://80000hours.org/2025/04/expression-of-interest-shortform-video-editing-contractor/): Help make spectacular videos that reach a huge audience. We’re looking for someone to contract as a video editor, who... - [The case for prioritising AI risks](https://80000hours.org/2025/04/work-on-ai-risks/) - [To understand AI, you should use it. Here's how to get started.](https://80000hours.org/2025/04/to-understand-ai-you-should-use-it-heres-how-to-get-started/) - [We're shifting our strategic approach to focus more on AGI](https://80000hours.org/2025/04/strategic-approach/): Why we’re updating our strategic direction Since 2016, we’ve ranked ‘risks from artificial intelligence’ as our top pressing problem. Whilst... - [Expression of Interest: Podcast Host](https://80000hours.org/2025/03/podcast-host/) - [Expression of interest: web chief of staff](https://80000hours.org/2025/03/expression-of-interest-web-chief-of-staff/) - [Shrinking AGI timelines: a review of expert forecasts](https://80000hours.org/2025/03/when-do-experts-expect-agi-to-arrive/): As a non-expert, it would be great if there were experts who could tell us when we should expect artificial... - [Understanding trends in our AI job postings](https://80000hours.org/2025/03/trends-in-ai-jobs/): This week, let’s review key trends in the jobs we’ve found that may help mitigate AI risk, including: Growth in... - [Expression of interest: product manager](https://80000hours.org/2025/03/senior-product-manager-eoi/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. In 2025,... - [Ask a career advisor: how to compete with AI models in the job market and whether to stay in the US government](https://80000hours.org/2025/02/ask-an-advisor-volume-two/): This week, we answer more of our newsletter subscriber’s career questions! I’ll tackle: Whether to stay in US AI policy... - [Expression of interest: writer/researcher](https://80000hours.org/2025/02/expression-of-interest-writer-researcher/): 80,000 Hours’ mission and impact 80,000 Hours’ mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems.... - [Ask a career advisor: how mid-career people can help with AI and how to survive a job hunt](https://80000hours.org/2025/02/ask-a-career-advisor-switching-to-ai-and-surviving-job-hunt/): This week, we’re answering our newsletter subscribers’ career questions. Question one: I’ve been working over 20 years as a software... - [Transcripts for Bastian](https://80000hours.org/2025/01/transcripts-for-bastian/) - [How quickly could robots scale up?](https://80000hours.org/2025/01/how-quickly-could-robots-scale-up/) - [It looks like there are some good funding opportunities in AI safety right now](https://80000hours.org/2025/01/it-looks-like-there-are-some-good-funding-opportunities-in-ai-safety-right-now/): This post was written by Benjamin Todd in his personal capacity and originally posted on benjamintodd. substack. com. The AI... - [What happened with AI in 2024?](https://80000hours.org/2025/01/what-happened-with-ai-2024/) - [2024 in review: some of our top pieces from this year](https://80000hours.org/2024/12/2024-in-review-some-of-our-top-pieces-from-this-year/): This week, we’re looking back at some of our top content from the year! Here are some of our favourite... - [Two key tips for giving season](https://80000hours.org/2024/12/giving-season/): It’s giving season! Cue excitement... or dread? If you’re anything like me, December is a busy time. You’re wrapping up... - [Why we get burned out — and what helps](https://80000hours.org/2024/11/burnout/): The idea this week: there are no magical fixes for career burnout, but there are concrete steps that can help.... - [What are experts in biosecurity worried about?](https://80000hours.org/2024/10/what-are-experts-in-biosecurity-worried-about/): The idea this week: biosecurity experts disagree on many of the field’s most important questions. We spoke to more than... - [Updates to our problem rankings of factory farming, climate change, and more](https://80000hours.org/2024/10/updates-to-our-problem-rankings-on-factory-farming-climate-change-and-more/): At 80,000 Hours, we are interested in the question: “if you want to find the best way to have a... - [Why experts and forecasters disagree about AI risk](https://80000hours.org/2024/09/why-experts-and-forecasters-disagree-about-ai-risk/): This week we’re highlighting: Our new interview with Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks The... - [Updates to our research about AI risk and careers](https://80000hours.org/2024/08/updates-to-our-research-about-ai-risk-and-careers/): This week, we’re sharing new updates on: Top career paths for reducing risks from AI An AI bill in California... - [Mpox and H5N1: assessing the situation](https://80000hours.org/2024/08/h5n1-and-mpox-assessing-the-situation/): The idea this week: mpox and a bird flu virus are testing our pandemic readiness. Would we be ready for... - [Why Orwell would hate AI](https://80000hours.org/2024/08/why-orwell-would-hate-ai/): The idea this week: totalitarian regimes killed over 100 million people in less than 100 years — and in the... - [Advisor [Applications closed]](https://80000hours.org/2024/08/open-position-advisor-2024/): The role 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems.... - [Open position: Head of Video](https://80000hours.org/2024/07/open-position-head-of-video/): Why this role? 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing... - [Open position: Head of Marketing](https://80000hours.org/2024/07/open-position-head-of-marketing-2024/): Why this role? 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing... - [Open position: Marketer](https://80000hours.org/2024/07/open-position-marketer-2024/): Why this role? 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing... - [Mental health and your career: our top resources](https://80000hours.org/2024/07/handling-mental-illness-in-your-career/): The idea this week: people pursuing altruistic careers often struggle with imposter syndrome, anxiety, and moral perfectionism. And we’ve spent... - [Does your vote matter? What the research says](https://80000hours.org/2024/06/does-your-vote-matter-what-the-research-says/) - [Dive into our most in-depth research on careers](https://80000hours.org/2024/06/dive-into-advanced-series/): The idea this week: your career choices may be much more important than you think — and we have a... - [The most interesting startup idea I’ve seen recently: AI for epistemics](https://80000hours.org/2024/05/project-idea-ai-for-epistemics/): This is the most interesting idea for a startup that I've heard recently. - [Where are all the nuclear experts?](https://80000hours.org/2024/05/where-are-all-the-nuclear-experts/): The idea this week: nuclear war remains a horrifying possibility — our new nuclear career review examines what you could... - [Particularly impactful career paths you might have overlooked](https://80000hours.org/2024/04/overlooked-career-paths/) - [Expression of interest: Writer and writer-researcher](https://80000hours.org/2024/03/writer-writer-researcher-eoi/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. Since being... - [Particularly neglected causes you could work on](https://80000hours.org/2024/03/particularly-neglected-causes/): The idea this week: working on a highly neglected or pre-paradigmatic issue could be a way to make a big... - [The case for taking your technical expertise to the field of AI policy](https://80000hours.org/2024/03/the-case-for-taking-your-technical-expertise-to-the-field-of-ai-policy/): The idea this week: technical expertise is needed in AI governance and policy. How do you prevent a new and... - [Open roles: Operations team](https://80000hours.org/2024/02/open-positions-operations-team/): About 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems — we... - [Why you might not want to work on nuclear disarmament (and what to work on instead)](https://80000hours.org/2024/02/why-you-might-not-want-to-work-on-nuclear-disarmament/): In 1955, ten years after Robert Oppenheimer, Leslie Groves, and the 130,000 workers of the Manhattan Project built the first... - [Our new series on building skills](https://80000hours.org/2024/02/skills-pages-launch/): If we were going to summarise all our advice on how to get career capital in three words, we’d say:... - [Announcing Niel Bowerman as the next CEO of 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2024/01/announcing-niel-bowerman-ceo/) - [Practical steps to form better habits in your life and career](https://80000hours.org/2024/01/forming-new-habits/): The idea this week: developing skills and habits takes time, effort, and using the right techniques. At the start of... - [2023 in review: some of our top pieces from last year](https://80000hours.org/2024/01/2023-in-review/): As we kick off 2024, we’re taking a moment to look back at our 2023 content. We published a lot... - [Special podcast holiday release: One highlight from every episode in 2023](https://80000hours.org/2023/12/best-of-2023-podcast-highlights/): Happy new year! We’re celebrating with a special podcast holiday release: our favourite highlights from each episode of the show... - [Announcing our plan to become an independent organisation](https://80000hours.org/2023/12/announcing-plan/) - [Not sure where to donate this year? Here’s our advice.](https://80000hours.org/2023/12/giving-season-advice/): The idea this giving season: figuring out where to donate is tricky, but a few key tips can help. There... - [A note of appreciation for your efforts to help others](https://80000hours.org/2023/11/a-note-of-appreciation-for-your-efforts-to-help-others/): The idea this week: it’s incredible how dedicated many of you are to helping others. One of my favourite parts... - [New opportunities are opening up in AI governance](https://80000hours.org/2023/11/new-ai-governance-opportunities/): The news this week: major new initiatives show governments are taking AI risks seriously — but there’s still a long... - [We've made mistakes in our careers — here's what we learned](https://80000hours.org/2023/10/staff-career-mistakes/): The idea this week: you can learn a lot from mistakes. In that spirit, we’re sharing six stories of mistakes... - [Building career capital: some new advice on three paths](https://80000hours.org/2023/09/building-career-capital/): The idea this week: building career capital is a key part of having an impactful career over the long term... - [What you should know about our updated career guide](https://80000hours.org/2023/09/what-you-should-know-about-our-updated-career-guide/): The question this week: what are the biggest changes to our career guide since 2017? Read the new and updated... - [Open positions: 1on1 team](https://80000hours.org/2023/09/open-positions-1on1-team/): We’re looking for candidates to join our 1on1 team. The 1on1 team at 80,000 Hours talks to people who want... - [Announcing the new 80,000 Hours career guide](https://80000hours.org/2023/09/career-guide-launch/): From 2016 to 2019, 80,000 Hours’ core content was contained in our persistently popular career guide. (You may also remember... - [What the past can tell us about how AI will affect jobs](https://80000hours.org/2023/09/what-the-past-can-tell-us-about-how-ai-will-affect-jobs/) - [Why you might consider switching careers — and what it takes to do it](https://80000hours.org/2023/08/why-you-might-consider-switching-careers-and-what-it-takes-to-do-it/): The idea this week: switching careers can be terrifying — but it can also be the key to finding more... - [Operations management: how I found the right career path for me](https://80000hours.org/2023/08/operations-management-how-i-found-the-right-career-path-for-me/): The idea this week: how I learned a lot about my skills by testing my fit for operations work. Like... - [What recent events mean for AI governance career paths](https://80000hours.org/2023/08/what-recent-events-mean-for-ai-governance-career-paths/): The idea this week: AI governance careers present some of the best opportunities to change the world for the better... - [Why many people underrate investigating the problem they work on](https://80000hours.org/2023/07/why-i-think-many-people-underrate-investigating-the-problem-they-work-on/): The idea this week: thinking about which world problem is most pressing may matter more than you realise. I’m an... - [What the war in Ukraine shows us about catastrophic risks](https://80000hours.org/2023/06/what-the-war-in-ukraine-shows-us-about-catastrophic-risks/): A new great power war could be catastrophic for humanity — but there are meaningful ways to reduce the risk.... - [How to cope with rejection in your career](https://80000hours.org/2023/06/career-rejection/): The idea this week: getting rejected from jobs can be crushing — but learning how to deal with rejection productively... - [Practical steps to take now that AI risk is mainstream](https://80000hours.org/2023/06/practical-steps-to-take-now-that-ai-risk-is-mainstream/) - [The public is more concerned about AI causing extinction than we thought](https://80000hours.org/2023/05/the-public-is-more-concerned-about-ai-causing-extinction-than-we-thought/): What does the public think about risks of human extinction? We care a lot about reducing extinction risks and think... - [Give feedback on the new 80,000 Hours career guide](https://80000hours.org/2023/05/give-feedback-on-the-new-80000-hours-career-guide/): We’ve spent the last few months updating 80,000 Hours’ career guide (which we previously released in 2017 and which you’ve... - [How 80,000 Hours has changed some of our advice after the collapse of FTX](https://80000hours.org/2023/05/how-80000-hours-has-changed-some-of-our-advice-after-the-collapse-of-ftx/): Following the bankruptcy of FTX and the federal indictment of Sam Bankman-Fried, many members of the team at 80,000 Hours... - [Some thoughts on moderation in doing good](https://80000hours.org/2023/05/moderation-in-doing-good/): How much should you do what seems right to you, even if it seems extreme or controversial, vs how much should you moderate your views and actions based on other perspectives? - [Why we’re adding information security to our list of priority career paths](https://80000hours.org/2023/04/why-were-adding-information-security-to-our-list-of-priority-career-paths/): Information security could be a top option for people looking to have a high-impact career. This might be a surprising... - [Are we doing enough to stop the worst pandemics?](https://80000hours.org/2023/04/are-we-doing-enough-to-stop-the-worst-pandemics/): If you're looking for a career working on a problem that is massively important, relatively neglected, and potentially very tractable, reducing biorisk might be a terrific option. - [How much should you research your career?](https://80000hours.org/2023/04/how-much-should-you-research-your-career/): In career decisions, we advise that you don’t aim for confidence — aim for a stable best guess. Career decisions... - [What our research has found about AI — and why it matters](https://80000hours.org/2023/03/concerned-about-recent-ai-progress-heres-our-best-resources-to-understand-whats-going-on/): Everyone’s suddenly talking a lot about artificial intelligence — and we have many helpful resources for getting up to speed.... - [Why you should think about virtues — even if you're a consequentialist](https://80000hours.org/2023/03/why-you-should-think-about-virtues-even-if-youre-a-consequentialist/): The idea this week: virtues are helpful shortcuts for making moral decisions — but think about consequences to decide what... - [80,000 Hours two-year review: 2021 and 2022](https://80000hours.org/2023/03/80000-hours-two-year-review-2021-and-2022/): We’ve released our review of our programmes for the years 2021 and 2022. The full document is available for the... - [What Bing’s chatbot can tell us about AI risk — and what it can’t](https://80000hours.org/2023/03/what-bings-chatbot-can-tell-us-about-ai-risk-and-what-it-cant/): You may have seen the new Bing. It’s impressive — and, reportedly, unhinged: manipulating people, threatening users and even telling... - [Expression of interest: systems hire (closed)](https://80000hours.org/2023/02/expression-of-interest-systems-hire/): 80,000 Hours is considering hiring someone to work on building tech-based systems for the 1on1 team. We’re looking for someone... - [How much do solutions to social problems differ in their effectiveness? A collection of all the studies we could find.](https://80000hours.org/2023/02/how-much-do-solutions-differ-in-effectiveness/): In a 2013 paper, Dr Toby Ord reviewed data that compared about 100 health interventions in developing countries in terms of how many years of illness they prevent per dollar. He discovered some striking facts about the data. - [Is the world getting better or worse?](https://80000hours.org/2023/02/is-the-world-getting-better-or-worse/) - [Open position: Content associate](https://80000hours.org/2023/01/open-position-content-associate/): 80,000 Hours is looking for a content associate to help us improve and grow the impact of the 80,000 Hours website, which provides free research and advice to help people use their careers to address the world’s most pressing problems. - [My thoughts on parenting and having an impactful career](https://80000hours.org/2023/01/parenting-impactful-career/): Having kids can be challenging for anyone, and there may be unique challenges for people who aim to have a positive impact with their career. - [The quick, medium, and long versions of career planning](https://80000hours.org/2023/01/the-quick-medium-and-long-versions-of-career-planning/): Without making time to check in on the big career questions, you might stay too long at a job, miss opportunities for doing more good, or fail to push yourself to grow — I’ve certainly been there before. - [2022 in review](https://80000hours.org/2023/01/2022-in-review/): As 2023 gets underway, we’re taking a look back at the content we produced in 2022 and highlighting some particular standouts. We published a lot of new articles and podcasts to help our readers have impactful careers — below are some of our favourite pieces from the year. - [How we’re thinking about where to donate to charity this year](https://80000hours.org/2022/12/how-were-thinking-about-where-to-donate-to-charity-this-year/): Charitable giving can be hugely impactful — if you’re careful about where you donate. One of the simplest ways to have an impact with your career is to donate a portion of your income. But if you’re going to do that, *where* you donate can make a huge difference. - [Four values at the heart of effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/2022/12/four-values-at-the-heart-of-effective-altruism/): Effective altruism isn’t about any particular way of doing good, like AI alignment or distributing malaria nets. Rather, it’s a way of thinking. - [Why being open to changing our minds is especially important right now](https://80000hours.org/2022/11/why-being-open-to-changing-our-minds-is-especially-important-right-now/): If something surprises you, your view of the world should change in some way. We’ve argued that you should approach... - [Regarding the collapse of FTX](https://80000hours.org/2022/11/regarding-the-collapse-of-ftx/): The collapse of FTX is likely to cause a tremendous amount of harm – to customers, employees, and many others... - [The importance of considering speculative ideas](https://80000hours.org/2022/10/the-importance-of-considering-speculative-ideas/): If you want to do the most good you can, it can be a good sign to be working on something that sounds a little weird. Our list of the most pressing problems has some pretty widely accepted concerns, to be sure: we care about mitigating climate change, preventing nuclear war, and ensuring good governance. - [Open position: Recruiter](https://80000hours.org/2022/10/open-position-recruiter/): The role You’ll be managed by Sashika Coxhead, our Head of Recruiting, and will have the opportunity to work closely... - [Do recent breakthroughs mean transformative AI is coming sooner than we thought?](https://80000hours.org/2022/08/is-transformative-ai-coming-sooner-than-we-thought/): If transformative AI is coming sooner than expected, work to ensure this transformation goes well (rather than disastrously) is even more urgent. - [Expression of interest: Head of Operations](https://80000hours.org/2022/07/expression-of-interest-head-of-operations/): 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours provides research and support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most... - [Open position: Marketer](https://80000hours.org/2022/07/open-position-marketer-2022/): Applications for this position are now closed. We’re looking for a new marketer to help us expand our readership and... - [Know what you’re optimising for](https://80000hours.org/2022/06/know-what-youre-optimising-for/): This idea is about being deliberate in what you’re trying hard to achieve. It’s about trying to ensure that the subject of the majority of your effort is in fact the most important thing. - [Let's get serious about preventing the next pandemic](https://80000hours.org/2022/05/prevent-future-pandemics-with-these-projects/): I recently argued that it’s time for our community to be more ambitious. And when it comes to preventing pandemics,... - [Effective altruism and the current funding situation](https://80000hours.org/2022/05/ea-and-the-current-funding-situation/): This post gives an overview of how I’m thinking about the “funding in EA” issue, building on many conversations. Although... - [Leadership change at 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2022/05/leadership-change-at-80000-hours/): Hi readers! We’ve decided for Howie to become CEO and for me to become President of 80,000 Hours. After ten... - [My experience with imposter syndrome — and how to (partly) overcome it](https://80000hours.org/2022/04/imposter-syndrome/): I’ve felt like an imposter since my first year of university. I was accepted to the university that I believed... - [Open position: writer](https://80000hours.org/2022/04/open-position-writer/): About the 80,000 Hours web team 80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the... - [Open position: Operations specialist](https://80000hours.org/2022/03/open-position-operations-specialist/): 80,000 Hours 80,000 Hours provides research and support to help students and graduates switch into careers that effectively tackle the... - [Expression of interest: writer](https://80000hours.org/2022/03/expression-of-interest-writer/): Why 80,000 Hours? 80,000 Hours’ mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. The effective... - [23 career choice heuristics](https://80000hours.org/2022/03/23-career-choice-heuristics/): We decided to make a list of all of the career choice heuristics we could think of — see below.... - [Introducing 80k After Hours](https://80000hours.org/2022/02/introducing-80k-after-hours/): As The 80,000 Hours Podcast has developed over the last few years, we’ve found ourselves experimenting more with different types... - [Expression of interest: popular writing consultant](https://80000hours.org/2022/02/expression-of-interest-popular-writing-consultant/): Why 80,000 Hours? 80,000 Hours’ mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems. The effective... - [When to worry about replaceability, and when not to](https://80000hours.org/2022/01/replaceability/) - [Open position: Head of Job Board](https://80000hours.org/2022/01/open-position-head-of-job-board/): 80,000 Hours is hiring a Head of Job Board to lead the (https://80000hours. org/job-board/). They will be responsible for setting... - [Our advisors want to talk with more people than ever before](https://80000hours.org/2022/01/our-advisors-want-to-talk-with-more-people-than-ever-before/): Last year, 80,000 Hours’ advisors spoke to more people than ever before -- and we are hoping to help even... - [The twelve 80,000 Hours 2021 releases that affected our staff most](https://80000hours.org/2022/01/best-of-2021/): In 2021, we released over 20 new articles and blog posts, plus over 30 new podcast episodes. It was a... - [Insider insights from people reviewing their own careers](https://80000hours.org/2022/01/career-reviews-from-our-community/): The people who know the most about a career path are usually the people following that path themselves. Luckily, some... - [Open position: Advisor](https://80000hours.org/2022/01/open-position-advisor/) - [The growth of effective altruism: what does it mean for our priorities and level of ambition?](https://80000hours.org/2021/11/growth-of-effective-altruism/): Lots of people have claimed that effective altruism hasn’t been growing in recent years. In a recent talk, I argue... - [Effective altruism in a nutshell](https://80000hours.org/2021/10/effective-altruism-in-a-nutshell/): Let’s say you’re planning to buy a new laptop — well, how do you choose that laptop? You’re probably not... - [Open position: Marketer](https://80000hours.org/2021/08/open-position-marketer/): Applications for this position have now closed. We’re looking for a Marketer to help us expand our readership and be... - [Open position: Head of Marketing](https://80000hours.org/2021/08/open-position-head-of-marketing/): Applications for this position have now closed. We’re looking for a Head of Marketing to help us expand our readership... - [How are resources in effective altruism allocated across issues?](https://80000hours.org/2021/08/effective-altruism-allocation-resources-cause-areas/): How are the resources in effective altruism allocated across cause areas? Knowing these figures, for both funding and labour, can... - [Is effective altruism growing? An update on the stock of funding vs people](https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/): See a brief update Aug 2022. In 2015, I argued that funding for effective altruism — especially within meta or... - [Expression of interest: experienced writer](https://80000hours.org/2021/06/expression-of-interest-experienced-writer/): 80,000 Hours is considering hiring full-time writers who have demonstrable experience writing for the public and who have a preexisting... - [80,000 Hours Annual Review — November 2020](https://80000hours.org/2021/05/80000-hours-annual-review-nov-2020/): We’ve released our 2020 annual review. The full document is available as a Google Doc, and we’ve copied the summary... - [How much do people differ in productivity? What the evidence says.](https://80000hours.org/2021/05/how-much-do-people-differ-in-productivity/): We did a survey of academic research about how much people differ in productivity. This is a quick summary of what we found. - [Launching a new resource: 'Effective Altruism: An Introduction'](https://80000hours.org/2021/04/launching-a-new-resource-effective-altruism-an-introduction/): Today we’re launching a new podcast feed that might be useful to you or someone you know. It’s called Effective... - [Why I find longtermism hard, and what keeps me motivated](https://80000hours.org/2021/02/why-i-find-longtermism-hard/): I find working on longtermist causes to be — emotionally speaking — hard: There are so many terrible problems in... - [Rob Wiblin on how he ended up the way he is](https://80000hours.org/2021/02/rob-wiblin-on-how-he-ended-up-the-way-he-is/): Today we put out an interview with our Head of Research, Rob Wiblin, on our podcast feed. The interviewer is... - [Rob Wiblin on self-improvement and research ethics](https://80000hours.org/2021/01/rob-wiblin-on-self-improvement-and-research-ethics/): Today on our podcast feed, we’re releasing a crosspost of an episode of the Clearer Thinking Podcast: 022: Self-Improvement and... - [Notes on good judgement and how to develop it](https://80000hours.org/2020/09/good-judgement/): Good judgement is the ability to weigh complex information and is a valuable career asset. Find out what we know about how to develop good judgement. - [Career success: five philosophies](https://80000hours.org/2020/09/career-success/): What drives career success? Discover five different theories on how to be successful in your career. - [Why I've come to think global priorities research is more important than I thought](https://80000hours.org/2020/08/global-priorities-research-update/): We’ve rated global priorities research (GPR) as one of our top priority areas for some time, but over the last... - [The emerging school of patient longtermism](https://80000hours.org/2020/08/the-emerging-school-of-patient-longtermism/): One of the parts of effective altruism I’ve found most intellectually interesting recently is ‘patient longtermism’. This is a school... - [Misconceptions about effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/2020/08/misconceptions-effective-altruism/): William MacAskill on 4 top misconceptions about effective altruism. - [Ideas for high-impact careers beyond our priority paths](https://80000hours.org/2020/08/ideas-for-high-impact-careers-beyond-our-priority-paths/): Below we list some more career options beyond our priority paths that seem promising to us for positively influencing the... - [What 80,000 Hours learned by anonymously interviewing people we respect](https://80000hours.org/2020/06/lessons-from-anonymous-interviews/): We recently released the fifteenth and final installment in our series of posts with anonymous answers. These are from interviews... - [Anonymous answers: Are there myths you feel obliged to support publicly? And five other questions.](https://80000hours.org/2020/06/anonymous-answers-myths-and-other-questions/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: How should the effective altruism community think about diversity?](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/anonymous-answers-diversity/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Policy and research ideas to reduce existential risk](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/longtermist-policy-ideas/): In his book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, 80,000 Hours trustee Dr Toby Ord suggests a... - [What programmes will 80,000 Hours provide (and not provide) within the effective altruism community?](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/which-programmes-within-ea/): We aim to sum up what we intend to provide and what we can’t within effective altruism, to make it easier for other groups to fill these gaps. - [80,000 Hours Annual Review - December 2019](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/annual-review-dec-2019/): We review our progress and mistakes over 2019, and plans for 2020. - [200+ opportunities to work on COVID-19, and 60+ places to get funding](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/opportunities-to-work-on-covid-19/): Below is a list of opportunities to help the global response to COVID-19. The list focuses on opportunities in research,... - [Good news about COVID-19](https://80000hours.org/2020/04/good-news-about-covid-19/): Many of us feel depressed about the COVID-19 situation, and it is without doubt a horrible tragedy. But millions of... - [The coronavirus crisis and our new review of how to prevent the worst possible pandemics](https://80000hours.org/2020/03/coronavirus-crisis-new-gcbr-profile/): At the time of this writing, COVID 19 — a flu-like respiratory disease causing fever and pneumonia — has killed... - [Anonymous contributors answer: What are the biggest flaws of the effective altruism community?](https://80000hours.org/2020/03/anonymous-answers-flaws-effective-altruism-community/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: What are the biggest flaws of 80,000 Hours?](https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anonymous-answers-flaws-80000hours/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: Should the effective altruism community grow faster or slower? And should it be broader, or narrower?](https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anonymous-answers-effective-altruism-community-and-growth/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: What's some underrated general life advice?](https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anonymous-answers-general-life-advice/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: How honest & candid should high-profile people really be?](https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anon-answers-honesty/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: What's one way to be successful you don't think people talk about enough?](https://80000hours.org/2020/01/anon-answers-one-way-successful/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: What mistakes do people most often make when deciding what work to do?](https://80000hours.org/2019/12/anon-answers-what-to-work-on/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: What bad habits do you see among people trying to improve the world?](https://80000hours.org/2019/12/anonymous-answers-bad-habits/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous answers: How risk-averse should talented young people be about their careers?](https://80000hours.org/2019/11/anonymous-answers-risk-aversion/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous contributors answer: If you were 18 again, what would you do differently this time around? And other personal career reflections.](https://80000hours.org/2019/11/anonymous-answers-personal-reflections/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous answers: What’s the thing people most overrate in their career?](https://80000hours.org/2019/11/anonymous-answers-most-overrated/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous answers: How have you seen talented people fail in their work?](https://80000hours.org/2019/10/anonymous-advice-fail-at-work/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and whose answers we offered to publish without... - [Anonymous advice: What's good career advice you wouldn’t want to have your name on?](https://80000hours.org/2019/10/anonymous-advice-careers/): The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and who would like to remain anonymous. - [Have we helped you have a bigger social impact? Our annual impact survey 2019](https://80000hours.org/2019/09/have-we-helped-you-have-a-bigger-social-impact-our-annual-impact-survey/): Briefly, once a year, we at 80,000 Hours ask you to tell us if we’ve helped you have a larger... - [How replaceable are the top candidates in large hiring rounds? Why the answer flips depending on the distribution of applicant ability](https://80000hours.org/2019/08/how-replaceable-are-top-candidates-in-large-hiring-rounds/): As more and more people apply for a job, the value of each extra application goes down. But does it... - [Rob Wiblin on human nature, new technology, and living a happy, healthy & ethical life](https://80000hours.org/2019/05/rob-wiblin-on-living-well/): Today we cross-posted to our podcast feed some interviews Rob did recently on two other podcasts — Mission Daily (from... - [80,000 Hours Annual Review - December 2018](https://80000hours.org/2019/05/annual-review-dec-2018/): We review our progress and mistakes over 2018, and plans for 2019. - [Recap: why do some organisations say their recent hires are worth so much?](https://80000hours.org/2019/05/why-do-organisations-say-recent-hires-are-worth-so-much/) - [Career advice I wish I'd been given when I was young](https://80000hours.org/2019/04/career-advice-i-wish-id-been-given-when-i-was-young/): Note: A reader who prefers to remain anonymous — but whose career we think did a lot of good —... - [Find your highest impact role: 104 new vacancies in our February 2019 job board updates](https://80000hours.org/2019/02/february-job-board-updates/): Our job board continues to get big updates each 2 week, and now lists 235 vacancies, with 104 additional opportunities... - [Find your highest impact role: 77 new vacancies in our December job board updates](https://80000hours.org/2018/12/find-your-highest-impact-role-77-new-vacancies-in-our-december-job-board-updates/): Thanks to the sterling work of Maria Gutierrez, our job board continues to get big updates each 2 week, and... - [A simple checklist for overcoming life and career setbacks](https://80000hours.org/2018/12/dealing-with-setbacks/): At 80,000 Hours we focus a lot on developing ambitious plans to dramatically improve the world. Something we haven’t written... - [Think twice before talking about 'talent gaps' — clarifying nine misconceptions](https://80000hours.org/2018/11/clarifying-talent-gaps/): After pushing the idea of ‘talent gaps’ in 2015, we’ve noticed increasing confusion about the term. This is partly our... - [New article: Have a particular strength? Already an expert in a field? Here are the socially impactful careers 80,000 Hours suggests you consider first.](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/new-article-advice-by-expertise/): We’ve published a new article that summarises our advice based on your strengths and link you to the most relevant... - [Second October job board update](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/second-october-job-board-update/) - [New article: Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/new-article-accidental-harm/): We’ve published a new article about how to avoid accidentally causing harm through your career: “We encourage people to work... - [What skills or experience are most needed within professional effective altruism in 2018? And which problems are most effective to work on? New survey of organisational leaders.](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/2018-talent-gaps-survey/): Read this to see the 2019 data. Update April 2019: We think that our use of the term ‘talent gaps’... - [New career review on becoming an academic researcher: Highlights on your chances of success, which fields have highest GRE scores, & having impact outside research](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/career-review-academic-research/) - [October job board update](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/october-job-board-update/) - [List of 80,000 Hours content from the last 4 months, summary of what was most popular, and plans for future releases.](https://80000hours.org/2018/10/research-review-4-months/): Cross posted from the Effective Altruism Forum. Here’s your regular reminder of everything 80,000 Hours has released over the last... - [Recent research we've published: Our top 10 careers for social impact; Congressional staffing; Comparative advantage; And can you guess which psychology experiments will replicate?](https://80000hours.org/2018/09/recent-research-weve-published-our-top-10-careers-for-social-impact-congressional-staffing-comparative-advantage-and-can-you-guess-which-psychology-experiments-will-replicate/): We recently published a number of new articles that you might have missed if you don’t follow us on social... - [American with a science PhD? Get a fast-track into AI and STEM policy by applying for the acclaimed AAAS Science & Technology Fellowship by Nov 1.](https://80000hours.org/2018/09/aaas-science-technology-policy-fellowship/): Within just four years of finishing her PhD in biophysics, Jessica Tuchman Mathews was Director of Global Issues for President... - [Randomised experiment: If you're genuinely unsure whether to quit your job or break up, then you probably should](https://80000hours.org/2018/08/randomised-experiment-if-youre-really-unsure-whether-to-quit-your-job-or-break-up-you-really-probably-should/): One of my favourite studies ever is ‘Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions... - [80,000 Hours user data is affected by the Typeform data breach](https://80000hours.org/2018/07/typeform-data-breach/): On Monday we learnt that Typeform, a popular service we’ve used to create some of our online forms, has suffered a significant data security breach. Many 80,000 Hours users have have completed one or more of these forms, and a subset of their form responses were among the information that was stolen from Typeform. - [Annual review December 2017](https://80000hours.org/2017/12/annual-review/): We review our progress and mistakes over 2017, and plans for 2018. - [Guide to effective holiday giving in 2017](https://80000hours.org/2017/12/effective-holiday-giving-in-2017/): It’s that wonderful time of year again – the time I have to rush out a blog post about effective... - [Why you should consider applying for grad school (but make sure you're aware of the potential drawbacks of attending!)](https://80000hours.org/2017/11/consider-applying-for-a-phd-program-now/): Last updated: Aug 2018. Application deadlines for US PhD programs are coming up over the next month (as of Nov... - [What are the most important talent gaps in the effective altruism community?](https://80000hours.org/2017/11/talent-gaps-survey-2017/): Note that this article is from 2017. For more up-to-date findings, see our new 2018 survey, which asked most of... - [Our 20 most popular pieces of research](https://80000hours.org/2017/10/our-20-most-popular-pieces-of-research/) - [New career review: Policy-oriented civil service (with a UK focus)](https://80000hours.org/2017/10/new-career-review-policy-oriented-civil-service-with-a-uk-focus/): We have a new career review focussed on government jobs developing policy, with a focus on the UK: Working in... - [New problem profile: Improving institutional decision-making](https://80000hours.org/2017/10/new-problem-profile-improving-institutional-decision-making/): A few weeks ago we released a new problem profile focussed on improving decision-making in major societal institutions: When powerful... - [Which professions are paid too much given their value to society?](https://80000hours.org/2017/06/which-jobs-do-economists-say-create-the-largest-spillover-benefits-for-society/): Many jobs have spillover effects on the rest of society. For instance, the value of new treatments discovered by biomedical... - [The Schwarzman Scholarship: An exciting opportunity to learn more about China and get a Masters in Global Affairs](https://80000hours.org/2017/06/the-schwarzman-scholarship-an-exciting-opportunity-to-learn-more-about-china-and-get-a-masters-in-global-affairs/): Co-authored with Helen Toner. In general, living in a foreign country – for example, by studying there – is a... - [How much do hedge fund traders earn?](https://80000hours.org/2017/05/how-much-do-hedge-fund-traders-earn/): Hedge fund trading may be the highest paying job in the world, so to learn more, we spoke with a... - [Most people report believing it's incredibly cheap to save lives in the developing world](https://80000hours.org/2017/05/most-people-report-believing-its-incredibly-cheap-to-save-lives-in-the-developing-world/): One way that people can have a social impact with their career is to donate money to effective charities. We... - [How accurately does anyone know the global distribution of income?](https://80000hours.org/2017/04/how-accurately-does-anyone-know-the-global-distribution-of-income/): How much should you believe the numbers in figures like this? People in the effective altruism community often refer to... - [What skills are effective altruist organisations short of? Results from our survey.](https://80000hours.org/2017/03/what-skills-are-effective-altruist-organisations-missing/): A survey of the skills that are most lacking in the effective altruism community. - [5 reasons not to go into education](https://80000hours.org/2017/01/5-reasons-not-to-go-into-education/): Many people who want to make a difference are interested in careers in education. But there's many reasons education doesn't look like the best cause to enter. - [The effective altruism guide to donating this giving season](https://80000hours.org/2016/12/the-effective-altruism-guide-to-donating-this-giving-season/): People in the effective altruism community aim to use evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to best promote... - [80,000 Hours annual review Dec 2016](https://80000hours.org/2016/12/annual-review-dec-2016/): Summary 2016 was an excellent year for 80,000 Hours. Here are some highlights – full details follow. Metrics In our... - [Has 80,000 Hours justified its costs?](https://80000hours.org/2016/12/has-80000-hours-justified-its-costs/): We set up 80,000 Hours because we thought it could become one of the most effective charities in the world.... - [End of year update on plan changes](https://80000hours.org/2016/12/metrics-report-2016/): This is an update on the number of significant plan changes we’ve caused as of the end of Nov 2016.... - [80,000 Hours has a funding gap](https://80000hours.org/2016/12/80000-hours-has-a-funding-gap/) - [Update on 80,000 Hours May 2015 - June 2016](https://80000hours.org/2016/09/update-on-80000-hours-may-2015-june-2016/): This is a quick update on our progress over the last year. Our next in-depth annual review, in which we’ll... - [Trevor decided to move from a nonprofit to a for-profit to do more good in the long run. Was it the right call?](https://80000hours.org/2016/08/plan-change-story-building-skills-in-the-private-sector-to-have-more-impact-in-the-long-run/): This is part of our series of profiles of people who changed their career in a major way in order... - [Is deep work the most underappreciated skill for career success? An interview with Cal Newport.](https://80000hours.org/2016/08/is-deep-work-the-most-underappreciated-skill-for-career-success-an-interview-with-cal-newport/): In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king – or so the saying goes. In his new... - [Update on number of significant plan changes](https://80000hours.org/2016/07/update-on-number-of-significant-plan-changes/): This is a brief update on the number of significant plan changes we’ve caused as of the end of Dec... - [Maria Gutierrez on doing good through art, Costa Rica and why 80,000 Hours changed her career](https://80000hours.org/2016/06/interview-with-maria-gutierrez-about-doing-good-through-art/): In 2014 Maria had a general desire to improve the world, but no idea how to put that into practice. She didn't see any way to do good using her art. - [New report: Is climate change the biggest problem in the world?](https://80000hours.org/2016/05/how-can-we-buy-more-insurance-against-extreme-climate-change/): How does climate change rank amongst the worlds biggest problems? Should you use your career to work on this problem? - [The rent is too damn high — should you work on reforming land use regulations?](https://80000hours.org/2016/05/the-rent-is-too-damn-high-should-you-work-on-reforming-land-use-regulations/): Local laws often prohibit the construction of dense new housing, which drives up prices, especially in a few large high-wage urban areas. - [Why and how to work on nuclear security](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/how-and-why-to-work-on-nuclear-security/): We’ve released a new ‘problem profile’ on the risks posed by nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons that are currently armed have... - [How and why to use your career to make artificial intelligence safer](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-use-your-career-to-make-artificial-intelligence-safe/): We've released a new 'problem profile' on the risks posed by artificial intelligence. - [The case for and against using your career to combat smoking](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/the-case-for-dedicating-your-career-to-tobacco-control/): Smoking takes an enormous toll on human health - accounting for about 6% of all ill-health globally according to the best estimates. - [Why and how to work on cause prioritisation research](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-work-on-cause-prioritisation-research/): Global priorities research seeks to use new methods to determine in which causes funding to improve the world can have the biggest impact. - [Is global health the most pressing problem to work on?](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-work-on-global-health-problems/): Every year around ten million people in poorer countries die of illnesses that can be very cheaply prevented or managed,... - [Why and how to use your career to end factory farming](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/new-profile-on-factory-farming/): Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms. Most experience extreme levels of suffering. - [Why and how to use your career to work on biosecurity](https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-use-your-career-to-work-on-biosecurity/): Natural pandemics and new scientifically engineered pathogens could potentially kill millions or even billions of people. - [We'll pay you up to £1,000 to write a career review for us](https://80000hours.org/2016/03/write-career-reviews-for-us-as-a-freelancer/): To get more career reviews written quickly we are going to experiment with allowing readers to submit them themselves. - [Which skills make you most employable?](https://80000hours.org/2016/03/which-skills-make-you-most-employable/): There’s lots of skills you could learn. How can we narrow them down to the most useful ones? - [Will high stress kill you, save your life, or neither?](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/should-you-look-for-a-low-stress-job/): If you’re working on a lake and also using your laptop to look at pictures of lakes, you might need a harder job. - [Interview: trying to change the resources industry from the inside](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/interview-trying-to-change-the-resources-industry-from-the-inside/): Benjamin Todd interviewed Michael Dello-Iacovo about his attempts to do good as a geophysicist inside the Australian mining industry. - [Help build our career guide as a freelance web engineer](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/we-are-looking-for-a-freelance-product-engineer-to-build-our-interactive-career-guide-and-help-millions-of-graduates-have-a-greater-social-impact-1000-for-referrals/): We'd like to hire a freelance web engineer to work 2-3 days per week developing our career guide for the next six months. - [New career review: web designer](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/new-career-review-web-designer/): What is the best career for someone whose main strengths are in visual design? We’ve released a new career review on web design. - [What the literature says about the earnings of entrepreneurs](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/what-the-literature-says-about-the-earnings-of-entrepreneurs/): It depends a lot on what kind of business you're trying to run. - [Use our tool to decide whether you're on the right career path](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/annual-career-check-in/): Once you’re done and have decided what steps to take, you can relax about your career trajectory for another 12 months! - [How important is finding a career that matches your strengths?](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/how-important-is-finding-a-career-that-matches-your-strengths/): One of the most common ideas in career advice is that finding a good career is a matter of finding the role that uniquely matches you. But is that right? - [Is nursing or headhunting the best career for you?](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/new-career-reviews-of-headhunting-and-nursing/): What are the pros and cons of these careers, and who do they best suit? - [Doing good through for-profits: Wave and financial tech](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/doing-good-through-for-profits-lincoln-quirk-and-wave/): Lincoln Quirk is saving people 70% of the cost of sending money back to their families in east Africa. - [Rule-breaking in children predicts future success](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/rule-breaking-in-children-predicts-future-success/): A paper was recently released looking into which personality factors in childhood predict success in education and work. The study... - [We can learn a lot from Tara, who left pharmacy to work in effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/we-can-learn-a-lot-from-tara-who-left-pharmacy-to-work-in-effective-altruism/): Tara saved lives working as a pharmacist in Bhutan - no really we checked, and she totally did - but she nevertheless left to try to find something better. - [Plan change story: interview with Dillon Bowen, founder of Effective Altruism group at Tufts University](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/plan-change-story-interview-with-dillon-bowen-leader-of-effective-altruism-at-tufts-university/): I recently interviewed Dillon Bowen, who runs the EA student group at Tufts University, about how his career plans changed... - [The value of coordination](https://80000hours.org/2016/02/the-value-of-coordination/): When you’re part of a community doing the most good becomes much more of a coordination problem. - [10 steps to a job in politics](https://80000hours.org/2016/01/10-steps-to-a-job-in-politics/): Sacia B and Hugh T speak to Maria A while campaigning for the Greens in Canada. I recently interviewed 4... - [Just how bad is being a CEO in big tobacco?](https://80000hours.org/2016/01/just-how-bad-is-being-a-ceo-in-big-tobacco/): Last year I wrote about the most harmful careers and had encouraging smoking at the top. But how bad is it exactly? - [Is now the time to do something about AI?](https://80000hours.org/2016/01/is-now-the-time-to-do-something-about-ai/): Open Philanthropy recently released a review of research on when human level artificial intelligence will be achieved. The main conclusion of the report was we’re really uncertain - [Where should you donate to have the most impact during giving season 2015?](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/where-should-you-donate-to-have-the-most-impact-in-giving-season-2015/): Many of our readers choose to give away substantial sums over the ‘giving season’ around Christmas and New Year. Where... - [Podcast with Ben West, who expects to donate tens of millions for charity through tech entrepreneurship](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/interview-with-ben-who-expects-to-donate-eight-figures-for-charity-through-tech-entrepreneurship/): I recently interviewed Ben West (second to left), the founder of Health eFilings. After reading 80,000 Hours’ website, Ben entered... - [Who should found a startup? Podcast with the founder of Entrepreneur First](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/podcast-with-founder-of-entrepreneur-first-about-being-a-startup-founder/): I recently interviewed Matt Clifford (left), the Co-founder & Chief Executive at (http://www. joinef. com/), which describes itself as “*Europe’s... - [Even if we can't lower catastrophic risks now, we should do something now so we can do more later](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/even-if-we-cant-lower-catastrophic-risks-now-we-should-do-something-now-so-we-can-do-more-later/): Does that fit with your schedule Mr President? A line of argument I frequently encounter is that it is too... - [What’s the easiest way anyone can have a big social impact?](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/whats-the-easiest-way-anyone-can-have-a-big-social-impact/): Let’s suppose you want to minimise sacrifice and maximise the good you do. What should you choose? - [Plan change story: from neuroscience academia to cost-effectiveness research](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/plan-change-story-from-neuroscience-academia-to-cost-effectiveness-research/): Hauke did a PhD in Neuroscience and was planning to go into academia. But after reading our research, he changed... - [Lehua closed down her fundraising startup after reading our blog: plan change story](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/plan-change-report-lehua-gray-closed-down-her-fundraising-startup-when-she-realised-it-wouldnt-have-impact/): Learning about ‘counterfactual analysis’ threw some puts on sunglasses cold water on Lehua’s startup idea. Lehua Gray’s story is an... - [How to pursue a career in research to lower the risks from superintelligent machines: a new career review.](https://80000hours.org/2015/12/how-to-pursue-a-career-in-research-to-lower-the-risks-from-superintelligent-machines-a-new-career-review/): This is a summary of our full career review on artificial intelligence risk research. Have you read the profile and... - [Working at effective altruist organisations: good or bad for career capital?](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-good-or-bad-for-career-capital/): Working in effective altruism directly is a good way to build career capital in some respects, and a bad way... - [Why you should focus more on talent gaps, not funding gaps](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-you-should-focus-more-on-talent-gaps-not-funding-gaps/): Update April 2019: We think that our use of the term ‘talent gaps’ in this post (and elsewhere) has caused... - [Take the growth approach to evaluating startup nonprofits, not the marginal approach](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/take-the-growth-approach-to-evaluating-startup-non-profits-not-the-marginal-approach/): In its first 2 years, Google made no revenue. Did this indicate it was a bad idea to invest or... - [One of the most exciting new effective altruist organisations: An interview with David Goldberg of the Founders Pledge](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/one-of-the-most-exciting-new-effective-altruist-organisations-an-interview-with-david-goldberg-of-the-founders-pledge/) - [Stop assuming 'declining returns' in small charities](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/stop-talking-about-declining-returns-in-small-organisations/): Amazon is one of the world’s largest companies and is still achieving lower marginal costs as it gets larger. Organisations... - [Are our most engaged readers overweighting career capital?](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/safe-credentials-are-not-always-the-best-way-to-career-capital/): We’ve spoken a lot about the importance of building career capital. But now, it seems like some of our most... - [In case you missed it: Open Phil would like to fund a science policy think tank](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/in-case-you-missed-it-open-phil-would-like-to-fund-a-science-policy-think-tank/): It appears to us that the strongest scientific funders have little interest in policy analysis and advocacy, while the strongest... - [Why and how to found a (GiveWell) nonprofit](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-and-how-to-found-a-givewell-non-profit/): We’ve argued against nonprofit jobs as an early career move, because many have little impact and you often don’t get... - [The story of 80,000 Hours (podcast)](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/the-story-of-80000-hours-podcast/): Here’s a podcast with me by Campus Kudos on: How 80,000 Hours got started. How I ended up working at... - [Why even our readers should save enough to live for 6-24 months](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-everyone-even-our-readers-should-save-enough-to-live-for-6-24-months/): Your 'personal runway' is how many months you can easily live if you stopped working. It’s a product of the... - [Our new tool can help you make the right career decision](https://80000hours.org/2015/11/our-new-tool-can-help-you-make-the-right-career-decisions/): We’ve released a new tool to help you think through career decisions, such as which major to study, which jobs... - [Common investing mistakes in the effective altruism community](https://80000hours.org/2015/10/common-investing-mistakes-in-the-effective-altruism-community/): This was written in 2015 and no longer reflects all my current thinking, though I think still makes some good... - [How to write a career plan](https://80000hours.org/2015/10/how-to-write-a-career-plan/): We see lots of career planning mistakes. Some people simply don’t have a plan, and hope the future will figure... - [Startup employees don't earn more](https://80000hours.org/2015/10/startup-salaries-and-equity-compensation/): We estimate typical startup salaries and equity compensation, and find early-employees don't earn more than large company employees. - [New opportunities to work in effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/2015/10/new-opportunities-to-work-in-effective-altruism/) - [The return to coding bootcamps may not remain so high forever](https://80000hours.org/2015/09/the-return-to-coding-bootcamps-may-not-remain-so-high-forever/): We have (https://80000hours. org/2014/06/case-series-why-and-how-to-learn-programming/) about learning to code as a way to gain useful skills for earning to give or... - [Join us as product engineer, build our interactive career guide, and help millions of graduates have a greater social impact. $1000 for referrals.](https://80000hours.org/2015/09/join-us-as-product-engineer-build-our-interactive-career-guide-and-help-millions-of-graduates-have-a-greater-social-impact-1000-for-referrals/): Our aim is to help as many graduates as possible maximise the social impact of their careers. We’re looking for... - [Are too many people going into biomedical research - or too few?](https://80000hours.org/2015/09/are-too-many-people-going-into-biomedical-research-or-too-few/): Are too many people going into biomedical research or too few? As we explore in our new review of the... - [Will effective altruism destroy the arts? No.](https://80000hours.org/2015/09/will-effective-altruism-destroy-the-arts-no/): A recent article on the Washington Post expressed concern that the growth of effective altruism could seriously reduce funding for... - [What do journalists say about journalism as a high-impact career?](https://80000hours.org/2015/09/what-do-journalists-say-about-journalism-as-a-high-impact-career-interviews-with-dylan-matthews-derek-thompson-and-shaun-raviv/): I interviewed three journalists who have written articles that promote important causes: Dylan Matthews, Derek Thompson, and Shaun Raviv. - [What do leaders of effective nonprofits say about working in nonprofits?](https://80000hours.org/2015/09/what-do-leaders-of-effective-non-profits-say-about-working-in-non-profits-interviews-with-givedirectly-deworm-the-world-initiative-development-media-international-schistosomiasis-control-initiativ/): Rob Mather - founder and CEO of GiveWell’s top rated charity, Against Malaria Foundation. Photo credit: Andrew Testa. I reached... - [How can doctors do the most good? An interview with Dr Gregory Lewis](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/how-can-doctors-do-the-most-good-an-interview-with-dr-gregory-lewis/): Gregory Lewis is public health doctor training in the east of England. He studied medicine at Cambridge, where he volunteered... - [How to explore in your career](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/how-to-explore-in-your-career/): Tony Blair tried to make it in rock n roll before going into politics. We often talk about the benefits... - [What are the 10 most harmful jobs?](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/what-are-the-10-most-harmful-jobs/): We spend most of our time discussing the most helpful careers that you should take. We just created a three... - [Try the new 80,000 Hours 'Career Recommender' - it could change your life](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/try-the-new-80000-hours-career-recommender-it-could-change-your-life/): We just added a new and very cool feature to our website: (https://80000hours. org/career-quiz/). It takes about 3 minutes to... - [4 reasons working at a foundation is better than you think](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/4-reasons-working-at-a-foundation-is-better-than-you-think/): If you're an all-rounder who wants to make a difference, consider working as a foundation grantmaker. Grantmaking can seem like... - [Review of program performance May 2015](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/review-of-program-performance/): Summary In this report, which is part of our annual review, we review how our programs performed over the last... - [Review of progress May 2015](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/review-of-progress-may-2015/): In this post, which is part of our annual review, we review our achievements, challenges and mistakes over the year... - [Plans for the coming year May 2015](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/plans-for-the-coming-year-may-2015/): This report explains our strategy and plans for the next year, and is part of our annual review. Moving from... - [What's it like being a nonprofit in Y Combinator?](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/why-is-80000-hours-in-y-combinator-as-a-non-profit-and-whats-it-like/): Now the obligatory Tech Crunch article is out, I’m thrilled to announce we’ve been in Y Combinator (YC) since June.... - [Summary of our annual review May 2015](https://80000hours.org/2015/08/summary-of-our-annual-review-may-2015/): We’ve just published our annual review for the period ending April 2015. In case you’re new to 80,000 Hours, this... - [Can you have more impact working in a foundation than earning to give?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/can-you-have-more-impact-working-in-a-foundation-than-earning-to-give/): Photo credit: Flickr – Refracted Moments Key points Working to improve grants at a foundation could well be more effective... - [‘Replaceability’ isn’t as important as you might think (or we’ve suggested)](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/replaceability-isnt-as-important-as-you-might-think-or-weve-suggested/): Often if you turn down a skilled job, the role simply won't be filled at all because there's no suitable... - [Update: how many extra donations have we caused?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/update-how-many-extra-donations-have-we-caused/): One way 80,000 Hours has an impact is by increasing the amount our users donate to high-impact charities. As part... - [80,000 Hours finance report April 2015](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-finance-report-april-2015-2/): In this report, we outline our income, expenses, projected budget and financial situation as of the end of March 2015. - [LinkedIn finds the most common ways in and out of every career](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/linkedin-finds-the-most-common-ways-in-and-out-of-every-career/): We recently wrote a career profile on medicine which said that one of the most common exit opportunities for physicians... - [Is wealth inequality so extreme that it's OK to be a ruthless trader?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/is-wealth-inequality-so-extreme-that-its-ok-to-be-a-ruthless-trader/): Wealth inequality globally is incredibly high. Perversely, this can be an argument in favour of working in finance. Many people... - [We’ve caused 188 significant plan changes](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/weve-caused-188-significant-plan-changes/): The results of our annual impact survey are in, so we can give an update on the number of significant... - [New definition of a significant plan change](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/new-definition-of-a-significant-plan-change/) - [Systemic change becomes non-systemic change and vice versa](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/systemic-change-becomes-non-systemic-change-and-vice-versa/): As you might have heard, there is an active debate among the 80,000 Hours community about the effectiveness of attempts... - [If you want to save lives, should you study medicine? Probably not.](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/if-you-want-to-save-lives-should-you-study-medicine-probably-not/): About 1 in 200 people become doctors, many of them because they want to cure the sick and generally make... - [Get the chance to save the world with this one weird trick](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/get-the-chance-to-save-the-world-with-this-one-weird-trick/): When I was an undergraduate I came to fully understand the depth of the world’s problems: tens of billions of... - [Disagreeing about what's effective isn't disagreeing with effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/disagreeing-about-whats-effective-isnt-disagreeing-with-effective-altruism/): Lately I have had the uncanny experience of reading supposed ‘rebuttals’ of effective altruism that just say a bunch of... - [Defining 'Earning to Give'](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/defining-earning-to-give/): We’ve found there’s sometimes been confusion about what ‘earning to give’ means. Here’s our working definition. You’re earning to give... - [What people miss about career capital: exceptional achievements](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/what-people-miss-about-career-capital-exceptional-achievements/): Pooja Chandrashekar is a good demonstration that sometimes the best way to show people you can achieve amazing things is... - [Effective altruists love systemic change](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/effective-altruists-love-systemic-change/): Effective altruists are out working every day to fix society's systemic problems. It's time to definitely rebut the claim that... - [Why you usually shouldn't work at nonprofits straight after graduation](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/why-you-usually-shouldnt-work-at-non-profits-straight-after-graduation/): I recently gave a TEDx talk at Cambridge University, where I argue that, most of the time, graduates who want... - [80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/): Norman Borlaug didn’t make millions, his research just saved millions of lives. One of the most common misconceptions that we’ve... - [Why are wages less stable in skilled professions?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/why-are-wages-less-stable-in-skilled-professions/): > There is some evidence, in fact, that markets for highly skilled workers, such as engineers and other specialized professionals,... - [In some careers your parents can give you a huge boost. Should you do what they did?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/in-some-careers-your-parents-can-give-you-a-huge-boost-should-you-do-what-they-did/): Would Angelina Jolie have been as successful if her father wasn’t Jon Voight? In our talks we often note that... - [What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/what-are-your-odds-of-getting-into-congress-if-you-try/): Calculation of the chances of being elected to Congress if you reach certain posts. - [I want to make a difference. Should I work in marketing?](https://80000hours.org/2015/07/i-want-to-make-a-difference-should-i-work-in-marketing/): If you want to make a difference, should you work in marketing? The short answer: probably not. Although marketing may... - [What’s the best way to spend $20,000 to help the common good?](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/whats-the-best-way-to-spend-20000-to-help-the-common-good/): I recently came across the following question posted by Paul Buchheit (the founder of Gmail): Assume that I'm going to... - [I want to make a difference. Should I become a philosopher?](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/i-want-to-make-a-difference-should-i-become-a-philosopher/): To most people, this question sounds like a joke. I think that’s the wrong reaction. (Full career profile on philosophy... - [Should you go into journalism to make a difference?](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/should-you-go-into-journalism-to-make-a-difference/): We just completed an (https://80000hours. org/career-reviews/journalism). To write the profile, we interviewed an NPR correspondent and a writer for the... - [Should you do a computer science PhD?](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/should-you-do-a-computer-science-phd/): We’ve released a new exploratory profile on computer science PhD’s in the US. Our recommendation in the profile: A computer... - [Why an economics PhD might be the best graduate program](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-an-economics-phd-might-be-the-best-graduate-program/): We've released an (https://80000hours. org/career-reviews/economics-phd), concluding that it looks like one of the most promising graduate study options for people... - [Advice on entering a US economics PhD from the UK with a non-quantitative background](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/advice-on-entering-a-us-economics-phd-from-the-uk-with-a-non-quantitative-background/): We asked someone with a philosophy undergraduate degree from the UK who was applying to economics PhD's in the US,... - [Announcing the effective altruism handbook](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/announcing-the-effective-altruism-handbook/): A new Effective Altruism handbook has been released, which features some of 80,000 Hours' ideas about high impact careers. - [New profile on a new career path: data science](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/new-profile-on-a-new-career-path-data-science/): 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. - [New in-depth profile on software engineering](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/new-in-depth-profile-on-software-engineering/): We've released a major update to our career profile on software engineering. See the updated profile here and the full... - [The winner takes all economy](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/the-winner-takes-all-economy/): It’s said that we live in an increasingly “winner takes all” economy. The following chart provides a nice illustration. - [Donating to Giving What We Can is higher impact than donating to GiveWell recommended charities.](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/donating-to-giving-what-we-can-is-higher-impact-than-donating-to-givewell-recommended-charities/): If you give to Giving What We Can, you'll have more impact than giving directly to GiveWell top recommended charities. - [The rise of income inequality and what it means for your career](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/rise-of-income-inequality/): What's driving the increasing in income inequality and what does it mean for your career? - [Why I stopped Earning to Give](https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-i-stopped-earning-to-give/): I stopped in mid-2014, and I do not plan to do it again. Instead, I am now writing a master’s thesis in philosophy, and I aim for a career in that field. - [New TEDx talk released!](https://80000hours.org/2015/05/new-tedx-talk-released/): To find fulfilling work, don't follow your passion. - [New in-depth profile on management consulting](https://80000hours.org/2015/05/new-in-depth-profile-on-management-consulting/): We've released a major update to our career profile on management consulting. See the updated profile here. See the new... - [Our advice in three minutes](https://80000hours.org/2015/04/our-advice-in-three-minutes/): We've summarised the 9 major types of career change that our members have taken as a result of our career advice. - [The four big challenges](https://80000hours.org/2015/04/four-big-challenges/): The 80,000 Hours community is involved with many different causes - from scientific research to social justice - but there... - [10 new organisations founded due to 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2015/04/10-new-organisations-founded-due-to-80000-hours/): One of our key reasons for founding 80,000 Hours was the “multiplier argument”: When we graduated, we had two options:... - [Get paid to do existential risk reduction research](https://80000hours.org/2015/04/get-paid-to-do-existential-risk-reduction-research/): (http://cser. org) (CSER) is hiring for postdoctoral researchers. Existential risk reduction is a high-priority area on the analysis of the... - [Education research: Interview with Dan Greene](https://80000hours.org/2015/03/education-research-interview-with-dan-greene/): If you’d like to work in education research and design to make a difference, how should you go about it? We recently asked Dan Greene for his thoughts. - [How to network](https://80000hours.org/2015/03/how-to-network/): It’s no secret that networking can be (https://80000hours. org/2013/05/how-important-is-networking-for-career-success). It's useful in helping you to find out about jobs *and*... - [Researcher position available at Animal Charity Evaluators](https://80000hours.org/2015/02/researcher-position-available-at-animal-charity-evaluators/): Animal Charity Evaluators has a researcher position available. They are looking for applicants with a passion for animal welfare and research. - [The Chronicle of Higher Education on who gets 'elite' jobs](https://80000hours.org/2015/02/chronical-on-elite-jobs/): Recruiters for elite jobs (law firms, investment banks, consultancies) pay more attention to what school you attended than anything else. - [Should I help now or later?](https://80000hours.org/2015/02/should-i-help-now-or-later/): When committing to make a difference, it can be hard to decide if you should help now or later. We outline a method to choose between different options. - [We change more than we expect](https://80000hours.org/2015/02/we-change-more-than-we-expect-so-keep-your-options-open/): How much will your personality, values and preferences change over the next decade? Probably more than you think, so keep your options open. - [How to start a career in technology (even if you studied art)](https://80000hours.org/2015/02/how-to-start-a-career-in-technology/): We recently hosted a panel on careers in technology, featuring four people who did arts degrees but ended up working in tech and loving their jobs. - [Which careers are most likely to be automated?](https://80000hours.org/2015/02/which-careers-will-be-automated/): A recent paper suggests that up to 47% of American jobs are at risk of being automated within the next couple of decades. - [The social impact of different professions](https://80000hours.org/2015/01/the-social-impact-of-different-professions/): Economists and Harvard and Chicago recently published a paper that contains a number of estimates of the social value produced... - [A meta-analysis may not mean much](https://80000hours.org/2015/01/a-meta-analysis-may-not-mean-much/): Scott Alexander recently posted an interesting and provocative article: (http://slatestarcodex. com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/) (and see the follow up post (http://slatestarcodex. com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well-refuted/)). In... - [Opportunity to work at JPAL as a Research Associate - just hours left to apply!](https://80000hours.org/2015/01/opportunity-to-work-at-jpal-as-a-research-associate-just-hours-left-to-apply/): The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is the world leader in conducting evidence-based research in developing countries. Their... - [Earning to give is systemic change](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/earning-to-give-is-systemic-change/): One of the most common criticisms of earning to give (e. g. see (http://www. varsity. co. uk/comment/8000) released yesterday), and... - [Why apply to Teach First?: An interview with the UK's largest graduate recruiter](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/we-interview-the-uks-largest-graduate-recruiter-teach-first/): Teach First is a two year program that places talented graduates in schools in challenging circumstances as teachers after a... - [The camel doesn't have two humps - update to software engineering profile](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/the-camel-doesnt-have-two-humps-update-to-software-engineering-profile/): In our current software engineering profile, we say: > Programming ability seems to roughly divide into two groups: those who... - [Stop worrying so much about the long-term](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/stop-worrying-so-much-about-the-long-term/): Today I’ve been reviewing our most recent round of coaching, and something struck me about the applications. Many of them... - [Learn to code in 16 weeks for free in the UK at Founders and Coders](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/learn-to-code-in-16-weeks-for-free-in-the-uk-at-founders-and-coders/): Want to learn to code for in 16 weeks in the UK or free? A review of Founders and Coders. - [Interested in working in international development? Consider 2Seeds.](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/interested-in-working-in-international-development-consider-2seeds/): Many people have told us that if you want to work in international development, it's very useful to spend time... - [Giving What We Can is seeking a Director of Research](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/giving-what-we-can-is-seeking-a-director-of-research/): Giving What We Can is our sister organisation, and we are cross posting this job opportunity from their blog: In... - [Interview with a project manager at the Copenhagen Consensus](https://80000hours.org/2014/12/interview-with-a-project-manager-at-the-copenhagen-consensus/): Ben recently interviewed Brad Wong about his career and current job at the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC), a leading global... - [80,000 Hours is seeking a Head of Research](https://80000hours.org/2014/11/80000-hours-is-seeking-a-head-of-research/): As Head of Research, you will become part of our founding team to lead our research efforts into how to... - [The Centre for Effective Altruism is seeking a Chief Operating Officer](https://80000hours.org/2014/11/the-centre-for-effective-altruism-is-seeking-a-chief-operating-officer/): We are recruiting a Chief Operating Officer to lead our central division, managing a team that supports the recruitment, finance,... - [Serial social entrepreneur, Michael Norton OBE, speaks in Oxford](https://80000hours.org/2014/11/serial-social-entrepreneur-michael-norton-obe-speaks-in-oxford/): The serial social entrepreneur, Michael Norton, recently spoke at 80,000 Hours: Oxford. Michael started his career as a scientist, merchant... - [Mid-year review September 2014](https://80000hours.org/2014/11/mid-year-review-september-2014/): This document is an update on the priorities we set in our May 2014 team plan, as part of our... - [Why and how to keep your options open](https://80000hours.org/2014/11/why-and-how-to-keep-your-options-open/): Keeping options open is important for everyone, it's especially important if you want to make a difference... - [Should you wait to make a difference?](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/should-you-wait-to-make-a-difference/): Suppose you could either work at a charity next year or go to graduate school. If you work at the charity, you’ll be making a difference right away, speeding up progress. If you go to graduate school, you’ll be investing in yourself and able to have a larger impact later. Which is better? - [Update: 7 career strategies for making a difference](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/update-7-career-strategies-for-making-a-difference/): New research on the seven top career strategies for making a difference. - [Want to do something about the risks of artificial intelligence?](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/want-to-do-something-about-the-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/): The field of research into the risks of artificial intelligence is taking off. If you're wondering how you can contribute, we'd like to hear from you. - [What I learned quitting my job to found a tech startup](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/what-i-learned-quitting-my-job-to-found-a-tech-startup/): I’ve been earning to give as a software developer for the past several years, and it started to become clear that I could make more money in a startups. - [Update on Peter's career story](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/update-on-peters-career-story/): Peter wrote about his (https://80000hours. org/2014/01/case-study-choosing-between-working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-earning-to-give-and-graduate-school/) on the blog back in January. After graduating, he started his software engineer internship... - [Tips on careers in journalism from NPR correspondent David Folkenflik](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/tips-on-careers-in-journalism-from-npr-correspondent-david-folkenflik/): David has been NPR’s media correspondent since 2004, and before that spent over a decade at the Baltimore Sun. He... - [Career story: Ben Kuhn: My job hunt after graduating](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/career-story-ben-kuhn-my-job-hunt-after-graduating/): In this guest post, 80,000 Hour's member Ben Kuhn describes how he looked for a job after graduating from Harvard... - [Have you checked out the Effective Altruism Forum yet?](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/have-you-checked-out-the-effective-altruism-forum-yet/): A few weeks ago, a (http://effective-altruism. com/top/) to discuss effective altruism was released. So far, the quality of the discussion... - [Interview: Holden Karnofsky on cause selection](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/interview-holden-karnofsky-on-cause-selection/): We interviewed Holden to discuss which causes are most important to work on with your career if you want to make a difference. - [We would like to interview you](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/wed-like-to-interview-you/): If you've got experience with a career of interest to our readers, we'd like to feature an interview with your... - [Interview: Holden Karnofsky on the importance of personal fit](https://80000hours.org/2014/10/interview-holden-karnofsky-on-the-importance-of-personal-fit/): In January 2014, I interviewed Holden Karnofsky, the co-founder of GiveWell, to further discuss his views on the importance of... - [Tell us about your career](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/tell-us-about-your-career/): If you’ve made a career decision recently, we’d like to feature your story on the blog. Here’s some examples: (https://80000hours.... - [Should you move to Thailand?](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/should-you-move-to-thailand/): By moving to Thailand, you can cut your cost of living by two to six times, and probably have a higher standard of living than you would have in the US or UK. - [Update: In which career can you make the most difference?](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/update-in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/): In which career can you make the most difference? We've updated our top careers list. - [Update: Don't follow your passion](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/update-dont-follow-your-passion/): Why we think follow your passion is bad advice, but how it contains a some truth – it’s worth searching for a career that’s a good personal fit. - [What does good research look like?](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/what-does-good-research-look-like/): A list of the principles that guide our research. - [Update: How to choose a career](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/update-how-to-choose-a-career/): One of our key new pages is ‘how to choose’ - a step-by-step process for making your next career decision, based on the process we use in coaching and workshops. - [Lots of new content released to the site](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/lots-of-new-content-released-to-the-site/): We’ve recently expanded our research page into a series of ten, supported by sixteen career profiles. In total, we’ve released... - [Cause overview: cause prioritisation](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/cause-prioritization-summary/): ## Introduction I recently conducted a ‘shallow investigation’ (see (http://www. givewell. org/labs/causes)) into cause prioritization, with the help of (http://www.... - [Conversation with Paul Penley of Excellence in Giving](https://80000hours.org/2014/09/conversation-with-paul-penley-of-excellence-in-giving/): ## Participants * Paul Penley: Director of Research, Excellence in Giving * Katja Grace: Research Assistant, Machine Intelligence Research Institute... - [Conversation with Paul Christiano on Cause Prioritization Research](https://80000hours.org/2014/08/conversation-with-paul-christiano-on-cause-prioritization-research/): ## Participants * Paul Christiano: Computer science PhD student at UC Berkeley * Katja Grace: Research Assistant, Machine Intelligence Research... - [Conversation with Owen Cotton-Barratt of the Global Priorities Project](https://80000hours.org/2014/08/conversation-with-owen-cotton-barratt-of-the-global-priorities-project/): ## Notes This is a summary made by Katja of points made by Owen during a conversation on March 24... - [Foundation influence interview with Kerry Vaughan](https://80000hours.org/2014/07/foundation-influence-interview-with-kerry-vaughan/): ## Introduction Kerry Vaughan was a member of the (http://arnoldfoundation. org/) - a major strategic foundation with over $1. 5B... - [How to influence policy? An interview with Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development](https://80000hours.org/2014/07/how-to-influence-policy-an-interview-with-owen-barder-of-the-center-for-global-development/): ## Introduction We recently interviewed Owen Barder to find out about making a difference through careers in policy. The interview... - [Careers in journalism - an interview with Larissa MacFarquhar](https://80000hours.org/2014/07/careers-in-journalism-an-interview-with-larissa-macfarquhar/): At the recent (http://www. gooddoneright. com), I had the opportunity to speak with Larissa MacFarquhar about careers in journalism. Larissa... - [Good Done Right: audio recordings now online](https://80000hours.org/2014/07/good-done-right-audio-recordings-now-online/): This July saw the first academic conference on effective altruism. The three-day event took place at All Souls College, one... - [What does economics tell us about replaceability?](https://80000hours.org/2014/07/what-does-economics-tell-us-about-replaceability/): ## Introduction ‘Replaceability’ has become a core concept in discussions of career choice among Effective Altruists (EAs) - put simply,... - [Interview with Caroline Fiennes about opportunities in effective philanthropy](https://80000hours.org/2014/07/interview-with-caroline-fiennes-about-opportunities-in-effective-philanthropy/): ## Introduction We recently interviewed Caroline Fiennes to find out about her ideas on opportunities to make a difference promoting... - [The payoff and probability of obtaining venture capital](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/the-payoff-and-probability-of-obtaining-venture-capital/): Venture capital has facilitated the growth of many companies including Apple, Google and Facebook. But is venture capital a key... - [Which university has better entrepreneurs?](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/which-university-has-better-entrepreneurs/): ! (http://i. imgur. com/wb0QZgB. jpg) Some of the most successful companies in recent years have been founded by students of... - [How to quantify research quality?](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/how-to-quantify-research-quality/): Introduction You may have recently noticed a number appearing under our blog posts, in a little green square. That’s an... - [What is the average net worth of Stanford entrepreneurs?](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/what-is-the-average-net-worth-of-stanford-entrepreneurs/): In this post we estimate the mean net worth of Stanford alumni who made their wealth primarily through founding startups.... - [Increasing your earnings as a doctor](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/increasing-your-earnings-as-a-doctor/): Making a difference to patient’s lives is a gratifying part of medical work. However, an (/2012/08/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save/) by Dr Gregory Lewis... - [Advisory board report June 2014](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/advisory-board-report-june-2014/): As part of our (/2014/05/summary-of-the-annual-review-may-2014/), we held an advisory board meeting. Our advisory board consists of: James Norris, Alex Flint... - [Case series - why and how to learn programming](https://80000hours.org/2014/06/case-series-why-and-how-to-learn-programming/): Software engineering is a lucrative career with an unusually low barrier to entry. Due to its appeal, some people in... - [How much do Y Combinator founders earn?](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/how-much-do-y-combinator-founders-earn/): ## Introduction We're interested in estimating how much tech entrepreneurs earn, since it's one of our top recommended (/2014/02/in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/), and... - [Our strategic review May 2014](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/our-strategic-review-may-2014/): ## Introduction - where have we come from? Less than two years ago, we were simply a group of student... - [Review of progress July 2013 to April 2014](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/review-of-progress-july-2013-to-april-2014/): ## Introduction and summary The purpose of this document is to review what 80,000 Hours has achieved from July 2013... - [80,000 Hours finance report](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/80-000-hours-finance-report/): ## Summary (N. B figures are rounded) *Current financial situation* **As of April 2014, 80,000 Hours had £148,000 in reserves.... - [Team plan May 2014](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/team-plan-may-2014/): In this document, which is part of our annual review, we outline our priorities over the rest of 2014. We... - [Summary of the annual review May 2014](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/summary-of-the-annual-review-may-2014/): ## Introduction In this document, we present some concluding comments about our annual review and provide a guide to the... - [Plan change analysis and cost effectiveness](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/): ## Introduction This document is part of our annual review. In section one, it aims to resolve some key uncertainties... - [What impact has 80,000 Hours had?](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/what-impact-has-80-000-hours-had/): ## Introduction What impact has 80,000 Hours had since we started in 2011? This document is not meant as an... - [How well are our programs performing?](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/): ## Introduction and summary In this document, which is part of our annual review, we overview the performance of our... - [What we can learn about career choice from the Terman study](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/what-we-can-learn-about-career-choice-from-the-terman-study/): The Terman study is the longest running longitudinal studies ever to be carried out in psychology. The study included 1,528... - [Biographies of Top Entrepreneurs](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/biographies-of-top-entrepreneurs/): Lots of the people we coach want to know how to become a successful technological entrepreneur. One approach to this... - [Shared values predict startup success? An interview with Saberr](https://80000hours.org/2014/05/shared-values-predict-startup-success-an-interview-with-saberr/): ## Introduction As part of our ongoing research we have been looking at the best ways to go into entrepreneurship.... - [App Academy interview with Buck Shlegeris](https://80000hours.org/2014/04/interview-with-buck-shlegeris-from-app-academy/): Buck Shlergeris is a teaching assistant at App Academy. We interviewed him on how to enter, what you do on the course and what the benefits are. - [The Undercover Economist speaks to 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2014/04/the-undercover-economist-speaks-to-80-000-hours/): Tim Harford recently spoke to us at Oxford. He’s a journalist for the *Financial Times* and the best-selling author of... - [The Copenhagen Consensus speaks to 80,000 Hours about global prioritisation](https://80000hours.org/2014/04/the-copenhagen-consensus-speaks-to-80-000-hours-about-global-prioritisation/): In October, Bjorn Lomborg from the (http://www. copenhagenconsensus. com/) led a global priorities setting session at 80,000 Hours: Oxford in... - [How much do people pursuing earning to give actually give?](https://80000hours.org/2014/04/how-much-do-people-pursuing-earning-to-give-actually-give/): ## Introduction The purpose of this document is to estimate: 1. How much do people pursuing earning to give donate,... - [80,000 Hours visits Number 10](https://80000hours.org/2014/04/80-000-hours-visits-number-10/): In December, Will and I had the opportunity to visit Number 10 Downing St. to meet with policy advisors to... - [Review of progress on the website](https://80000hours.org/2014/03/review-of-progress-on-the-website/): This document outlines the website updates from the period of August 2013 to January 2014. It's part of our annual... - [80,000 Hours impact survey evaluation](https://80000hours.org/2014/03/80-000-hours-impact-survey-evaluation/): To understand our impact and learn how to improve as an organisation, we recently ran an open survey of our... - [Coaching Applications Analysis](https://80000hours.org/2014/03/coaching-applications-analysis/): Who has been applying to (/speak-with-us/) from 80,000 Hours? In this post, we analyze our coaching applications to understand what... - [Interview with Matt Gibb](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/interview-with-matt-gibb/): ## Introduction Matt Gibb has been involved with 80,000 Hours since its inception. Early on, he was influenced by the... - [Case study: should I finish my degree?](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/case-study-should-i-finish-my-degree/): Introduction Martin is taking a year out from an applied science degree at a Russell group university to work in... - [Case study: earning to give compared to medical research](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/case-study-earning-to-give-compared-to-medical-research/): ## Introduction Ramit came to us with a simple question: should I try to train as a medic with the... - [Should you do a degree?](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/should-you-do-a-degree/): As university fees have continued to increase, there has been debate in the press over whether doing a degree is... - [Internship opportunities at 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/internship-opportunities-at-80-000-hours/): We are looking for interns to join our Graduate Volunteer Scheme, which involves a period of 6-10 months of work... - [An estimate of the expected influence of becoming a politician](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/an-estimate-of-the-expected-influence-of-becoming-a-politician/): Introduction How much influence could you have by becoming a politician? Common sense says that politicians have a lot of... - [Assessing the social value produced by founding Google](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/assessing-the-social-value-produced-by-founding-google/): 80,000 Hours has outlined (/2013/09/should-more-altruists-consider-entrepreneurship/) tech entrepreneurship could be a particularly promising career path. One relevant factor is that the... - [The Centre for Effective Altruism is looking for a Director of Development](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/the-centre-for-effective-altruism-is-looking-for-a-director-of-development/): We are looking for a Director of Development to join our team in Oxford! The right candidate would play a... - [In which career can you make the most difference?](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/): ## Introduction Previously, we introduced a way to (/2013/07/how-to-assess-the-impact-of-a-career/) in terms of their potential for positive impact, but which careers... - [Some stories of career change due to 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/some-stories-of-career-change-due-to-80-000-hours/): What kinds of career changes has 80,000 Hours caused? The following is a collection of 15 examples we prepared as... - [5 ways to make a big difference in any career](https://80000hours.org/2014/02/5-ways-to-make-a-big-difference-in-any-career/): At 80,000 Hours, we’re focused on finding the very best opportunities for you to do good with your career. We’re... - [80,000 Hours is hiring: careers analyst job available](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/80-000-hours-is-hiring-careers-analyst-job-available/): As we continue to expand our team in Oxford, we are looking for someone to join 80,000 Hours full time... - [Case study: can I earn more in software or finance?](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/case-study-can-i-earn-more-in-software-or-finance/): Jessica is a software engineer at Google, who donates much of her income to GiveWell recommendations and 80,000 Hours. She... - [Interview with leading HIV vaccine researcher - Prof. Sir Andrew McMichael](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/interview-with-leading-hiv-vaccine-researcher-prof-sir-andrew-mcmichael/): ## Introduction Continuing our investigation into medical research careers, we interviewed Prof. Andrew McMichael. Andrew is Director of the Weatherall... - [Has 80,000 Hours helped you?](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/has-80-000-hours-helped-you/): We want to find out. We’re doing a survey to understand how we may have helped readers like yourself. **This... - [80,000 Hours is hiring! Lead Developer and tech/design interns needed](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/80-000-hours-is-hiring-lead-developer-and-tech-design-interns-needed/): As we continue to expand our team in Oxford, we are seeking three new team members to join us some... - [Reasoning about influence in politics](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/reasoning-about-influence-in-politics/): Understanding a politician’s influence at first appears to be hopelessly tangled. A politicians’ influence is very tenuously related to the... - [The Value of a Degree](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/the-value-of-a-degree/): Introduction Many of our readers are students, and some have come to us wondering whether they should start a university... - [Neglectedness and impact](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/neglectedness-and-impact/): ## Summary Let’s suppose there’s a cause that you care about much more than society at large. In your eyes,... - [Case study: choosing between working at effective altruist organisations, earning to give, and graduate school](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/case-study-choosing-between-working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-earning-to-give-and-graduate-school/): ## Introduction Back in May 2013, I realized I would be graduating in a year and wondered a lot about... - [Research into the earnings of software engineers](https://80000hours.org/2014/01/research-into-the-earnings-of-software-engineers/): ## Introduction We recently did a case study for an individual who has worked at Google for several years in... - [A framework for strategically selecting a cause](https://80000hours.org/2013/12/a-framework-for-strategically-selecting-a-cause/): ## Introduction and summary We could have all the influence in the world, but if we focus on the wrong... - [An interview on which skills most boost your employability](https://80000hours.org/2013/12/an-interview-on-which-skills-most-boost-your-employability/): We recommend reading the following interview by Peter Hurford (an 80,000 Hours coachee, and volunteer at CEA) with Satvik Beri.... - [A comparison of medical research and earning to give](https://80000hours.org/2013/12/a-comparison-of-medical-research-and-earning-to-give/): ## Introduction and Summary We recently did a case study with Ramit (see the full case study write up (/2014/02/case-study-earning-to-give-compared-to-medical-research/)).... - [Why pick a cause?](https://80000hours.org/2013/12/why-pick-a-cause/): ## Introduction We normally find our coachees benefit from (/2013/08/introduction-to-our-career-model/), like global health or mitigating climate change, which they can... - [More evidence on the competitiveness of charity jobs](https://80000hours.org/2013/12/more-evidence-on-the-competitiveness-of-charity-jobs/): Introduction Here’s a short report, “Charities: Passion and skills in aid of a good cause,” on changes in the nonprofit... - [Economics PhD the only one worth getting?](https://80000hours.org/2013/12/economics-phd-the-only-one-worth-getting/): ## Introduction Here’s a (http://qz. com/82743/a-phd-in-economics-is-the-only-one-worth-getting/) by Noah Smith, professor of finance at Stony Brook University. We think it’s an... - [Summary of our thoughts on how to pick a degree](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/summary-of-our-thoughts-on-how-to-pick-a-degree/): ## Introduction I recently came across (http://lesswrong. com/r/discussion/lw/j2t/i_am_switching_to_biomedical_engineering_and_am/), which prompted me to summarise our current thoughts on how to pick... - [An attempt to create a new AMF](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/an-attempt-to-create-a-new-amf/): There are several health interventions that have been found in academic papers to have a cost-effectiveness that’s similar or better... - [Careers advice from top tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/careers-advice-from-top-tech-entrepreneur-marc-andreessen/): We just came across a series of four careers advice posts by Marc Andreessen (hat tip, Satvik Beri). We’re always... - [Interview with malaria vaccine researcher Katie Ewer](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/interview-with-malaria-vaccine-researcher-katie-ewer/): Introduction A recent case study candidate asked us whether he should enter vaccine research. As part of our research for... - [Career Opportunities for Economics PhDs](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/career-opportunities-for-economics-phds/): ## Introduction This post presents some research notes we made while investigating the value of economics PhDs. We were motivated... - [Interview with a Cambridge Professor of Medical Genetics on research careers](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/interview-with-a-cambridge-professor-of-medical-genetics-on-research-careers/): ## Introduction I recently interviewed John Todd, a Professor of Medical Genetics at Cambridge, as part of a series of... - [Case study: Working in the financial sector to promote a flourishing long-term future](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/case-study-working-in-the-financial-sector-to-promote-a-flourishing-long-term-future/): ## Introduction This post is a write up of an in-depth (/speak-with-us/overview), exploring one person’s decision about where to work... - [Live Q&A in Oxford with Dame Stephanie Shirley](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/live-q-a-in-oxford-with-dame-stephanie-shirley/): Introduction We recently held a public Q&A with Dame “Steve” Shirley at our Oxford student group. In the talk, Dame... - [What should you do with a very large amount of money?](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/what-should-you-do-with-a-very-large-amount-of-money/): A philanthropist who will remain anonymous recently asked Nick Beckstead, a trustee of 80,000 Hours, what he would do with... - [Thoughts on my experience working at GiveWell](https://80000hours.org/2013/11/thoughts-on-my-experience-working-at-givewell/): ## Introduction In this post, I offer some thoughts on my experience working at GiveWell. I’ve had a number of... - [Why consider becoming a trader?](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/why-consider-becoming-a-trader/): ## Introduction The following is an article by 80,000 Hours member, Joe Mela, about (i) why he thinks trading can... - [Linearity - a useful assumption in evaluating careers and causes](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/linearity-a-useful-assumption-in-evaluating-careers-and-causes/): Introduction When analysing the good done by different paths, we’ve often found it useful to assume that the value of... - [Interview with the World Health Organisation](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/interview-with-the-world-health-organisation/): Jeremy Lauer is a researcher at (http://www. who. int/choice/en/), a project of the World Health Organization to encourage cost-effectiveness via... - [Why I'm doing a PhD](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/why-i-m-doing-a-phd/): I’ve just started a PhD in Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. People who have thought hard about how to... - [More on What Really Matters for Finding a Job You Love](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/more-on-what-really-matters-for-finding-a-job-you-love/): We think being satisfied in the work you do is really crucial if you want to make a difference: you... - [Interview with the founder of Giving Games](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/interview-with-the-founder-of-giving-games/): Like both Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, Jon Behar left a lucrative job at a hedge fund to create a... - [Interview with Matt Clifford](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/interview-with-matt-clifford/): In 2011 Matt Clifford and Alice Bentick, left their consulting jobs in McKinsey to found their own non-profit, (http://www. entrepreneurfirst.... - [Influencing the Far Future](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/influencing-the-far-future/): ## Introduction In an earlier post we reviewed the arguments in favor of the idea that we should primarily assess... - [The value of economics PhDs: A conversation with Robin Hanson](https://80000hours.org/2013/10/the-value-of-economics-phds-a-conversation-with-robin-hanson/): ## Summary **Purpose of the call:** We organized this call to learn more about the value of getting a PhD... - [Should more altruists consider entrepreneurship?](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/should-more-altruists-consider-entrepreneurship/): One thing you might consider, if you’re aiming to do the most good with your career, is going into entrepreneurship.... - [We're looking for donations](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/we-re-looking-for-donations/): Do we provide useful research or coaching? Support our service: we’re looking for donations to develop 80,000 Hours. We set... - [Case Study: Designing a new organisation that might be more effective than GiveWell's top recommendation](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/case-study-designing-a-new-organisation-that-might-be-more-effective-than-givewell-s-top-recommendation/): Several months ago, we (/2013/03/how-to-create-the-world-s-most-effective-charity/) an easy way to create a charity that’s more effective than (http://www. givewell. org) top... - [Making a difference through social entrepreneurship: an interview with Tom Rippin](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/making-a-difference-through-social-entrepreneurship-an-interview-with-tom-rippin/): I spoke with Tom Rippin, founder and CEO of On Purpose, a leadership programme aimed at "attracting and developing talent... - [Summary of our six month evaluation](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/summary-of-our-six-month-evaluation/): *This is the final post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This report overviews our entire... - [Trustee and Advisory Board Report](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/trustee-and-advisory-board-report/): Our trustees and advisory board have reviewed our six month evaluation. This report presents a summary report from each group,... - [Team Plan](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/team-plan/): *This is the fifth post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This report outlines our key... - [Finance Report](https://80000hours.org/2013/09/finance-report/): *This is the fourth post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This report outlines our key... - [Evaluation of 80,000 Hours as Project](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/evaluation-of-80-000-hours-as-project/): *This is the third post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* In this report, we answer... - [Metrics Report](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/metrics-report/): *This is the second post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This post outlines the key... - [Our Progress](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/our-progress/): *This is the first post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* The purpose of the evaluation... - [How important are future generations?](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/how-important-are-future-generations/): At 80,000 Hours, (http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=u2XNfeIASoA) the (/causes) in which you can make the most difference. One important consideration... - [Our first career workshop](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/our-first-career-workshop/): Last month, 80,000 Hours ran its **first ever career workshop**! This post is a quick summary of the workshop: what... - [Why the Myers Briggs test is not useful in picking a career](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/why-the-myers-briggs-test-is-not-useful-in-picking-a-career/): While investigating how to give good careers advice, we asked ourselves whether the Myers Briggs test, the world’s most widely... - [Does your personality matter in picking a career?](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/does-your-personality-matter-in-picking-a-career/): In order to work out current best practice within career advising, we looked into personality testing. Several people I have... - [Introduction to our career model](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/introduction-to-our-career-model/): Drawing on similarities between an individual planning their career and a startup business, we've realised the importance of learning and... - [We're looking for a Director of Fundraising and a Finance Manager!](https://80000hours.org/2013/08/we-re-looking-for-a-director-of-fundraising-and-a-finance-manager/): Hopefully you've seen by now that 80,000 Hours is hiring! In addition to the positions advertised previously, we're also looking... - [Show me the harm](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/show-me-the-harm/): Does Earning to Give do more harm than good? It is often claimed that philanthropists do more harm earning money... - [Your career is like a startup](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/your-career-is-like-a-startup/): We think that we can draw many useful insights about career planning from thinking about how startups operate successfully. There... - [How to assess the impact of a career](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/how-to-assess-the-impact-of-a-career/): How do you even begin going about trying to assess the impact of a career? It might seem impossible. But... - [80,000 Hours is hiring!](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/80-000-hours-is-hiring/): We want to change the world by revolutionising something incredibly important: the way people think about and spend their careers.... - [Looking for a seriously high-impact job using your managerial skills?](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/looking-for-a-seriously-high-impact-job-using-your-managerial-skills/): We recently interviewed Roland Mathiasson, vice president of the (http://www. copenhagenconsensus. com) (CCC), a leading global think tank which draws... - [The Future of Humanity Institute is hiring a high-impact project manager](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/the-future-of-humanity-institute-is-hiring-a-high-impact-project-manager/): We recently secured funding for a Research Collaboration with Amlin Insurance focusing on systemic risks associated with risk modelling. This... - [How important is keeping your options open?](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/how-important-is-keeping-your-options-open/): Why do so many elite graduates go into finance and consulting? At Princeton, for example, (http://economix. blogs. nytimes. com/2011/12/21/out-of-harvard-and-into-finance/) The... - [We're changing our career coaching](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/we-re-changing-our-career-coaching/): We’re changing how we do our career coaching. For at least the next couple of months, we’re only going to... - [Effective Animal Activism, a spin-off of 80,000 Hours, has hired a full-time Executive Director](https://80000hours.org/2013/07/effective-animal-activism-a-spin-off-of-80-000-hours-has-hired-a-full-time-executive-director/): Effective Animal Activism (EAA) will now become entirely independent from 80,000 Hours, and has a separate board of trustees consisting... - [Maximizing your donations via a job](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/maximizing-your-donations-via-a-job/): Want a systematic approach to getting your dream job, whether for earning to give or for working at one of... - [Want to make a real difference in development? AidGrade is hiring!](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/want-to-make-a-real-difference-in-development-aidgrade-is-hiring/): Want to really add value and innovate in international development? AidGrade, a fantastic new organisation with precisely this aim, are... - [How to add value in international development: an interview with Eva Vivalt](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/how-to-add-value-in-international-development-an-interview-with-eva-vivalt/): I recently interviewed Eva Vivalt, who works for the World Bank and is the founder of AidGrade, a new organisation... - [Where can I earn the most?](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/where-can-i-earn-the-most/): Since one way that you can have a big impact with your career is through earning to give, we want... - [Why Earning to Give is often not the best option](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/why-earning-to-give-is-often-not-the-best-option/): A common misconception is that 80,000 Hours thinks (/earning-to-give) is typically the way to have the most impact with your... - [80,000 Hours in the Washington Post! - Our responses to the coverage](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/80-000-hours-in-the-washington-post-our-responses-to-the-coverage/): The concept of (/earning-to-give) was featured in the Washington Post last week. See the article (http://www. washingtonpost. com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/). In combination... - [80,000 Hours Mentioned in TED](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/80-000-hours-mentioned-in-ted/): Peter Singer gave a TED talk on "The Why and How of Effective Altruism," which you can watch (http://www. ted.... - [How to create a Donor-Advised Fund](https://80000hours.org/2013/06/how-to-create-a-donor-advised-fund/): What can you do if you're pursuing (/earning-to-give) but aren't currently sure what organisation to donate to? You can set... - [Can you measure the good you'll do](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/can-you-measure-the-good-you-ll-do/): The idea that it’s impossible to measure which career lets you make the most difference is silly. If it were... - [The worst ethical careers advice in the world](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/the-worst-ethical-careers-advice-in-the-world/): What are you going to do with your life? If you’re like most young people, you care about making a... - [What should I read if I'm new?](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/what-should-i-read-if-i-m-new/): Are you new to 80,000 Hours, and wondering where to start? We've put together this summary of our most popular... - [The best career advice you never heard in a graduation speech](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/the-best-career-advice-you-ll-never-hear-in-a-graduation-speech/): “Follow your passion” is the stupidest career advice I’ve ever heard. Why? Because my passion in life is for singing... - [Biases: how they affect your career decisions, and what to do about them](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/biases-how-they-affect-your-career-decisions-and-what-to-do-about-them/): A large and growing body of research suggests our reasoning is far from perfectly "rational. " This means that an... - [How to double your donations with no extra effort](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/how-to-double-your-donations-with-no-extra-effort/): 80,000 hours is all about making a difference in an effective way and one of the most effective things you... - [Estimation - Part II: How much will you earn?](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/estimation-part-ii-how-much-will-you-earn/): *How much could I earn during my life as a lawyer? How many people could this campaign reach? How long... - [Estimation - Part I: How to do it?](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/estimation-part-i-how-to-do-it/): Trying to answer questions about the impact of a career is difficult, and trying to decide between different career options... - [Looking for a seriously high impact job using your analytical skills?](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/looking-for-a-seriously-high-impact-job-using-your-analytical-skills/): Recently we (/2013/04/interview-with-holden-karnofsky-co-founder-of-givewell/), co-founder of the independent, nonprofit charity evaluator (http://www. givewell. org/). We recommend GiveWell as a leading source... - [How important is networking for career success?](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/how-important-is-networking-for-career-success/): “After two decades of successfully applying the power of relationships in my own life and career, I’ve come to believe... - [Intelligence matters more than you think for career success](https://80000hours.org/2013/05/intelligence-matters-more-than-you-think-for-career-success/): When you’re trying to have an impact, it's useful to know how successful you'll be in different careers so you... - [Interview with Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/interview-with-holden-karnofsky-co-founder-of-givewell/): Holden Karnofsky is the co-founder and co-executive director of GiveWell, an independent, nonprofit charity evaluator. We recommend Givewell as a... - [How much is 50p worth to you?](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-much-is-50p-worth-to-you/): Suppose we meet on the street one day and I tell you that, through no fault of my own, I’m... - [How important is fitting in at work?](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-important-is-fitting-in-at-work/): For most people, having a career which is a good “fit” for their personality and interests is extremely high priority.... - [Is US gun control an important issue?](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/is-us-gun-control-an-important-issue/): After the shocking massacre in Connecticut it looks like gun control is going to draw a lot of attention from... - [Tiny steps towards an incrementally better world](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/tiny-steps-towards-an-incrementally-better-world/): Robin Hanson is an American economist who recently blogged about an elegant way to help others at little personal cost.... - [Is most research a waste?](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/is-most-research-a-waste/): Worldwide, over US$100 billion is invested every year in supporting biomedical research, which results in an estimated 1 million research... - [How to prioritise - Meta skills part 4](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-to-prioritise-meta-skills-part-iv/): Some activities have many more times more impact than others. For example, if you’re learning a new skill you’ll improve... - [Dramatically increase your productivity by using a task management system - Meta-skills Part 3](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/dramatically-increase-your-productivity-by-using-a-task-management-system-meta-skills-part-3/): Many of us at 80,000 Hours have found that having a good task management system - a list of tasks... - [How to finally do what you've been putting off - Meta skills part 2](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-to-finally-do-what-you-ve-been-putting-off/): Commitment devices have boosted my productivity from spending hours or even days procrastinating to consistently achieving my aims. The idea... - [Increase your productivity to boost your impact - Meta skills part 1](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/increase-your-productivity-to-boost-your-impact/): To have impact you need to choose the right career. But that’s not all. If you can build your knowledge... - [Opportunity to intern with 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/opportunity-to-intern-with-80-000-hours-178/): If you’re here, you probably have some idea of what 80,000 Hours is about. We’re trying to become the world’s... - [How to improve your memory - Meta skills part 5](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-to-improve-your-memory/): Learn more effectively using a spaced repetition system If you can accelerate your learning then you’ll be able to learn... - [Six Month Review of 80,000 Hours June - Nov 2012](https://80000hours.org/2013/04/six-month-review-of-80-000-hours-june-nov-2012/): In December we conducted the first review of our progress as a full-time organisation. In a spirit of transparency, we’re... - [Should you plan your career?](https://80000hours.org/2013/03/should-you-plan-your-career/): Should you try to plan your career? On the one hand, goals provide direction and motivation. Especially if you care... - [Internship opportunity in promoting charity cost-effectiveness](https://80000hours.org/2013/03/internship-opportunity-in-promoting-charity-cost-effectiveness/): Are you interested in learning how to research charity effectiveness? Want training in communicating the idea of effective giving? Or... - [When to "go with your gut" in career choice](https://80000hours.org/2013/03/when-to-go-with-your-gut-in-career-choice/): People often talk about how you should just “go with your gut” when choosing a career. But how useful is... - [How to create the world's most effective charity](https://80000hours.org/2013/03/how-to-create-the-world-s-most-effective-charity/): GiveWell’s charity recommendations – currently (http://www. givewell. org/international/top-charities/AMF), (http://www. givewell. org/international/top-charities/give-directly) and the (http://www. givewell. org/international/top-charities/schistosomiasis-control-initiative)– are generally regarded as... - [How much do taxes matter if you're giving to charity?](https://80000hours.org/2013/03/how-much-do-taxes-matter-if-you-re-giving-to-charity/): Suppose you're looking to donate as much as possible to charity, and are choosing between two jobs. Should you worry... - [How to find out earnings for different jobs](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/how-to-find-out-earnings-for-different-jobs/): When you’re thinking about earning money to donate it to charity, you need compare different jobs on how much you’ll... - [The single number that best predicts professor tenure: a case study in quantitative career planning](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/the-single-number-that-best-predicts-professor-tenure-a-case-study-in-quantitative-career-planning/): *Cal Newport is the best-selling author of (http://www. amazon. com/dp/1455509124), which argues, as we have, against the common sense careers... - [Bringing it all together: high impact research management](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/bringing-it-all-together-high-impact-research-management/): There's a general misconception that researchers are the only people who really contribute towards scientific progress. But there's a lot... - [Two questions you won't want to ask yourself but should](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/two-questions-you-won-t-want-to-ask-yourself-but-should/): Most of us spend a lot of time visualising scenarios we’d like to happen, thinking about reasons the things we... - [Advice on going into a research career: An interview with Richard Thaler](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/advice-on-going-into-a-research-career-an-interview-with-richard-thaler/): I've recently been following a great new blog doing interviews with "research heroes" in the field of judgement and decision-making... - [Common mistakes in careers advice: when should you trust sayings?](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/common-mistakes-in-careers-advice-when-should-you-trust-sayings/): “Look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves. ” Often in careers advice, as in life generally,... - [The best resources for planning your career](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/the-best-resources-for-planning-your-career/): When you’re choosing between career options you need detailed information on different aspects of your career so you can evaluate... - [Vegetarian Research](https://80000hours.org/2013/02/vegetarian-research-the-value-and-the-need/): For-profit companies (including the meat, egg, and dairy industries) spend countless dollars each year on market research to figure out... - [Encourage discussion, not defensiveness](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/encourage-discussion-not-defensiveness/): Rather than encouraging constructive discussion, presenting new ideas - especially about moral issues - can often spark confrontation. Why is... - [Career Advice for High-Impact Activism](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/career-advice-for-high-impact-activism/): Nick Cooney is the Founder and Director of The Humane League – (http://www. effectiveanimalactivism. org/Top- charities) top recommended charity -... - [How to choose a degree - putting it all together](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-putting-it-all-together/): It’s time. This is where you pull together all the information you have assembled to work out what you will... - [10 steps to choosing your degree](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/10-steps-to-choosing-your-degree/): I talked earlier about how (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-what-do-employers-want/). This is pretty similar to conventional advice on choosing a degree. But I found... - [How to choose a degree - what do employers want?](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-what-do-employers-want/): In my (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-for-earning-to-give-and-research/) I looked at the role of degree choice for professional and academic careers. Now let’s branch out... - [How to choose a degree for Earning to Give and Research](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-for-earning-to-give-and-research/): One of the most important early career decisions many people face is what to study at university. This is the... - [How to make a difference in research: An interview with Nick Bostrom](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-make-a-difference-in-research-an-interview-with-nick-bostrom/): Rob Wiblin and I interviewed Nick Bostrom, founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, about his career... - [3 ways to broaden your career horizons](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/3-ways-to-broaden-your-career-horizons/): One huge barrier to making good career decisions is thinking too narrowly. There are just too many options, and too... - [Save time through smart buying](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/save-time-through-smart-buying/): When people say that time is money, they mostly mean that you can earn money with your time. But it... - [Trading, donating and charter cities: An interview with Ben Gilbert](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/trading-donating-and-charter-cities-an-interview-with-ben-gilbert/): Ben Gilbert’s an 80,000 Hours member who previously worked as a trader in the City, but now focuses his attention... - [Should you go into research? - part 2](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/should-you-go-into-research-part-2/): Why do the best researchers get almost all the attention? One factor is the Matthew effect, in which “the rich... - [Are you cheating career choice?](https://80000hours.org/2013/01/are-you-cheating-career-choice/): Often when faced with a really difficult question, people “cheat” by opting to answer an easier but related one, without... - [The power of effective activism](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/the-power-of-effective-activism/): The power of persuasion for making a difference is often underappreciated. If you can convince just one other person to... - [Our research on how to find a job you love](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/our-research-on-how-to-find-a-job-you-love/): *Note: this post has been superseded by our (https://80000hours. org/career-guide/framework/job-satisfaction/) and (/career-guide/job-satisfaction/job-satisfaction-research/). * Many people aren’t as satisfied as they... - [How to judge your chances of success](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/how-to-judge-your-chances-of-success/): You want to make a difference. This means being as successful as possible in whatever high-impact path you pursue. In... - [3 Ways to Advance Science](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/3-ways-to-advance-science/): There are three ways to contribute to scientific progress. The direct way is to conduct a good scientific study and... - [Christmas gifts, goats and cash-transfer charities](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/christmas-gifts-goats-and-cash-transfer-charities/): It’s getting closer to Christmas, and we’re running out of time to get presents for friends and family. It can... - [Want to be successful? Know your odds.](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/want-to-be-successful-know-your-odds/): If you want to make a difference in your career, you need to think not just about which jobs have... - [How to choose a research topic: An interview with Anders Sandberg](https://80000hours.org/2012/12/how-to-choose-a-research-topic-an-interview-with-anders-sandberg/): Ben and I spoke with Anders Sandberg, a James Martin research fellow at the (http://www. fhi. ox. ac. uk), about... - [Do you think you're better than average?](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/do-you-think-you-re-better-than-average/): Most people think they're better than the average person: that they're smarter, more likeable, more attractive. This tendency to think... - [Is microcredit mostly hype?](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/is-microcredit-mostly-hype/): Microcredit has become one of the most popular ideas in charity. 2005 was named the Year of Microcredit. The microcredit... - [Triumphs of intuition](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/triumphs-of-intuition/): Paramedics appear to make good, fast decisions based on "gut feeling": knowing what to do without knowing how you know.... - [Why don't people help others more? - part 2](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/why-don-t-people-help-others-more-part-2/): In part 1, I talked about some ways in which we might motivate people to be more altruistic. Providing a... - [Why don't people help others more? - part 1](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/why-don-t-people-help-others-more-part-1/): As Peter Singer writes in his book *The Life You Can Save*, "he world would be a much simpler place... - [A formula for the perfect job?](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/a-formula-for-the-perfect-job/): Career choice is complex. Could a simple decision rule help us? This idea seems worth paying serious attention to, as... - [80,000 Hours is Recruiting!](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/80-000-hours-is-recruiting/): We're trying to build the world's best career advice organisation that helps you make a difference. That's a big project,... - [Interview with Brian Tomasik](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/interview-with-brian-tomasik/): Brian Tomasik is a member of 80,000 Hours who has spent many years thinking and writing essays about how to... - [The Best News You'll Hear All Year](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/the-best-news-you-ll-hear-all-year/): The folks at (http://www. charitynavigator. org) get a lot of heat from people who care about charity evaluation. Their approach,... - [What's your true impact?](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/what-s-your-true-impact/): We often confuse our true impact with what we do directly. Instead of focusing on what you do directly, ask... - [Find the gate](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/find-the-gate/): There’s an easy way to tell a smart dog from a stupid dog. There’s a fence in front of you,... - [Should we stop interviewing people?](https://80000hours.org/2012/11/should-we-stop-interviewing-people/): Most employers rely heavily on interviews in recruiting. However, research suggests that the interview process is far from perfect. This... - [Sunk Costs in Careers](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/sunk-costs-in-careers/): In my last post (/2012/10/good-generals-let-their-soldiers-die-in-vain/). We saw that having paid for something distorts how you think about it later on.... - [How to be a high impact volunteer](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-to-be-a-high-impact-volunteer/): Lots of volunteering is definitely not actually about helping people. It usually doesn’t hurt, but neither does going for a... - [Net Impact Survey: Hopeful News for Ethical Careers](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/net-impact-survey-hopeful-news-for-ethical-careers/): Net Impact, a US charity, has released a report on attitudes towards ethical careers. The report contains hopeful news for... - [Good generals let their soldiers die in vain](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/good-generals-let-their-soldiers-die-in-vain/): In November 1914 Winston Churchill proposed a campaign to turn the tide of war on the Eastern Front. The plan... - [Why most charity fundraisers cause harm](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/why-most-charity-fundraisers-cause-harm/): Most fundraisers don’t raise extra money for charity. Rather, they shift money from one charity to another. This means that... - [Introducing THINK](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/introducing-think/): Not long ago, there were zero organizations focused on effective altruism. Over the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion... - [Open Source Technology: A Career in Engineering](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/open-source-technology-a-career-in-engineering/): We recently interviewed Joshua Pearce, a professor at Michigan Tech and member of 80,000 Hours, about open source appropriate technology... - [How much is a volunteer worth?](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-much-is-a-volunteer-worth/): The problem with volunteer labour is that it’s free, so a charity has an incentive to recruit volunteers as long... - [The most important unsolved problems in ethics](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/the-most-important-unsolved-problems-in-ethics/): In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert published a list of 23 of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics. This... - [How to do one year of work in four hours](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-to-do-one-year-of-work-in-four-hours/): The author, Tim Ferriss, promises to teach you how to cut your working week down to just four hours, using... - [Why don't charities spend more on fundraising?](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/why-don-t-charities-spend-more-on-fundraising/): People often think it’s bad for their charity of choice to spend money fundraising. This has always been a mystery... - [When should I quantify? - Quantification - Part 4](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/when-should-i-quantify-quantification-part-4/): Every 48 seconds someone dies of malaria. Every one of those deaths is a human being with passions and loves... - [How to do important research](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-to-do-important-research/): Many academics want to do important research that makes the world a better place. Unfortunately, there’s virtually no guidance out... - [Let's stop building schools](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/let-s-stop-building-schools/): I recently came accross Taylor Conroy, who’s using an innovative fundraising technique to let ordinary people to raise $8,500 to... - [Quantification as a Lamppost in the Dark - Quantification - Part 3](https://80000hours.org/2012/10/quantification-as-a-lamppost-in-the-dark-quantification-part-3/): Late one evening a police officer comes across a man on the way home from a party. He is quite... - [How to be a high impact philosopher, part II](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher-part-ii/): There’s a second method for high impact philosophy. Let’s call it the bottom-up method. Begin by asking ‘which are the... - [Quantum Quest: Pruning Procrastination](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/quantum-quest-pruning-procrastination/): In a series of posts, I will offer a perspective on the “quantum quest” - the evolving attempt to make... - [Quantification - Part 2 - The Dangers](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/quantification-part-2-the-dangers/): Somalia is in crisis. For decades it has been racked by civil war, famine, and political violence. Members of 80,000... - [Does money make you happy?](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/does-money-make-you-happy/): If we’re to believe the Internet, (http://quotationsbook. com/quote/27092/) (http://snigdhakrishna. com/money-happiness) (http://quotationsbook. com/quote/27092/) (http://www. goodreads. com/quotes/show/106119) (http://www. girlnextdoorfashion. net/2010/08/whoever-said-that-money-doesnt-buy. html) whoever... - [Quantification - Part 1 - An Introduction](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/quantification-part-1-an-introduction/): Who was the most important person in the 20th century? JFK? Einstein? Bill Gates? On the one hand it’s a... - [Do you really know what job will make you happy?](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/do-you-really-know-what-job-will-make-you-happy/): Why are so many people dissatisfied with their jobs? A big part of the problem is that we’re pretty bad... - [Is there such thing as a 'bad' charity?](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/is-there-such-thing-as-a-bad-charity/): When we talk about giving to charities there’s a dirty secret we try really hard not to mention. Some charities... - [How good are the best?](https://80000hours.org/2012/09/how-good-are-the-best/): Imagine you’re offered the top job at SCI – one of the world’s most cost-effective charities – should you take... - [Should we sacrifice doing what we love to make a difference? part 2](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-we-sacrifice-doing-what-we-love-to-make-a-difference-part-2/): Making a difference can lead to a satisfying career, so you might think we should just focus on making a... - [How much malaria is biodiversity worth?](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/how-much-malaria-is-biodiversity-worth/): Every day, almost everything we do is about prioritisation. Given how important prioritisation is, and how much people seem to... - [Should we sacrifice doing what we love to make a difference? part 1](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-we-sacrifice-doing-what-we-love-to-make-a-difference-part-1/): We all want to find a career which makes us happy: but for many there seems to be a conflict... - [Project Launch: Effective Animal Activism](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/project-launch-effective-animal-activism/): Among the goals of 80,000 hours is to provide resources to our community on the issues that matter most to... - [How to find a job you'll love](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/how-to-find-a-job-you-ll-love/): If you want to be satisfied at work, what characteristics should you look for? Prestige, money, something you’re (/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1/), a... - [Social interventions gone wrong](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/social-interventions-gone-wrong/): Lots of social interventions end up doing more harm than good. Many more make no difference at, and they're just... - [What is going on at 80,000 Hours?](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/what-is-going-on-at-80-000-hours/): This is an exciting time for 80,000 Hours. One month ago we took on our first full-time staff members. Over... - [Should you go into research? - part 1](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-you-go-into-research-part-1/): Should you go into a research career? Here’s one striking fact about academic research that bears on this question: in... - [Don't 'do what you're passionate about' - part 2](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-2/): In the (/discussion/do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1), I showed that we can’t blindly follow the widely-quoted careers guidance “do what you’re passionate about. ”... - [Don't 'do what you're passionate about' - part 1](https://80000hours.org/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1/): Common advice in choosing a career is “do what you’re passionate about. ” An article on lifehack begins: “If you... - [Universalisability - Immoral Industries Part 3](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/universalisability-immoral-industries-part-3/): When I tell people that they might want to consider professional philanthropy as a career choice, they react in a... - [Collective Action: working in unethical industries part 2](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/collective-action-working-in-unethical-industries-part-2/): In my ( /2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/) I looked at how it sometimes the best option is to take a high-earning job, even... - [The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: A popular but flawed way of understanding your personality](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/the-myers-briggs-type-indicator-a-popular-but-flawed-way-of-understanding-your-personality/): It’s difficult to work out which jobs will suit you. To help with this problem, a variety of personality tests... - [The wider consequences of giving away money](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/the-wider-consequences-of-giving-away-money/): Like most of the people here, I'm asking myself what I could do that would have a positive impact on... - [Why Do People Love Charity Workers? pt 2](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/why-do-people-love-charity-workers-pt-2/): In the last post, I argued that self-sacrifice is not, on its own, relevant to the moral value of an... - [What questions do you have about making a difference?](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/what-questions-do-you-have-about-making-a-difference/): How can you best use your time to make a difference? 80,000 Hours now has several people working full time... - [Why do people love charity workers? pt 1](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/why-do-people-love-charity-workers-pt-1/): Many careers guides and agencies suggest that ethically minded folks go into the nonprofit sector. And some use the phrase... - [Biases in career choice: Don't be misled by the category 'high impact career' when deciding between careers](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/biases-in-career-choice-don-t-be-misled-by-the-category-high-impact-career-when-deciding-between-careers/): I've noticed a bias in my thinking about career options that I'd like to help you avoid: I often group... - [The high impact PA: how anyone can bring about ground-breaking research](https://80000hours.org/2012/07/the-high-impact-pa-how-anyone-can-bring-about-ground-breaking-research/): Suppose you could identify a really important research topic - one that could yield huge benefits to millions of people... - [Following in Schindler's footsteps](https://80000hours.org/2012/06/following-in-schindler-s-footsteps/): Can it be ethical to take a job working for an immoral corporation if one does so with the aim... - [On triage](https://80000hours.org/2012/06/on-triage/): Effective altruism focuses on efficiency. Any action that fails to effect the maximum possible reduction in suffering is considered suboptimal.... - [Fundraising for charity - A career for effective altruists?](https://80000hours.org/2012/05/fundraising-for-charity-a-career-for-effective-altruists/): Fundraising sometimes has a bad reputation, but there are a lot of reasons to think that being a fundraiser, or... - [The flat margin effect](https://80000hours.org/2012/05/the-flat-margin-effect/): Here’s a claim to supplement the replacement effect (RE): The flat margin effect: If you take a job that seems... - [How to be a high impact philosopher](https://80000hours.org/2012/05/how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher/): Philosophy is often impractical. That’s an understatement. It might therefore be surprising to think of a career as a philosopher... - [Donation methods: credit vs cheque](https://80000hours.org/2012/05/donation-methods-credit-vs-cheque/): How much you give and the effectiveness of the organisations that you give to together determine the impact of your... - [The haste consideration](https://80000hours.org/2012/04/the-haste-consideration/): Here’s a crucial issue for altruists. _The Haste Consideration_: Resources for improving the world are vastly more valuable if you... - [Living to 1000: an interview with Aubrey de Grey](https://80000hours.org/2012/04/living-to-1000-an-interview-with-aubrey-de-grey/): In his recent (http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=jDJ_IjMwT20&context=C40174a6ADvjVQa1PpcFOEBMV6ytjvTudCo5CPyIuBqysnQTTFpls=), Aubrey de Grey argued that the (http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/SENS_Foundation)’s life extension research should... - [Where are the women?](https://80000hours.org/2012/04/where-are-the-women/): Women (http://thesocietypages. org/socimages/2010/10/24/charitable-giving-by-income-and-sex/) than men. They are more likely to give, and they give more money. So why is the... - [Heuristics for a good life](https://80000hours.org/2012/03/heuristics-for-a-good-life/): I wondered what careers or the like help other people the most. Tyler reposted my question, (http://marginalrevolution. com/marginalrevolution/2010/06/what-career-helps-other-people-the-most. html): *(Let’s)... - [The replaceability effect: working in unethical industries part 1](https://80000hours.org/2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/): High earning careers are often perceived as unethical careers. It’s not just that people think earning lots of money is... - [Why doesn't everyone use match funding?](https://80000hours.org/2012/03/why-doesn-t-everyone-use-matching-donations/): For the last two years whenever I have felt charitable, rather than directly give away the money - to Village... - [Review of Dead Aid](https://80000hours.org/2012/03/review-of-dead-aid/): Dambisa Moyo's best-selling 2009 book _Dead Aid_ caused a considerable stir upon its release; written by a young African woman,... - [What is an effective altruist?](https://80000hours.org/2012/03/what-is-an-effective-altruist/): 80,000 Hours is built around the idea of effective altruism. What does _that_ mean? - [The Road Less Travelled: Replaceability and Neglected Causes](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/the-road-less-travelled-replaceability-and-neglected-causes/): The replaceability issue often means that pursuing conventional ethical careers isn’t the way to have the most impact. Instead, it’s... - [Lots of website updates on 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/lots-of-website-updates-on-80-000-hours/): The last month has been a big one for the 80,000 Hours website. Thanks to our comms and web team... - [26th of September: Petrov Day](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/26th-of-september-petrov-day/): Here’s another candidate for Most Important Person Ever, albeit one whose footsteps will be harder - hopefully impossible - to... - [5 ways to be misled by salary rankings](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/5-ways-to-be-misled-by-salary-rankings/): Suppose that you plan, like many members of (http://www. givingwhatwecan. org/) or the (http://givingpledge. org/), to give a significant portion... - [In praise of Viktor Zhdanov](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/in-praise-of-viktor-zhdanov/): Until 2010, (http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Viktor_Zhdanov), didn't even have a Wikipedia page. No big deal, you say, unless you realize Viktor... - [Software engineering: Britain vs Silicon Valley](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/software-engineering-britain-vs-silicon-valley/): Several British members of 80,000 hours, both students and people considering switching careers, have asked about entering the field of... - [Entrepreneurship: a game of poker, not roulette](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/entrepreneurship-a-game-of-poker-not-roulette/): Follow-up to: (/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/) In a previous (/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/), I discussed how high-risk, high-reward careers can be a better deal for those... - [How hard is it to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/how-hard-is-it-to-become-prime-minister-of-the-united-kingdom/): How to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? We analyse what kinds of people make it, and what your chances of making it might be. - [Professional philanthropy vs professional influencing](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/professional-philanthropy-vs-professional-influencing/): Some facts about charity are so useful that they just have to be shared. Here’s one from the website of... - [Pledge to fight neglected tropical diseases](https://80000hours.org/2012/02/pledge-to-fight-neglected-tropical-diseases/): Treating NTDs is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve (http://www. givingwhatwecan. org/resources/recommended-charities. php##sci) (http://www. givewell. org/charities/top-charities). So if... - [Practical ethics given moral uncertainty](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/practical-ethics-given-moral-uncertainty/): Practical ethics aims to offer advice to decision-makers embedded in the real world. In order to make the advice practical,... - [Just what is making a difference: counterfactuals and career choice](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/just-what-is-making-a-difference-counterfactuals-and-career-choice/): When we think about how to make a difference in our careers, it is natural to think about what we... - [High impact interview 1: Existential risk research at SIAI](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/high-impact-interview-1-existential-risk-research-at-siai/): The plan: to conduct a series of interviews with successful workers in various key candidates for high impact careers. The... - [New donations recommendations](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/new-donations-recommendations/): Givewell and Giving What We Can have both recently updated their charity recommendations. As a response I've updated the 'Best... - [Is banking harmful?](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/is-banking-harmful/): The basic argument for professional philanthropy is that, because giving your money away is so powerful, it's well worth the... - [Policy careers](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/policy-careers/): The 80,000 Hours 'Banker vs. Aid Worker' media campaign has certainly succeeded in causing a stir, but many have been... - [WikiCharities, for those who haven't seen it](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/wikicharities-for-those-who-haven-t-seen-it/): Just a quick note: In case you missed it in Sam's post on (/2012/01/health-vs-education/), some members of Giving What We... - [Salary or startup? How do-gooders can gain more from risky careers](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/): Consider Sam, a software engineer at Google. His employer ranks highly in both quality-of-life and salary rankings. Sam is a... - [Health vs education](https://80000hours.org/2012/01/health-vs-education/): If you want to make a difference with your philanthropic donations it is important to donate to a good charity,... - [Delayed Gratification? - Choosing When to Donate](https://80000hours.org/2011/12/delayed-gratification-choosing-when-to-donate/): Most charities spend money at about the rate at which they take it in, while most foundations pay out (https://web.... - [It is Effectiveness, not Overhead that Matters](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/it-is-effectiveness-not-overhead-that-matters/): Would you rather help one person or 200 people, if it took the same effort? If you do what most... - [Today Show](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/today-show/): 80,000 Hours founder Will Crouch appeared with Private Eye editor Ian Hislop on BBC Radio 4’s The Today Show. The... - [William MacAskill of 80,000 Hours featured on the Today Programme](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/william-macaskill-of-80-000-hours-featured-on-the-today-programme/): Want to make a difference? Want to make the most different that you can? Become a banker. An ethical banker.... - [The best causes - updated](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/the-best-causes-updated/): If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’re convinced by the philosophy of 80,000 Hours - so you won’t find an... - [High Impact Science](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/high-impact-science/): Paul Ehrlich began his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, with this statement: > The battle to feed all of humanity... - [Our Worst Subjects](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/our-worst-subjects/): “I prefer to give to local organizations. ” I've heard this a lot. Imagine a high school student who sits... - [Estimation is the best we have](https://80000hours.org/2011/11/estimation-is-the-best-we-have/): This argument seems common to many debates: ‘Proposal P arrogantly assumes that it is possible to measure X, when really... --- ## Skills - [Engineering skills](https://80000hours.org/skills/engineering/): Learn how to get started in an engineering career, and how you can use engineering skills to solve pressing global problems. - [Experience with an emerging power (especially China)](https://80000hours.org/skills/emerging-power/): Become an expert on an emerging power to improve international coordination on global issues including AI, pandemics, and climate change. - [Communicating ideas](https://80000hours.org/skills/communication/): Through communicating important ideas, you could end up inspiring many people to do far more good than you could ever have done by yourself. - [Specialist knowledge relevant to a top problem](https://80000hours.org/skills/specialist-knowledge/): Which areas of specialist knowledge are most applicable to solving the world's most pressing problems? - [Policy and political skills](https://80000hours.org/skills/political-bureaucratic/): Working in policy can be a rewarding and high-impact way of changing the world for the better. Learn how to get started. - [Organisation-building](https://80000hours.org/skills/organisation-building/): Find out how to help build and boost great organisations through skills like management, operations, legal and financial oversight, entrepreneurship and fundraising. - [Software and tech skills](https://80000hours.org/skills/software-tech/): Learn to code, then apply your skills to something that really matters. Here's how to get started and how to use your coding skills for good. - [Research skills](https://80000hours.org/skills/research/): Learn how to do research, and how you can use research skills to do good. --- ## Podcast - [Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/daniel-kokotajlo-ai-2027-updates-china-robot-economy/) - [Andrew Snyder-Beattie on the low-tech plan to patch humanity's greatest weakness](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andrew-snyder-beattie-four-pillars-biosecurity-pandemic/) - [Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team at 26 – and advice if you want to work at an AI company (part 2)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/neel-nanda-career-advice-frontier-ai-companies/) - [Neel Nanda on the race to read AI minds (part 1)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/neel-nanda-mechanistic-interpretability/) - [Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kyle-fish-ai-welfare-anthropic/) - [Rebuilding after apocalypse: What 13 experts say about bouncing back](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/civilisational-collapse-resilience-compilation/) - [Ryan Greenblatt on the 4 most likely ways for AI to take over, and the case for and against AGI in under 8 years](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ryan-greenblatt-ai-automation-sabotage-takeover/) - [Toby Ord on graphs AI companies would prefer you didn't (fully) understand](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-inference-scaling-ai-governance/) - [Hugh White on why Trump is abandoning US hegemony – and that’s probably good](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hugh-white-hard-new-world-end-of-us-global-order/) - [Beth Barnes on the most important graph in AI right now — and the 7-month rule that governs its progress](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/beth-barnes-ai-safety-evals/) - [Beyond human minds: The bewildering frontier of consciousness in insects, AI, and more](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nonhuman-sentience-consciousness-compilation/) - [Don’t believe OpenAI’s “nonprofit” spin (emergency pod with Tyler Whitmer)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tyler-whitmer-openai-nonprofit-restructure-control/) - [Emergency pod: Did OpenAI give up, or is this just a new trap? (with Rose Chan Loui)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rose-chan-loui-openai-nonprofit-control/) - [Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done – and how to fix it](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-dunt-why-governments-fail/) - [Serendipity, weird bets, & cold emails that actually work: Career advice from 16 former guests](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/concrete-unconventional-career-advice/) - [Tom Davidson on how AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-davidson-ai-enabled-human-power-grabs/) - [Guilt, imposter syndrome & doing good: 16 past guests share their mental health journeys](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/mental-health-impactful-careers-compilation/) - [Buck Shlegeris on controlling AI that wants to take over – so we can use it anyway](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/buck-shlegeris-ai-control-scheming/) - [15 expert takes on infosec in the age of AI](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/infosecurity-compilation/) - [Will MacAskill on AI causing a “century in a decade” — and how we're completely unprepared](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-century-in-a-decade-navigating-intelligence-explosion/) - [Emergency pod: Judge plants a legal time bomb under OpenAI (with Rose Chan Loui)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rose-chan-loui-elon-musk-openai-case-update/) - [Allan Dafoe on why technology is unstoppable & how to shape AI development anyway](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/allan-dafoe-unstoppable-technology-human-agency-agi/) - [Emergency pod: Elon tries to crash OpenAI's party (with Rose Chan Loui)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rose-chan-loui-elon-musk-open-ai/) - [AGI disagreements and misconceptions: Rob, Luisa, & past guests hash it out](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ai-misconceptions-disagreements/) - [2024 highlightapalooza — the best of The 80,000 Hours Podcast this year](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/2024-highlights/) - [Sam Bowman on why housing still isn't fixed and what would actually work](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sam-bowman-overcoming-nimbys-housing-policy-proposals/) - [Cameron Meyer Shorb on dismantling the myth that we can’t do anything to help wild animals](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cameron-meyer-shorb-wild-animal-suffering/) - [Rose Chan Loui on OpenAI’s gambit to ditch its nonprofit](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rose-chan-loui-openai-breaking-free-nonprofit/) - [Elizabeth Cox on the case that TV shows, movies, and novels can improve the world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/elizabeth-cox-tv-movies-novels-change-the-world/) - [Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on why she shut down her charity, and why more founders should follow her lead](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sarah-eustis-guthrie-founding-shutting-down-charity/) - [Parenting insights from Rob and 8 past guests](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bonus-parenting-insights-compilation/) - [Anil Seth on the predictive brain and how to study consciousness](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/anil-seth-predictive-brain-explaining-consciousness/) - [Sébastien Moro on the most insane things fish can do](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sebastien-moro-fish-cognition-senses-social-lives/) - [Nate Silver on making sense of SBF, and his biggest critiques of effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nate-silver-effective-altruism-sbf-art-of-risk/) - [Peter Godfrey-Smith on interfering with wild nature, accepting death, and the origin of complex civilisation](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/peter-godfrey-smith-wild-animal-suffering-complex-life/) - [Venki Ramakrishnan on the cutting edge of anti-ageing science](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/venki-ramakrishnan-ageing-life-extension/) - [Ken Goldberg on why your robot butler isn’t here yet](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ken-goldberg-robotics/) - [Ezra Karger on what superforecasters and experts think about existential risks](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ezra-karger-forecasting-existential-risks/) - [Nathan Calvin on California’s AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nathan-calvin-sb-1047-california-ai-safety-bill/) - [Meghan Barrett on upending everything you thought you knew about bugs in 3 hours](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/meghan-barrett-insect-pain-consciousness-sentience/) - [Nick Joseph on whether Anthropic's AI safety policy is up to the task](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nick-joseph-anthropic-safety-approach-responsible-scaling/) - [Jonathan Birch on the edge cases of sentience and why they matter](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jonathan-birch-edge-sentience-uncertainty/) - [Sella Nevo on who's trying to steal frontier AI models, and what they could do with them](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sella-nevo-securing-ai-model-weights/) - [Vitalik Buterin on defensive acceleration and how to regulate AI when you fear government](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/vitalik-buterin-techno-optimism/) - [Sihao Huang on navigating the geopolitics of US–China AI competition](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sihao-huang-china-ai-capabilities/) - [Annie Jacobsen on what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear weapon at the US](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/annie-jacobsen-nuclear-catastrophe-escalation/) - [Carl Shulman on government and society after AGI (Part 2)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/carl-shulman-society-agi/) - [Carl Shulman on the economy and national security after AGI (Part 1)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/carl-shulman-economy-agi/) - [Eric Schwitzgebel on whether the US is conscious](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/eric-schwitzgebel-world-weird-us-consciousness/) - [Rachel Glennerster on why we still don’t have vaccines that could save millions](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rachel-glennerster-market-shaping-incentives/) - [Matt Clancy on whether science is good](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/matt-clancy-whether-science-is-good/) - [Zach Weinersmith on how researching his book turned him from a space optimist into a "space bastard"](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/zach-weinersmith-space-settlement/) - [Dean Spears on why babies are born small in Uttar Pradesh, and how to save their lives](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/dean-spears-neonatal-mortality-kangaroo-mother-care/) - [Lewis Bollard on the 7 most promising ways to end factory farming, and whether AI is going to be good or bad for animals](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lewis-bollard-factory-farm-advocacy-gains/) - [Zvi Mowshowitz on sleeping on sleeper agents, and the biggest AI updates since ChatGPT](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/zvi-mowshowitz-sleeper-agents-ai-updates/) - [Spencer Greenberg on causation without correlation, money and happiness, lightgassing, hype vs value, and more](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/spencer-greenberg-money-happiness-hype-value/) - [Bob Fischer on comparing the welfare of humans, chickens, pigs, octopuses, bees, and more](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bob-fischer-comparing-animal-welfare-moral-weight/) - [Laura Deming on the science that could keep us healthy in our 80s and beyond](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/laura-deming-ending-ageing/) - [Hugo Mercier on why gullibility and misinformation are overrated](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hugo-mercier-misinformation-mass-persuasion/) - [Randy Nesse on why evolution left us so vulnerable to depression and anxiety](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/randy-nesse-evolutionary-medicine-psychiatry/) - [Emily Oster on what the evidence actually says about pregnancy and parenting](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/emily-oster-pregnancy-parenting-careers/) - [Nathan Labenz on recent AI breakthroughs and navigating the growing rift between AI safety and accelerationist camps](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nathan-labenz-ai-breakthroughs-controversies/) - [Nathan Labenz on the final push for AGI, understanding OpenAI's leadership drama, and red-teaming frontier models](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nathan-labenz-openai-red-team-safety/) - [Lucia Coulter on preventing lead poisoning for $1.66 per child](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lucia-coulter-lead-exposure-elimination-project/) - [Nita Farahany on the neurotechnology already being used to convict criminals and manipulate workers](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nita-farahany-neurotechnology/) - [Jeff Sebo on digital minds, and how to avoid sleepwalking into a major moral catastrophe](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jeff-sebo-ethics-digital-minds/) - [Bryan Caplan on why you should stop reading the news](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-stop-reading-the-news/) - [Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/alison-young-biosafety-lab-leaks/) - [Santosh Harish on how air pollution is responsible for ~12% of global deaths — and how to get that number down](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/santosh-harish-air-pollution/) - [Paul Niehaus on whether cash transfers cause economic growth, and keeping theft to acceptable levels](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/paul-niehaus-cash-transfers/) - [Ian Morris on whether deep history says we're heading for an intelligence explosion](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-morris-deep-history-intelligence-explosion/) - [Seren Kell on the research gaps holding back alternative proteins from mass adoption](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/seren-kell-alternative-proteins/) - [Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider at the White House, DeepMind and elsewhere](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tantum-collins-ai-policy-insider/) - [Anders Sandberg on war in space, whether civilisations age, and the best things possible in our universe](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/anders-sandberg-best-things-possible-in-our-universe/) - [Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kevin-esvelt-stealth-wildfire-pandemics/) - [Toby Ord on the perils of maximising the good that you do](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-perils-of-maximising-good/) - [Mustafa Suleyman on getting Washington and Silicon Valley to tame AI](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/mustafa-suleyman-getting-washington-and-silicon-valley-to-tame-ai/) - [Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/michael-webb-ai-jobs-labour-market/) - [Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hannah-ritchie-environmental-optimism/) - [Jan Leike on OpenAI's massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jan-leike-superalignment/) - [Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they’re no smarter than humans, and his 4-part playbook for AI risk](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-how-ai-could-take-over-the-world/) - [Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ezra-klein-ai-and-dc/) - [Markus Anderljung on how to regulate cutting-edge AI models](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/markus-anderljung-regulating-cutting-edge-ai/) - [Lennart Heim on the compute governance era and what has to come after](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lennart-heim-compute-governance/) - [Rohin Shah on DeepMind and trying to fairly hear out both AI doomers and doubters](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rohin-shah-deepmind-doomers-and-doubters/) - [Elie Hassenfeld on two big-picture critiques of GiveWell's approach, and six lessons from their recent work](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/elie-hassenfeld-givewell-critiques-and-lessons/) - [Joe Carlsmith on navigating serious philosophical confusion](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/joe-carlsmith-navigating-serious-philosophical-confusion/) - [Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ajeya-cotra-accidentally-teaching-ai-to-deceive-us/) - [Tom Davidson on how quickly AI could transform the world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-davidson-how-quickly-ai-could-transform-the-world/) - [Tim LeBon on how altruistic perfectionism is self-defeating](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tim-lebon-self-defeating-altruistic-perfectionism/) - [Johannes Ackva on unfashionable climate interventions that work, and fashionable ones that don't](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/johannes-ackva-unfashionable-climate-interventions/) - [Spencer Greenberg on stopping valueless papers from getting into top journals](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/spencer-greenberg-stopping-valueless-papers/) - [Robert Long on why large language models like GPT (probably) aren't conscious](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/robert-long-artificial-sentience/) - [Christopher Brown on why slavery abolition wasn't inevitable](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/christopher-brown-slavery-abolition/) - [Athena Aktipis on why cancer is actually one of the fundamental phenomena in our universe](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/athena-aktipis-cancer-cooperation-apocalypse/) - [Jeffrey Lewis on the most common misconceptions about nuclear weapons](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jeffrey-lewis-common-misconceptions-about-nuclear-weapons/) - [John McWhorter on key lessons from linguistics, the virtue of creoles, and language extinction](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/john-mcwhorter-language-extinction/) - [Richard Ngo on large language models, OpenAI, and striving to make the future go well](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/richard-ngo-large-language-models/) - [Bear Braumoeller on the case that war isn't in decline](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bear-braumoeller-decline-of-war/) - [Alan Hájek on puzzles and paradoxes in probability and expected value](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/alan-hajek-probability-expected-value/) - [Sharon Hewitt Rawlette on why pleasure and pain are the only things that intrinsically matter](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/sharon-hewitt-rawlette-hedonistic-utilitarianism/) - [Andreas Mogensen on whether effective altruism is just for consequentialists](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andreas-mogensen-deontology-and-effective-altruism/) - [Will MacAskill on what we owe the future](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-what-we-owe-the-future/) - [Samuel Charap on key lessons from five months of war in Ukraine](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/samuel-charap-key-lessons-from-five-months-of-war-in-ukraine/) - [Ian Morris on what big-picture history teaches us](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-morris-big-picture-history/) - [Max Tegmark on how a 'put-up-or-shut-up' resolution led him to work on AI and algorithmic news selection](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/max-tegmark-ai-and-algorithmic-news-selection/) - [Nova DasSarma on why information security may be critical to the safe development of AI systems](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nova-dassarma-information-security-and-ai-systems/) - [Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lewis-dartnell-getting-humanity-to-bounce-back-faster/) - [Will MacAskill on balancing frugality with ambition, whether you need longtermism, and mental health under pressure](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-ambition-longtermism-mental-health/) - [Dr James Tibenderana on the state of the art in malaria control and elimination](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/james-tibenderana-malaria-control-and-elimination/) - [Chris Blattman on the five reasons wars happen](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/chris-blattman-five-reasons-wars-happen/) - [Bryan Caplan on whether lazy parenting is OK, what really helps workers, and betting on beliefs](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-parenting-workers-betting/) - [Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/joan-rohlfing-avoiding-catastrophic-nuclear-blunders/) - [Karen Levy on fads and misaligned incentives in global development, and scaling deworming to reach hundreds of millions](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/karen-levy-misaligned-incentives-in-global-development/) - [Samuel Charap on why Putin invaded Ukraine, the risk of escalation, and how to prevent disaster](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/samuel-charap-why-putin-invaded-ukraine/) - [Michelle Hutchinson & Habiba Islam on balancing competing priorities and other themes from our 1-on-1 careers advising](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/michelle-hutchinson-habiba-islam-themes-from-careers-advising/) - [Matthew Yglesias on avoiding the pundit's fallacy and how much military intervention can be used for good](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/matthew-yglesias-pundits-fallacy-military-intervention/) - [Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan’s experiments with how to do democracy](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/audrey-tang-what-we-can-learn-from-taiwan/) - [Andrew Yang on our very long-term future, and other topics most politicians won’t touch](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andrew-yang-very-long-term-future/) - [Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jaime-yassif-safeguarding-bioscience/) - [David Denkenberger on using paper mills and seaweed to feed everyone in a catastrophe, ft Sahil Shah](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-denkenberger-sahil-shah-using-paper-mills-and-seaweed-in-catastrophes/) - [Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/luisa-rodriguez-why-global-catastrophes-seem-unlikely-to-kill-us-all/) - [David Wallace on the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics and its implications](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-wallace-many-worlds-theory-of-quantum-mechanics/) - [Maha Rehman on working with governments to rapidly deliver masks to millions of people](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/maha-rehman-governments-masks-millions/) - [Varsha Venugopal on using gossip to help vaccinate every child in India](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/varsha-venugopal-vaccinations-children-india/) - [Carl Shulman on the common-sense case for existential risk work and its practical implications](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/carl-shulman-common-sense-case-existential-risks/) - [Mushtaq Khan on using institutional economics to predict effective government reforms](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/mushtaq-khan-institutional-economics/) - [Holden Karnofsky on building aptitudes and kicking ass](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-building-aptitudes-kicking-ass/) - [Holden Karnofsky on the most important century](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-most-important-century/) - [Chris Olah on working at top AI labs without an undergrad degree](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/chris-olah-unconventional-career-path/) - [Chris Olah on what the hell is going on inside neural networks](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/chris-olah-interpretability-research/) - [Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cal-newport-industrial-revolution-for-office-work/) - [Alexander Berger on improving global health and wellbeing in clear and direct ways](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/alexander-berger-improving-global-health-wellbeing-clear-direct-ways/) - [Dr Pardis Sabeti on the Sentinel system for detecting and stopping pandemics](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/pardis-sabeti-sentinel/) - [Max Roser on building the world's first great source of COVID-19 data at Our World in Data](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/max-roser-our-world-in-data/) - [Tom Moynihan on why prior generations missed some of the biggest priorities of all](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-moynihan-prior-generations/) - [Robert Wright on using cognitive empathy to save the world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/robert-wright-cognitive-empathy/) - [Having a successful career with depression, anxiety, and imposter syndrome](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/depression-anxiety-imposter-syndrome/) - [Leah Garcés on turning adversaries into allies to change the chicken industry](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/leah-garces-chicken-industry/) - [Christian Tarsney on future bias and a possible solution to moral fanaticism](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/christian-tarsney-future-bias-fanaticism/) - [Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/mike-berkowitz-preserving-us-democracy/) - [Nina Schick on disinformation and the rise of synthetic media](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nina-schick-disinformation-synthetic-media/) - [Kelly Wanser on whether to deliberately intervene in the climate](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kelly-wanser-climate-interventions/) - [Ezra Klein on aligning journalism, politics, and what matters most](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ezra-klein-journalism-most-important-topics/) - [Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete and ending the new nuclear arms race](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/andy-weber-rendering-bioweapons-obsolete/) - [Brian Christian on the alignment problem](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/brian-christian-the-alignment-problem/) - [Lewis Bollard on big wins against factory farming and how they happened](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lewis-bollard-big-wins-against-factory-farming/) - [Ajeya Cotra on worldview diversification and how big the future could be](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ajeya-cotra-worldview-diversification/) - [Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems & layers of defence against potential global catastrophes](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/owen-cotton-barratt-epistemic-systems/) - [Tristan Harris on the need to change the incentives of social media companies](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tristan-harris-changing-incentives-social-media/) - [Benjamin Todd on what the effective altruism community most needs (& how to analyse replaceability)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ben-todd-on-what-effective-altruism-most-needs/) - [Russ Roberts on whether it's more effective to help strangers, or people you know](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/russ-roberts-effective-altruism-empirical-research-utilitarianism/) - [Hilary Greaves on Pascal's mugging, strong longtermism, and whether existing can be good for us](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hilary-greaves-comparing-existence-and-non-existence/) - [Benjamin Todd on the core of effective altruism and how to argue for it](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ben-todd-on-the-core-of-effective-altruism/) - [Benjamin Todd on varieties of longtermism and things 80,000 Hours might be getting wrong](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ben-todd-on-varieties-of-longtermism/) - [Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/mark-lynas-climate-change-nuclear-energy/) - [Shruti Rajagopalan on what India did to stop COVID-19 and how well it worked](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/shruti-rajagopalan-covid19-and-india/) - [Jennifer Doleac on ways to prevent crime other than police and prisons](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jennifer-doleac-reforming-police-preventing-crime/) - [James Forman Jr on reducing the cruelty of the US criminal legal system](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/james-forman-jr-cruelty-in-the-us-criminal-legal-system/) - [Ben Garfinkel on scrutinising classic AI risk arguments](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ben-garfinkel-classic-ai-risk-arguments/) - [Stuart Russell on the flaws that make today's AI architecture unsafe, and a new approach that could fix them](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/stuart-russell-human-compatible-ai/) - [A.J. Jacobs on radical honesty, following the whole Bible, and reframing global problems as puzzles](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/aj-jacobs-on-writing-reframing-problems-as-puzzles/) - [Danny Hernandez on forecasting and the drivers of AI progress](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/danny-hernandez-forecasting-ai-progress/) - [Marc Lipsitch on whether we're winning or losing against COVID-19](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/marc-lipsitch-winning-or-losing-against-covid19-and-epidemiology/) - [Tara Kirk Sell on COVID-19 misinformation, who's done well and badly, and what we should reopen first](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tara-kirk-sell-covid-19-misinformation-performance-reopen/) - [Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/michelle-hutchinson-giving-career-advice/) - [Dr Greg Lewis on COVID-19 and reducing global catastrophic biological risks](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/greg-lewis-covid-19-global-catastrophic-biological-risks/) - [Emergency episode: Rob & Howie on the menace of COVID-19, and what both governments & individuals might be able to do to help](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rob-howie-coronavirus-crisis/) - [Phil Trammell on how becoming a 'patient philanthropist' might allow you to do far more good](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/phil-trammell-patient-philanthropy/) - [Toby Ord on the precipice and humanity's potential futures](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/toby-ord-the-precipice-existential-risk-future-humanity/) - [Benjamin Todd on the key ideas of 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ben-todd-key-ideas-of-80000hours/) - [Bonus episode: Arden & Rob on demandingness, work-life balance and injustice](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/arden-and-rob-on-demandingness/) - [Dr Cassidy Nelson on the twelve best ways to stop the next pandemic (and limit COVID-19)](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-ways-to-stop-pandemics/): Dr Cassidy Nelson, a medical doctor and research scholar at Oxford University, explains 12 policies her research group says are urgently required. - [Jeff Ding on China, its AI dream, and what we get wrong about both](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jeffrey-ding-china-ai-dream/) - [Bonus episode: What we do and don’t know about the 2019-nCoV coronavirus](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/howie-rob-coronavirus-february-3rd/) - [Will MacAskill on the moral case against ever leaving the house, whether now is the hinge of history, and the culture of effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-paralysis-and-hinge-of-history/) - [David Chalmers on the nature and ethics of consciousness](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-chalmers-nature-ethics-consciousness/) - [Peter Singer on being provocative, EA, how his moral views have changed, & rescuing children drowning in ponds](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/peter-singer-advocacy-and-the-life-you-can-save/) - [Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins on 8 years of combating WMD terrorism](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ambassador-bonnie-jenkins-peace-arms-control/) - [Bruce Schneier on how insecure electronic voting could break the United States — and surveillance without tyranny](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bruce-schneier-security-secrets-and-surveillance/) - [Rob Wiblin on plastic straws, nicotine, doping, & whether changing the long term is really possible](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rob-wiblin-on-many-things/) - [Vitalik Buterin on effective altruism, better ways to fund public goods, the blockchain's problems so far, and how it could yet change the world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/vitalik-buterin-new-ways-to-fund-public-goods/) - [Paul Christiano on whether we should leave a helpful message for future civilisations — just in case humanity dies out](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/paul-christiano-a-message-for-the-future/) - [Helen Toner on the new 30-person research group in DC investigating how emerging technologies could affect national security](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/helen-toner-on-security-and-emerging-technology/) - [Accurately predicting the future is central to absolutely everything. Phil Tetlock has spent 40 years studying how to do it better.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/philip-tetlock-forecasting-research/) - [Cass Sunstein on how social change happens, and why it's so often abrupt & unpredictable](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cass-sunstein-how-change-happens/): Professor Cass R. Sunstein, legal scholar and best-selling author of Nudge, discusses his recent book How Change Happens on the 80,000 Hours podcast. - [Pushmeet Kohli on DeepMind's plan to make AI systems robust & reliable, why it's a core issue in AI design, and how to succeed at AI research](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/pushmeet-kohli-deepmind-safety-research/) - [Tom Kalil on how to have a big impact in government & huge organisations, based on 16 years' experience in the White House](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-kalil-government-careers/) - [Animals in the wild often suffer a great deal. We ask Persis Eskander what — if anything — should we do about that](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/persis-eskander-wild-animal-welfare/) - [Mark Lutter on trying to end poverty by founding well-governed 'charter' cities, ft Tamara Winter](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lutter-and-winter-chater-cities-innovative-governance/) - [Askell, Brundage & Clark on whether policy has a hope of keeping up with AI advances](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/openai-askell-brundage-clark-latest-in-ai-policy-and-strategy/): OpenAI’s Dactyl can manipulate objects; OpenAI Five can defeat humans at Dota 2. Amazingly, they both sprang from the same general-purpose reinforcement learning algorithm. - [Kelsey Piper on whether journalists have room to write about important things](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/kelsey-piper-important-advocacy-in-journalism/) - [Glen Weyl on radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/glen-weyl-radically-reforming-capitalism-and-democracy/) - [Martin Gurri on the revolt of the public & crisis of authority in the information age](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-of-the-public/): Politics in rich countries seems to be going nuts. What's the explanation? Rising inequality? The decline of manufacturing jobs? Excessive immigration? - [We could feed all eight billion people through a nuclear winter. David Denkenberger is working to make it practical.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-denkenberger-allfed-and-feeding-everyone-no-matter-what/) - [Rachel Glennerster on a year's worth of education for under a dollar and other 'best buys' in development](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/rachel-glennerster-best-buys-in-international-development/) - [Brian Christian on computer science algorithms that tackle fundamental and universal problems — and whether they can help us live better in practice](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/brian-christian-algorithms-to-live-by/) - [PhD or programming? Fast paths into aligning AI as a machine learning engineer, according to ML engineers Catherine Olsson & Daniel Ziegler](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/olsson-and-ziegler-ml-engineering-and-safety/) - [Philosopher Hilary Greaves on moral cluelessness, population ethics, probability within a multiverse, & harnessing the brainpower of academia to tackle the most important research questions](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/hilary-greaves-global-priorities-institute/) - [Economist Tyler Cowen says our overwhelming priorities should be maximising economic growth and making civilisation more stable. Is he right?](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tyler-cowen-stubborn-attachments/) - [Paul Christiano on how OpenAI is developing real solutions to the 'AI alignment problem', and his vision of how humanity will progressively hand over decision-making to AI systems](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/paul-christiano-ai-alignment-solutions/) - [Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and a practical plan for dismantling them](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/daniel-ellsberg-doomsday-machines/) - [Amanda Askell on tackling the ethics of infinity, being clueless about the effects of our actions, and having moral empathy for intellectual adversaries](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/amanda-askell-moral-empathy/) - [If the US put fewer people in prison, would crime go up? Not at all, according to Open Philanthropy’s renowned researcher David Roodman.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/david-roodman-becoming-a-world-class-researcher/) - [How well can we actually predict the future? Katja Grace on why expert opinion isn't a great guide to AI's impact and how to do better](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/katja-grace-forecasting-technology/) - [How much should you change your beliefs based on new evidence? Spencer Greenberg on the scientific approach to solving difficult everyday questions](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/spencer-greenberg-bayesian-updating/) - [Yew-Kwang Ng on ethics and how to create a much happier world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/yew-kwang-ng-anticipating-effective-altruism/) - [Finding the best charity requires estimating the unknowable. Here’s how GiveWell tries to do that, according to researcher James Snowden.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/james-snowden-givewell-research/) - [Tanya Singh on ending the operations management bottleneck in effective altruism](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tanya-singh-operations-bottleneck/) - [How the audacity to fix things without asking permission can change the world, demonstrated by Tara Mac Aulay](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tara-mac-aulay-operations-mindset/): How broken is the world? How inefficient is a typical organisation? Looking at Tara Mac Aulay’s life, the answer seems to be ‘very’. - [Politics is so much worse because we use an atrocious 18th century voting system. Aaron Hamlin has a viable plan to fix it.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/aaron-hamlin-voting-reform/) - [Oxford's Anders Sandberg on solar flares, the annual risk of nuclear war, and what if dictators could live forever?](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/anders-sandberg-extending-life/) - [Economist Bryan Caplan thinks education is mostly pointless showing off. We test the strength of his case.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bryan-caplan-case-for-and-against-education/) - [Allan Dafoe on trying to prepare the world for the possibility that AI will destabilise global politics](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/allan-dafoe-politics-of-ai/) - [Eva Vivalt's research suggests social science findings don’t generalize. So evidence-based development - what is it good for?](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/eva-vivalt-social-science-generalizability/) - [Where are the aliens? Anders Sandberg on three new resolutions to the Fermi Paradox and how we could easily colonise the whole universe](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/anders-sandberg-fermi-paradox/) - [Owen Cotton-Barratt on why daring scientists should have to get liability insurance](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/owen-cotton-barratt-regulating-risky-research/): If an accident is capable of triggering a global pandemic – hundreds of millions of lives might be at risk. - [The careers and policies that can prevent global catastrophic biological risks, according to world-leading health security expert Dr Tom Inglesby](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/tom-inglesby-health-security/) - [How exactly clean meat is created & the advances needed to get it into every supermarket, according to food scientist Marie Gibbons](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/marie-gibbons-clean-meat/) - [Why we have to lie to ourselves about why we do what we do, according to economist Robin Hanson](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/robin-hanson-on-lying-to-ourselves/) - [Stefan Schubert on why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/stefan-schubert-considering-considerateness/) - [Jan Leike on how to become a machine learning alignment researcher](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/jan-leike-ml-alignment/) - [Leah Utyasheva on how to massively cut suicide rates in Sri Lanka, and her non-profit's plan to do the same around the world](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/leah-utyasheva-pesticide-suicide-prevention/) - [The world’s most intellectual foundation is hiring. Holden Karnofsky, founder of GiveWell, on how philanthropy can have maximum impact by taking big risks.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/holden-karnofsky-open-philanthropy/) - [Bruce Friedrich makes the case that inventing outstanding meat replacements is the most effective way to help animals](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/bruce-friedrich-good-food-institute/) - [Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on her job worrying about any way nukes could get used](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/samantha-pk-nuclear-security/) - [Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty and the spurious action/inaction distinction](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ofir-reich-data-science/) - [Will MacAskill fears our descendants will probably see us as moral monsters. What should we do about that?](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/will-macaskill-moral-philosophy/) - [Michelle Hutchinson hopes to shape the world by shaping the ideas of intellectuals. Will global priorities research succeed?](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/michelle-hutchinson-global-priorities/) - [Phil Tetlock on predicting catastrophes, why keep your politics secret, and when experts know more than you](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/prof-tetlock-predicting-the-future/) - [Sharon Nuñez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal cruelty, get rabbit cages banned, and reduce meat consumption](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/animal-equality-exposing-cruelty/) - [Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/claire-walsh-evidence-in-development/) - [Beth Cameron fought Ebola for the White House. Now she works to stop something even worse.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/beth-cameron-pandemic-preparedness/) - [Spencer Greenberg on speeding up social science 10-fold & why plenty of startups cause harm](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/spencer-greenberg-social-science/) - [Nick Beckstead on how to spend billions of dollars preventing human extinction](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/nick-beckstead-giving-billions/) - [Christine Peterson on the '80s futurist movement and its lessons for today's idealists](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/christine-peterson-computer-security/) - [Lewis Bollard on ending factory farming as soon as possible](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/lewis-bollard-end-factory-farming/) - [Julia Galef on making humanity more rational, what EA does wrong, and why Twitter isn’t all bad](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/is-it-time-for-a-new-scientific-revolution-julia-galef-on-how-to-make-humans-smarter/) - [Toby Ord on why the long-term future of humanity matters more than anything else, and what we should do about it](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/why-the-long-run-future-matters-more-than-anything-else-and-what-we-should-do-about-it/) - [Alex Gordon-Brown on making millions for charity each year by working in quant finance](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/the-life-of-a-quant-trader-how-to-earn-and-donate-millions-within-a-few-years/) - [Howie Lempel on why we aren't worried enough about the next pandemic — and specifically what we can do to stop it.](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/we-are-not-worried-enough-about-the-next-pandemic/): What disaster is most likely to kill more than 10 million human beings in the next 20 years? Natural pandemics and new scientifically... - [Dario Amodei on OpenAI and how AI will change the world for good and ill](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/the-world-needs-ai-researchers-heres-how-to-become-one/) - [David Spiegelhalter on risk, statistics, and improving the public understanding of science](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/prof-david-spiegelhalter-on-risk-statistics-and-improving-the-public-understanding-of-science/) - [Miles Brundage on the world's desperate need for AI strategists and policy experts](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/the-world-desperately-needs-ai-strategists-heres-how-to-become-one/) --- ## Podcast (80k After Hours) - [Christian Ruhl on why we're entering a new nuclear age — and how to reduce the risks](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/christian-ruhl-nuclear-catastrophic-risks-philanthropy/) - [Benjamin Todd on the history of 80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/benjamin-todd-history-80k/) - [Alex Lawsen on avoiding 10 mistakes people make when pursuing a high-impact career](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/alex-lawsen-10-career-mistakes/) - [Hannah Boettcher on the mental health challenges that come with trying to have a big impact](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/hannah-boettcher-mental-health-challenges/) - [Luisa and Keiran on free will, and the consequences of never feeling enduring guilt or shame](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/luisa-keiran-free-will-guilt-shame/) - [Luisa and Robert Long on how to make independent research more fun](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/luisa-rob-long-independent-research/) - [Marcus Davis on founding and leading Rethink Priorities](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/marcus-davis-rethink-priorities/) - [Kuhan Jeyapragasan on effective altruism university groups](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/kuhan-jeyapragasan-effective-altruism-university-groups/) - [Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla on the Shrimp Welfare Project](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/andres-jimenez-zorrilla-shrimp-welfare-project/) - [Clay Graubard and Robert de Neufville on forecasting the war in Ukraine](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/clay-graubard-robert-de-neufville-forecasting-ukraine/) - [Michelle and Habiba on what they’d tell their younger selves, and the impact of the 1-1 team](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/michelle-habiba-advice-for-younger-selves/) - [Rob and Keiran on the philosophy of The 80,000 Hours Podcast](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/rob-and-keiran-on-the-philosophy-of-the-80000-hours-podcast/) - [Alex Lawsen on his advice for students](https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/alex-lawsen-on-his-advice-for-students/) --- # # Detailed Content ## AI guide - Published: 2025-06-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/agi/guide/skills-ai-makes-valuable/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, AI, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2025-03-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/agi/guide/when-will-agi-arrive/ - Topics: AI, Career planning, Forecasting, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Machine learning, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2025-03-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/agi/guide/summary/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Existential risk, Foundations, World problems --- --- ## Career guide pages > Just the bottom lines from our career guide. TL;DR: To have a fulfilling career, get good at something and then use it to tackle pressing global problems. - Published: 2023-05-23 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/summary/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > We summarise our entire career guide in one minute. - Published: 2017-04-24 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/end/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- > Much advice on how to be successful is wrong, or useless cliches. Here we cover the best advice we've found in the last 10 years that's backed by evidence. - Published: 2017-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Doing good in your current job, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Other topics, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skill-building and career capital, Skills --- > Learn about joining a community can help you succeed and have a greater impact. - Published: 2017-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/community/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > Three ways to make a big positive impact without changing jobs: 1. Give 10% to effective charities. 2. Use your political influence. 3. Be a multiplier. - Published: 2017-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/making-a-difference/ - Topics: Career capital, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Foundations, Volunteering --- > What are the biggest problems and issues in the world that are the most important to solve? Here's what we learned after 10 years of research. - Published: 2017-03-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/world-problems/ - Topics: Career planning, Effective altruism, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, World problems --- > You’ll spend about 80,000 hours working in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. How to spend that time is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. - Published: 2016-04-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/introduction/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- > A step-by-step guide to how to get a job, based on all the best advice we could find and what we've learned coaching thousands of people. - Published: 2016-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-get-a-job/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Leverage, Personal fit, Skills --- > Many common ways to do good don't make as much difference as you first think. But it's possible to have a huge impact by being a little unconventional. - Published: 2016-04-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/can-one-person-make-a-difference/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, History, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making, Skill-building and career capital --- > To have the biggest impact, you'll want to work on the world's most pressing problems. This sounds obvious, but people often fail to put it into practice. - Published: 2016-04-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Personal fit, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills, World problems --- > You don’t need to be a doctor or a charity worker to help people. Drawing on over ten years of research, we outline five types of jobs that help others. - Published: 2014-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Government & policy, Organisation-building, Research --- > One mistake many people make is to take jobs that don’t put them in a better long-term position. Why does this happen and how can you avoid it? - Published: 2014-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-capital/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Now vs later, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > Detailed long-term career plans can be harmful, but it's still good to have some idea where you're going. Here's how to write out your plan. - Published: 2014-08-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-planning/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- > Career aptitude tests and gap years don't help you find the right career. Here's a step-by-step process to work out the career that suits you best. - Published: 2014-08-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/personal-fit/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills --- > We reviewed over 60 studies. We found a dream job isn't highly paid or easy, and need not involve your "passion". Rather, focus on 6 key ingredients. - Published: 2014-08-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Skills --- --- ## Problem profiles - Published: 2025-09-17 - Modified: 2025-10-24 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ai-enhanced-decision-making/ - Topics: AI, AI-enhanced decision making, Career paths, Career planning, Exploration, Global priorities research, Research, Skills --- > The future of AI is difficult to predict. But while AI systems could have substantial positive effects, there's a growing consensus about the dangers of AI. - Published: 2025-07-17 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/risks-from-power-seeking-ai/ - Topics: AI, AI companies, AI policy, AI safety technical research, Existential risk, Top-recommended organisations --- - Published: 2025-06-24 - Modified: 2025-10-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/catastrophic-ai-misuse/ - Topics: AI, Biorisk strategy & policy, Catastrophic AI misuse, Existential risk --- - Published: 2025-04-24 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ai-enabled-power-grabs/ - Topics: AI, AI-enabled power grabs, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2025-04-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/gradual-disempowerment/ - Topics: AI, Existential risk, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > We don't know how to assess whether future AI systems will have moral status. Here's why that could be a big problem. - Published: 2024-09-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/moral-status-digital-minds/ - Topics: AI, Foundations, Moral patients, Moral philosophy, Moral status of digital minds, World problems --- > Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms. Most experience extreme levels of suffering. - Published: 2024-07-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/factory-farming/ - Topics: Factory farming, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Skills, World problems --- - Published: 2024-06-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/risks-of-stable-totalitarianism/ - Topics: Existential risk, Totalitarianism, World problems --- > It’s very plausible that there will be a nuclear war this century. As a result, nuclear weapons remain an extremely pressing problem. - Published: 2024-06-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/nuclear-security/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career paths, Existential risk, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Nuclear war, Philanthropic advising, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > Another great power conflict could cause unprecedented destruction. But there are ways to reduce the risks. - Published: 2023-06-20 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/great-power-conflict/ - Topics: AI, Existential risk, Foundations, Great power conflict, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-26 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/immigration-restrictions/ - Topics: Career paths, Economics, Global health, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Policy and political skills, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-the-spread-of-false-ideas-on-social-media/ - Topics: Communication, Exploration, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Psychology, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > It's easy to imagine that wild animals live harmoniously with one another in a natural 'balance' — but advocates for wild animal welfare argue that this attitude ignores the huge amounts of suffering present in nature. - Published: 2022-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/wild-animal-welfare/ - Topics: Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, Wild animal suffering, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/whole-brain-emulation/ - Topics: AI, Existential risk, Other pressing problems, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-positive-values/ - Topics: Advocacy, Effective altruism, Future generations & longtermism, Moral patients, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/risks-from-malevolent-actors/ - Topics: Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/s-risks/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, Research in relevant areas, S-risks, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/liberal-democracy/ - Topics: AI policy, Career paths, Effective altruism, Exploration, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2022-09-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/civilisation-resilience/ - Topics: Civilisational resilience, Climate change, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global health, Moral philosophy, World problems --- > Both the risks and benefits of advances in atomically precise manufacturing could be significant. Shaping the trajectory of this technology is highly neglected. - Published: 2022-07-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/atomically-precise-manufacturing/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Existential risk, Foundations, Other pressing problems, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-23 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/neglected-mental-health/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Global health, Mental health, Policy and political skills, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/high-leverage-economic-growth/ - Topics: Career planning, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Institutional decision making, Policy and political skills, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/science-policy-and-infrastructure/ - Topics: Global priorities research, Research, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/global-public-goods/ - Topics: Economics, Global health, Longtermist philanthropy, Other pressing problems, Policy and political skills, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/improving-individual-reasoning-or-cognition/ - Topics: Career capital, Mental health, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/voting-reform/ - Topics: Advocacy, Community & coordination, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Institutional decision making, Policy and political skills, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > Climate change will affect all our lives and gravely damage livelihoods around the world. But how pressing is climate change compared to other risks? - Published: 2022-05-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Climate change, Engineering, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > Humanity’s long-run future could lie in space — it could go well, but that’s not guaranteed. What can you do to help shape the future of space governance? - Published: 2022-02-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/space-governance/ - Topics: Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Risk, Space governance, World problems --- > Are we prepared for the next pandemic? Pandemics — and biological risks like bioterrorism or biological weapons — pose an existential threat to humanity. - Published: 2020-04-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Engineered pandemics, Global health, Policy and political skills, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2020-03-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/preventing-catastrophic-pandemics/full-report/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Engineered pandemics, Existential risk, Foundations, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > Governments and other important institutions frequently have to make complex, high-stakes decisions based on the judgement calls of just a handful of people. - Published: 2017-09-25 - Modified: 2025-10-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/improving-institutional-decision-making/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Forecasting, Foundations, Institutional decision making, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- > Effective altruism is about using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis. - Published: 2017-03-20 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/promoting-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Operations, Prioritisation frameworks, World problems --- > Local laws often prohibit the construction of dense new housing, which drives up prices, especially in a few large high-wage urban areas. The increased prices transfer wealth from renters to landowners and push people away from centers of economic activity - Published: 2016-04-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/land-use-reform/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Policy and political skills, World problems --- > Smoking takes an enormous toll on human health - accounting for about 6% of all ill-health globally according to the best estimates. This is more than HIV and malaria combined. Despite this, smoking is on the rise in many developing countries as people become richer and can afford to buy cigarettes. There appears to be a range of policies which have been shown to reduce smoking rates, which are usually not applied in developing countries. The most natural ways to tackle the problem through your career include becoming a health policy expert, or advocacy through journalism, think tanks and politics. This is a particularly promising cause for people living in a developing country with high smoking rates. - Published: 2016-04-06 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/tobacco/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Global health, Other pressing problems, Policy and political skills, Research, World problems --- > Global priorities research seeks to use new methods to determine in which causes funding to improve the world can have the biggest impact, and make a convincing case about this to people in a position to redirect large amounts of money. - Published: 2016-04-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/global-priorities-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Global priorities research, Research in relevant areas, Skill-building and career capital, World problems --- > Every year around ten million people in poorer countries die of illnesses that can be very cheaply prevented or managed, including malaria, HIV, tuberculosis and diarrhoea. - Published: 2016-04-03 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/health-in-poor-countries/ - Topics: Career paths, Global health, Other pressing problems, Philanthropic advising, Research, Skill-building and career capital, World problems --- --- ## Career reviews - Published: 2024-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/diplomacy/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- > Find out how you could use your career to prevent a nuclear war and reduce the risks posed by nuclear weapons. - Published: 2024-04-29 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/nuclear-weapons/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Communication, Government & policy, Nuclear war, Research, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2023-09-11 - Modified: 2025-10-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/become-an-expert-in-ai-hardware/ - Topics: AI, AI hardware expertise, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Engineering, Information security, World problems --- > Working in policy is among the most effective ways to have a positive impact in key fields. Getting a policy master’s degree can be a big help in this path. - Published: 2023-08-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/us-policy-masters-degrees/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Graduate school, Job satisfaction, Skills --- > Advanced AI systems could have massive impacts on humanity and potentially pose global catastrophic risks. There are opportunities... - Published: 2023-06-20 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-policy-and-strategy/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Data science, Government & policy, Machine learning, Other pressing problems, Politics, Research in relevant areas, Software engineering, World problems --- - Published: 2023-06-20 - Modified: 2025-10-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/working-at-an-ai-lab/ - Topics: Accidental harm, AI, AI companies, AI safety technical research, Anthropic, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, DeepMind, Exploration, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, OpenAI, Risk, World problems --- > AI safety research — research on ways to prevent unwanted behaviour from AI systems — generally involves working as a scientist or engineer at major AI labs, in academia, or in independent nonprofits. - Published: 2023-06-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-safety-researcher/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Computer science, Machine learning, Research in relevant areas, Skills, Software engineering, World problems --- - Published: 2023-04-25 - Modified: 2025-08-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ai-safety-technical-research/ --- > Organisations with influence, financial power, and advanced technology are targeted by actors seeking to steal or abuse these assets. A career in information security is a promising avenue to support high-impact organisations by protecting against these attacks, which have the potential to disrupt an organisation's mission or even increase existential risk. - Published: 2022-12-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/information-security/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Computer science, Data science, Engineered pandemics, Information security, Other pressing problems, Skills, World problems --- > For the right person, becoming a journalist could be very impactful.But the most influential positions in the field are highly competitive... - Published: 2022-09-20 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/journalism/ - Topics: Advocacy, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Communication, Doing good in your current job, Journalism, Other pressing problems, Other topics, World problems --- > Law school can be valuable for people pursuing several promising high-impact career paths — but you should avoid some common mistakes. - Published: 2022-09-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/should-you-go-to-law-school/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Law, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- > Many proposals to reduce risks from misaligned AI may need a lot of high-quality data from people that can be used to train machine learning models. - Published: 2022-05-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/alignment-data-expert/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Machine learning, Software engineering, World problems --- > China is a leading country in AI. If you have a background in China you may be able to help ensure its development benefits everyone. - Published: 2022-02-10 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/china-related-ai-safety-and-governance-paths/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, China-related AI safety & governance, China-Western coordination, Machine learning, World problems --- > Software engineers can contribute directly to solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. There is a shortage of software engineers at the cutting edge of research into AI safety. - Published: 2022-02-04 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Doing good in your current job, Engineering, Founding a tech startup, Income, Other topics, Research in relevant areas, Software engineering, World problems --- > Become a founder of an organisation tackling one of the world’s most pressing problems. - Published: 2021-11-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/founder-impactful-organisations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Charity Entrepreneurship, Community & coordination, Entrepreneurship, Skills --- - Published: 2021-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/managing-philanthropic-funds/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Grantmaking, Longtermist philanthropy, Other topics, Philanthropic advising, Research management, Working at a foundation --- - Published: 2021-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/explore-a-potentially-pressing-global-issue/ - Topics: Being a public intellectual, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Global priorities research, Prioritisation frameworks, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/effective-altruist-approach-to-climate-change/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Climate change, Effective altruism, Foundations, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/organise-an-effective-altruism-group/ - Topics: Advocacy, Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Foundations, Organising an effective altruism group, Other topics, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/research-management/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Global priorities research, Research in relevant areas, Research management, World problems --- > Find out how to become a historian to help understand how technology and social change could affect the future. - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/historian-of-societal-trends/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Global priorities research, History, History of large societal trends, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/policy-careers-focused-on-other-pressing-global-issues/ - Topics: AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Climate change, Engineered pandemics, Government & policy, Nuclear war, Other pressing problems, Politics, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/executive-assistant-for-an-impactful-person/ - Topics: Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, High impact executive assistance, Operations, Personal fit --- - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/emerging-global-power-specialist/ - Topics: AI policy, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Government & policy, Nuclear war, Politics, Research in relevant areas, Specialist in emerging global powers, World problems --- > This is a high risk but potentially very high impact path. Public intellectuals can do a lot of good by spreading important ideas -- when they succeed. - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/public-intellectual/ - Topics: Advocacy, Being a public intellectual, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Communication, Doing good in your current job, Global priorities research, Journalism, Other topics, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/formal-verification-expert/ - Topics: AI, Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Engineered pandemics, Information security, Other pressing problems, World problems --- > You can work on making better predictions of future events in order to guide decision-making by powerful governments and institutions. - Published: 2021-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/forecasting/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Economics, Forecasting, Foundations, Institutional decision making, Reasoning and decision-making, Research, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > We think most people's highest-impact options involve working directly on solving pressing global problems. But if you want to focus on having an impact by donating part of your income (earning to give) and will thrive in a quantitative trading role - Published: 2021-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/quantitative-trading/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Finance, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills --- > Explore how careers in biosecurity research, strategy, and policy can help reduce biorisks like engineered pandemics. - Published: 2021-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/biorisk-research/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, COVID-19, Engineered pandemics, Government & policy, Other topics, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > You can help figure out which global problems are most pressing by working in global priorities research. - Published: 2021-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/global-priorities-researcher/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Economics, Global priorities research, Philosophy, Research, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- > Help grow, shape, and support organisations working to address global problems by working in the effective altruism community. - Published: 2021-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/work-in-effective-altruism-organisations/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Foundations, Operations, Personal fit, Skills, World problems --- > In a grantmaking job, you can direct millions of dollars to tackle the world's most pressing problems. - Published: 2021-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/grantmaker/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Grantmaking, Other topics, Philanthropic advising --- - Published: 2018-02-28 - Modified: 2025-10-20 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/china-specialist/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, China-related AI safety & governance, China-Western coordination, Other pressing problems, Specialist in emerging global powers, World problems --- --- ## Career reports - Published: 2015-04-20 - Modified: 2024-08-08 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/reports/management-consulting/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- --- ## Key articles - Published: 2024-10-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-answers-could-advances-in-ai-supercharge-biorisk/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Expertise relevant to a top problem, Future generations & longtermism, Research, Risk --- - Published: 2024-09-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-answers-how-can-we-manage-infohazards-in-biosecurity/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Government & policy, Research, Risk --- - Published: 2024-09-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-advice-what-are-the-best-ways-to-fight-the-next-pandemic/ - Topics: Research management, Risk, Skills --- > Experts give their opinions about common misconceptions about biosecurity and pandemic prevention. They were granted anonymity for this piece. - Published: 2024-02-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-misconceptions-about-biosecurity/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Other topics --- - Published: 2023-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save-part-3/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Earning to give, Global health, Medicine, Research --- > Is medicine the most promising career path if you want to do good? This series of posts examines the impact of being a doctor in terms of saving lives. - Published: 2023-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save-part-2/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Medicine, Personal fit --- - Published: 2023-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save-part-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Job satisfaction, Medicine, Mental health, Research --- > It would be better for the future if we avoid extinction, manage our resources carefully, foster institutions that promote cooperation rather than violent conflict, and responsibly develop powerful technology. - Published: 2023-03-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/future-generations/ - Topics: Career planning, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Moral patients, Moral philosophy, Risk --- > Should you work on AI capabilities? We put this question to the AI experts we thought most qualified to answer it - and they don't all agree. - Published: 2022-10-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-capabilities/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Software engineering, World problems --- - Published: 2022-10-01 - Modified: 2023-01-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/charitable-interventions-differ/ - Topics: Unconventional advice --- - Published: 2022-09-30 - Modified: 2025-08-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/what-if-you-lived-every-human-life/ --- > Find out how to get more leverage to contribute to pressing world problems in many different career paths. - Published: 2022-09-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/leverage/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Leverage, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- > Arguments for AI being risky are often very abstract. Here we explain several concrete ways an AI system might be able to actually gain power. - Published: 2022-08-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/what-could-an-ai-caused-existential-catastrophe-actually-look-like/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Existential risk, Foundations, World problems --- - Published: 2021-11-15 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/applying-an-unusual-skill-to-a-needed-niche/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Community & coordination, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital --- > Self-help often says you should be more ambitious. This isn't always good advice. But if you want to do good, here are 4 reasons it makes sense. - Published: 2021-11-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/be-more-ambitious/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Risk --- > Lots of people say having a social impact is one of their key goals. But what does it actually mean to have a social impact? Here's our definition. - Published: 2021-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/what-is-social-impact-definition/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-09-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/moral-uncertainty/ - Topics: Foundations, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making --- > A brief introduction to what expected value is, how we can use it to work out what's best to do, and some of the main objections to it. - Published: 2021-09-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/expected-value/ - Topics: Foundations, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making, Risk --- - Published: 2021-09-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/cluelessness/ - Topics: Foundations, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-09-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/counterfactuals/ - Topics: Career planning, Earning to give, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-09-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/careers-differ-in-impact/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Effective altruism, Exploration, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2021-09-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/the-most-important-century/ - Topics: AI, Career planning, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, World problems --- - Published: 2021-09-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/comparing-problems-yourself/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Global priorities research, Other pressing problems, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- > Some might say to do what you love means giving up on having as much social impact. We think the two things don’t need to be in tension. - Published: 2021-09-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/do-what-you-love-vs-impact/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit --- > How much career exploration should you do? We draw on research from computer science, psychology and elsewhere to provide a practical answer. - Published: 2021-09-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/career-exploration/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Personal fit --- > Most solutions to social problems don’t actually work very well. - Published: 2021-09-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/solutions/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Reasoning and decision-making, Research, Skills --- > If you want to help others, should you follow your passion? Probably not. You'll do far more good if you focus on bigger and more problem areas. - Published: 2021-09-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/your-choice-of-problem-is-crucial/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Exploration, Foundations, Global priorities research, Other topics, Prioritisation frameworks, User stories, World problems --- - Published: 2021-09-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-altruism/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Research in relevant areas, Skills --- > The best advice we’ve found on identifying your strengths, turned into a 3-step process, plus a list of personal strengths used by researchers. - Published: 2021-03-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/personal-strengths/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Leverage, Personal fit --- > If you care about social impact, why is voting important? It's not just about your civic duty. We examine the research on US presidential elections. - Published: 2020-10-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/is-voting-important/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Foundations, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, Other topics, Politics, Volunteering, World problems --- > Seeking inspiration for research questions? Discover examples of open questions that could have a big social impact. - Published: 2020-08-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/research-questions-by-discipline/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Prioritisation frameworks, Research, Research in relevant areas, World problems People frequently ask us what high-impact research in different disciplines might look like. This might be because they’re already working in a field and want to shift their research in a more impactful direction. Or maybe they’re thinking of pursuing an academic research career and they aren’t sure which discipline is right for them. In any case, below you will find a list of disciplines and a handful of research questions and project ideas for each one. They are meant to be illustrative, in order to help people who are working or considering working in these disciplines get a sense of what some attempts to approach them from a longtermist perspective might look like. They also represent projects that we think would be useful to pursue from a longtermist perspective. --- - Published: 2020-08-14 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-reduce-existential-risk/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Existential risk, Foundations, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Graduate school, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2020-06-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/anonymous-answers/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Other topics --- > Summary of our understanding of the current science on key questions about COVID-19 (as of 3 April, 2020), as best we can given the state of the evidence and the fast moving situation. - Published: 2020-04-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/covid-19-key-facts/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Engineered pandemics, Forecasting, Foundations, Global health, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- > Many people have been asking about where they can donate to fight COVID-19, so we asked a couple of advisors for their quick thoughts. - Published: 2020-03-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/covid-19-options-for-donating/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, COVID-19, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Engineered pandemics, Global health, Other topics, Policy and political skills, World problems --- > There are five main things we need to tackle the crisis. How to find your best opportunity to help. - Published: 2020-03-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/covid-19-what-should-you-do/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Engineered pandemics, Other topics, Research in relevant areas, Volunteering, World problems --- - Published: 2019-11-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/advice-on-how-to-read-our-advice/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Other topics --- - Published: 2019-11-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/alternatives-to-consulting/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Consulting, Earning to give, Exploration, Personal fit, Policy and political skills --- - Published: 2019-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/career-planning/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills --- > The US Government is likely to be a key actor in how advanced AI is developed and used in society. Learn more about this career path. - Published: 2019-01-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/us-ai-policy/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Government & policy, World problems --- - Published: 2018-11-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/ml-engineering-career-transition-guide/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Machine learning, Software engineering, World problems --- > Even when you try to do good, you can end up doing accidental harm. But there are ways you can minimise the risks. - Published: 2018-10-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/accidental-harm/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Existential risk, Foundations --- - Published: 2018-10-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/advice-by-expertise/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Skill-building and career capital, World problems --- > When we work together, we can do far more good in the world. We cover the basics of coordination and practical tips for doing it more effectively. - Published: 2018-09-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/coordination/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Institutional decision making, World problems --- > Doing a job where you have the comparative advantage seems like an obviously good idea, but that may not always be the case. - Published: 2018-08-14 - Modified: 2025-10-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/comparative-advantage/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- > We argue that operations management is one of the highest-impact roles in the effective altruism and existential risk communities right now, and address some common misconceptions about the roles. - Published: 2018-03-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/operations-management/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Operations, Personal fit, Skills, World problems --- - Published: 2018-03-12 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/video-most-pressing-problems/ - Topics: Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Prioritisation frameworks, World problems --- > What experts say are the most likely existential risks, why they're more likely than people think, and what we can do about them. - Published: 2017-10-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/existential-risks/ - Topics: Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2017-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-social-program/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Future of Humanity Institute, Reasoning and decision-making --- > A data-driven ranking of which job skills make you most employable by 80,000 Hours, a career research group founded by Oxford academics. - Published: 2017-07-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/skills-most-employable/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Skills --- > Why you should avoid harmful jobs, even if you’ll do more good. We look at how to analyse the situation and common options, like finance, law, and oil. - Published: 2017-06-23 - Modified: 2025-10-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/harmful-career/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making, Risk --- - Published: 2017-06-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-policy-guide/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Policy and political skills, World problems --- > New tax data lets us accurately estimate which 11 jobs and industries are the highest paying on average, and for top performers. - Published: 2017-05-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/highest-paying-jobs/ - Topics: Art & entertainment, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Consulting, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Finance, Foundations, Income, Law, Medicine, Other topics, Software engineering --- > Looking for college advice? Here’s what we know about how to choose a major, and what to do once you start studying. - Published: 2017-04-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/college-advice/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning --- - Published: 2017-03-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/further-reading/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Institutional decision making, Prioritisation frameworks, World problems --- - Published: 2016-12-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/volunteering/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Doing good in your current job, Other topics, Volunteering --- - Published: 2016-11-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/best-charity/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Now vs later, Other topics, Research in relevant areas --- > This is a syllabus of relevant background reading material and courses related to AI safety. It is intended as a guide for undergraduates in mathematics and computer science. - Published: 2016-08-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/ai-safety-syllabus/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Machine learning, PhDs, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2016-06-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/email-scripts/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Communicating ideas, How to get a job --- - Published: 2016-05-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/career-capital-in-any-job/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2016-04-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/problem-framework/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global health, Global priorities research, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- > It's said "money can't buy happiness," but we've all felt the pull of financial success -- so what's the truth? Here's what science has to say. - Published: 2016-03-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/money-and-happiness/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Foundations, Income, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Other topics, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2015-07-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/framework/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk --- - Published: 2015-07-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/best-existing-resources/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills --- > So many people are clearly desperate to plan out the next decade of their career, ending up anxious and overwhelmed. But this isn't the best way to approach - Published: 2014-12-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/stop-worrying-so-much-about-the-long-term/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital --- - Published: 2014-12-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-or-not/ - Topics: Foundations, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- - Published: 2014-11-06 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/true-vs-tangible-impact/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Effective altruism, Foundations, Personal fit, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- > On this page we outline why we use a framework and how we selected the factors to go in our framework. - Published: 2014-10-26 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/reasoning-behind-our-framework/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2014-10-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/4-biases-to-avoid-in-career-decisions/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2014-10-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/should-you-wait/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Foundations, Graduate school, Income, Other topics, Personal fit, Prioritisation frameworks, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2014-10-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/keeping-options-open/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Now vs later --- > People often talk about how you should just go with your gut instinct when choosing a career. But how useful is this advice, really? - Published: 2014-10-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-go-with-your-gut-instinct/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas, Skills --- > Here we list some of our most in-depth career research reports that have not been featured on other pages. - Published: 2014-10-04 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/research-reports/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Personal fit, Replaceability, Research, Skills --- > It's possible to make a big difference in any career. On this page, we explain how. - Published: 2014-10-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-make-a-difference-in-any-career/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Volunteering --- > 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 organization, it’s an option worth considering. - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/effective-work/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Effective altruism, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/worksheet/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/self-developer/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career capital, Career planning, Entrepreneurship, How to get a job, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > Finding a career that’s the right fit for you is important, but it’s also difficult to do just by thinking about it. It can therefore be a good strategy to try out a number of different areas in order to learn more about your own interests and skills. - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/the-experimenter/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Skills --- > 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. - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/earning-to-give/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Consulting, Data science, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Engineering, Finance, Foundations, Giving What We Can, Government & policy, Income, Medicine, Other topics, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas, Software engineering --- > If you’ve got potential as an entrepreneur, attempt to found new effective non-profit organisations or innovative for-profits that benefit their customers and create positive externalities. - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/entrepreneurship/ - Topics: Career capital, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Risk --- > Research shows that "follow your passion" is often bad advice. We explain why and how to do better. - Published: 2014-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-follow-your-passion/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2014-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/improving-decision-making/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Forecasting, Institutional decision making, World problems --- - Published: 2014-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/promoting-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Advocacy, Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Global priorities research, Operations, World problems --- - Published: 2014-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/global-priorities-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Longtermist philanthropy, Philanthropic advising, Research --- > The full results of our literature survey into how to predict job satisfaction. - Published: 2014-08-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/job-satisfaction-research/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Income, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Other topics, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2014-08-20 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/yardsticks/ - Topics: Economics, Foundations, Longtermist philanthropy, Other pressing problems, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems What are ‘yardsticks’, and why use them? In order to compare causes, we want to estimate the impact of solving different social problems. The problem is, even if we had a precise notion of what counts as ‘impact’ (for instance, the amount of human welfare created), it’s not practical to estimate the effect of solving different problems in these terms, especially if you care about the long-run effects of our actions - it’s rarely practical to count how many people benefited from an outcome, or measure how large the benefits are. This means we need to use rough yardsticks instead. A yardstick is a factor we expect to correlate with the positive impact of our actions (what we really care about), but which is easier to measure. We use yardsticks (or metrics, or proximate goals) all the time in other domains when it’s difficult to measure what we really care about. For instance, schools award ‘grades’ - a yardstick for educational attainment, though we know that grades don’t capture everything that matters in education. What are the properties of a good yardstick? A good yardstick is a property of the world that is both: Relevant: increasing the amount of this property correlates with positive impact. Measurable: it’s easy to tell, given the resources you have available, whether this property is increasing or decreasing. Which yardsticks should we use? At 80,000 Hours, we don’t do research into which yardsticks best track positive impact, however, it’s a major research priority for our affiliates, the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford; the Global Priorities Project, which is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism; and our trustees. We seek to align our views with those of these groups, while also applying some weight to the views of economists and our understanding of what’s regarded as common sense among informed experts. In the rest of this section, we outline our current views. To measure short-run impact on welfare To measure short-run impact, we often focus on ‘QALYs’ or ‘quality-adjusted life years’. The QALY is a metric for measuring health that is widely used within health economics. One QALY is a year of healthy life, and can be gained either by increasing the quality of someone’s health or extending how long they live. You can read more about how QALYs are defined here. Of course, health is not the only component of welfare. Ideally, we’d be able to measure ‘well-being adjusted life years’ or ‘WALYs’. Unfortunately, such a metric has not yet been developed, so instead, we need to consider a patchwork of metrics to capture other aspects of wellbeing. One of the most important is income, though one can also look at life satisfaction, education outcomes, satisfaction of basic human rights and others. Within income, we prefer to focus on the logarithm of income. It’s widely accepted that there are diminishing returns to the utility of income, such that economists often talk about the “law of diminishing marginal utility”. This law means you get more welfare from gaining $100 if you have $1,000 compared to when you have $10,000. Moreover, it’s thought that the returns are roughly logarithmic, in part due to empirical data, such as that shown in the chart below. There’s some evidence that individual wellbeing hardly increases at all above a threshold of about £50,000, though this has been disputed (for instance see this review paper by Stevenson and Wolfers. The law of dimishing marginal utility, combined the belief that all people have equal moral worth, is a key reason many think it’s more important to focus on causes that help the developing world. We think it’s likely that animal suffering also deserves moral weight (for more, see the writings of Peter Singer).This means our yardsticks should also include animal welfare. The main group aiming to compare interventions aimed at animal welfare is Animal Charity Evaluators, who often use the metric of ‘years spent in factory farms avoided’. We’re very uncertain how to weigh this metric against QALYs or income. The importance of the long-run The preceding yardsticks focused on measuring short-run wellbeing. However, we think the wellbeing of future generations carries moral weight, so we also need yardsticks to measure long-run welfare. Indeed, we find it plausible that the impact of our actions on future generations is more important than the impact of our actions on short-run welfare, so yardsticks to measure the extent to which we’re putting civilization on a good long-run path may deserve higher weight than those in the previous section. To measure long-run impact on welfare Yardsticks for improving the long-run future need to be distinct from ‘future QALYs’ or something along those lines, because that’s far too hard to measure. Unfortunately, there’s no widely accepted metrics to use as proxies for our impact on the long-run future, but here are our current ideas. Economists often focus on boosting GDP, or even better, a sustainability adjusted measure of GDP, such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. For instance, Tyler Cowen has suggested “The Principle of Growth”: We should make political choices so as to maximize the rate of sustainable economic growth. Paul Romer has also said: For a nation, the choices that determine whether income doubles with every generation, or instead with every other generation, dwarf all other economic policy concerns. We put some weight on this view, because it appears to represent the view of economists, although don’t find the arguments very persuasive, mainly due to the reasons discussed in Chapter 3 of Nick Beckstead’s thesis. We’re more persuaded by Beckstead’s view that we should focus on what’s likely to cause positive ‘path changes’ to the future trajectory of civilization. We think the most important category of these path changes is likely to be ‘existential risks’ - events that could permanently curtail the future of civilization, such as a nuclear war. Nick Bostrom has most famously argued that, if concerned with the welfare of future generations, it’s most important to “maximise the probability of an OK outcome” i.e. avoid an existential risk. The problem is that “reducing existential risk” or “causing positive path changes” are still relatively hard yardsticks to measure, so we want a sub-set of metrics that correlate with these but are easier to track. We’re still highly unsure what these should be, though expect progress over the next couple of years. This means keeping options open is highly desirable, as is investing in more research. Beyond that, our best guess is that the most dangerous risks will be human-caused rather than natural, and likely the result of new technology. This position is widely shared by researchers in this area within the Future of Humanity Institute, including Nick Bostrom, as well as others, such as the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. What yardsticks are best for measuring reduced chances of human-caused catastrophe? We’re highly uncertain, but suggest the following: Level of collaboration By this we mean extent to which humanity is able to act together to achieve common goals. This is important to avoid dangerous arms races and deal with crises once they arise. Level of wisdom By this we mean the extent to which humanity is able to use our capabilities to good ends, through compromise, reflection, altruism and so on. This is important so that society can spot and take steps to avert potential crises. Differential technological development By this we mean accelerating the development of technologies that are likely to be safe, and slowly down the development of others. Some technologies seem more risky than others, so it would be better if these were slowed down, to allow for the development of other risk-reducing technologies, or the allow time for further gains to collaboration and wisdom. Furthering global priorities research By this we mean further research aimed at working out which yardsticks are best, and which causes are best in light of these yardsticks. This is important because we’re highly uncertain about which yardsticks are best from the perspective of the long-run future, and research on this question is still in its infancy, so further progress would help to work out which projects are best. Capacity building By this we mean effort to increase the resources and ability to coordinate of those who want to mitigate existential risk and improve the long-run future, through advocacy and community building. This is also important because we’re highly uncertain about which yardsticks are best. General capacity aiming to improve the long-run future will be able to take whichever opportunities turn out to be best in the future. For more, see Chapter 14 of ‘Superintelligence’ by Nick Bostrom. Toby Ord has also written about how to balance capacity building and research against other actions. Non-welfare values So far, we’ve focused on yardsticks for human welfare in the long-term. You might think we should put extra weight on factors like ‘justice’ and ‘environmental diversity’ over and above their long-run effect on human welfare, because these factors also have intrinsic value. We don’t explicitly factor in non-welfare values because: There’s less agreement over their importance They’re already included to a large degree, because a more just society is also likely one that’s better for long-run welfare. It’s unclear how to compare them to welfare. However, if you would like to add extra weight to a non-welfare value, then you could add them as further yardsticks. Our overall position We see the following as robustly good, though difficult to measure, yardsticks: Level of collaboration Level of wisdom Furthering global priorities research Capacity building We also apply some weight to the following, which are all more measurable: Long-term sustainable world GDP growth rate. Short-run impact in terms of QALYs, log income, animal welfare etc. Differential technological development. All of the above are relatively high-level yardsticks, so often need to be further divided for practical purposes. For example, the first three yardsticks suggest that “improving institutional quality” and “promoting effective altruism” are good sub-yardsticks. How robust are our views? We think that research into which yardsticks are best is still in its infancy, so we anticipate gaining new significant information over the medium-term, which will cause our views to evolve. This favors supporting causes that seem good from many perspectives, and keeping your options open. --- > A list of the best advice we've found on how to assess your career options in the face of high uncertainty. - Published: 2014-08-17 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/making-an-assessment/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making Career decisions are high-stakes, but involve a lot of uncertainty. To help you make better decisions, we’ve gathered up the best advice we found on making good decisions in the face of high uncertainty, both from business and decision making science. Here’s a summary of what we’ve found, organized into a checklist you can apply to high stakes decisions. This feeds into our how to choose process at step seven. Before you start Have you structured the assessment? Rather than making a complete gut judgement, there’s evidence that when making similar decisions (such as giving job interviews) you’ll make a better decision if you explicitly write out your key criteria, and assess based on those. When assessing each factor Have you looked at relevant statistics, where available? Often going with the ‘base rate’ is better than making an internal judgement. This is called reference class forecasting. Have you considered what a credible trustworthy person would say? When we don’t know much else and there’s no hard data on the question, we find this a useful starting point. Have you questioned your gut? Your gut is good at making decisions when you’ve made lots of similar decisions before, so it’s probably good at judging something like “would I get on with these people?”, but it’s bad at making novel decisions, like “how much will I earn in this career?” (see more on when to go with your gut). Have you asked yourself why you might be wrong? This can help to reduce bias. Have you justified your answers to a friend? This can help to reduce bias. Have you focused on the future pros and cons of the options, rather than what you’ve done in the past? This can help avoid the sunk cost fallacy. When combining the factors Have you considered the problem from many angles? Rather than basing your decision on one or two strong considerations, it’s often better to consider the issue from many independent perspectives weighted by their strength. For instance, see here, here and here. Have you weighed the evidence by its strength? As you learn more, update away from your prior guess based on the strength of what you learn. See an example here. When making your final assessment Look for dominant options. If you’re lucky, you’ll find one option seems better or equal from all perspectives. You can then eliminate the option it dominates. Make an overall judgement. If one option doesn’t dominate, you’ll need to make a final overall judgement call. When your options look very close and it’s hard to choose between them, this can feel somewhat agonizing. One comforting thought in these situations is that even if you choose the wrong option, the difference in how much worse it is, is likely to be slight - which is why it’s a tough call in the first place. --- > A list of career strategies for making a difference. - Published: 2014-08-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/articles/strategies/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital 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 Our impression from interviewing people in the field (for instance our interviews in biomedical research) is that the idea that some researchers are many times more productive than others is regarded as common sense within science. Another strand of evidence is the power-law distribution of citations per paper. ↩ This study showed that in the UK the rich only give about 1% of their income to charity, and the figures seem to only be slightly higher in the US e.g. Ken Berger claims they give 1.3%. ↩ --- --- ## Pages - Published: 2025-07-31 - Modified: 2025-08-07 - URL: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas-cn2025/ --- - Published: 2025-03-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/terms-of-use/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-03-06 - Modified: 2025-09-04 - URL: https://80000hours.org/privacy-policy/ --- - Published: 2023-12-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Communicating ideas, Organisation-building, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital, Software and tech skills --- - Published: 2023-09-05 - Modified: 2025-10-06 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/translations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Exploration, Global priorities research, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2023-08-22 - Modified: 2023-08-22 - URL: https://80000hours.org/test-skill-set-page/ --- - Published: 2023-08-22 - Modified: 2023-11-28 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skill-set-page-template/ --- > Sharing our career guide lets us help more people find a fulfilling career that does good. If you know someone who might find the guide useful, consider sharing it. - Published: 2023-07-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide-share/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2023-05-22 - Modified: 2023-05-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/ebook/ --- - Published: 2023-03-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/cookie-notice/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2023-03-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/what-others-say-about-80000-hours/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- > Your career is not only a major driver of your happiness — it’s probably also your biggest opportunity to have a positive impact on the world. - Published: 2022-08-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/start-here/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- > What We Owe The Future releases August 16th. Read the introduction for free now. - Published: 2022-08-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/what-we-owe-the-future/ - Topics: AI policy, Building a flourishing future, Career advice & strategy, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Future of Humanity Institute, Moral philosophy --- - Published: 2022-07-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/stories/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Personal fit, Risk --- > If you want to do as much good as you can with your career, what world problems should you try to tackle? Get ideas from our list. - Published: 2022-05-31 - Modified: 2024-09-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/our-current-list-of-pressing-world-problems/ --- - Published: 2022-03-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/all-articles/ --- - Published: 2022-03-11 - Modified: 2024-04-16 - URL: https://80000hours.org/style-guide-for-sharing/ --- - Published: 2022-02-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Exploration, Mental health --- - Published: 2021-09-14 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas-2023/summary/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills --- - Published: 2021-07-20 - Modified: 2025-07-30 - URL: https://80000hours.org/make-a-difference-with-your-career/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Reasoning well, Unconventional advice --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/feedback-and-investigation/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/what-does-a-fulfilling-high-impact-career-look-like/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Moral philosophy, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/your-views-of-global-problems/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Global priorities research, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/longer-term-paths/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/clarify-your-strategic-focus/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/determine-next-steps/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Now vs later, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/plan-to-adapt/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2021-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/put-your-plan-into-action/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, How to get a job, Personal fit --- > Our 8-step career planner template is designed to help you write an in-depth and actionable career plan. - Published: 2021-05-14 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-plan-template/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2021-05-06 - Modified: 2024-09-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/summary/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy --- > What makes for a high-impact career? Here's how to compare your options in terms of the difference they make. - Published: 2021-03-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas-2023/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Leverage, Moral philosophy, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- > Research-based, practical advice on career planning, decision-making and getting jobs for people who want a fulfilling career with positive impact. - Published: 2020-12-20 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, How to get a job, Reasoning and decision-making, Skill-building and career capital --- > We've taken ten years of research and turned it into a free, in-depth career planning process, to help you make a career plan you feel confident in. - Published: 2020-11-16 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/process/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2020-04-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/contact-us/ - Topics: Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, How to get a job, Research management --- > Analysis and resources to help mitigate COVID-19. - Published: 2020-03-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/covid-19/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Engineered pandemics, Global health, World problems --- > Toby Ord's new book on existential risk was released in March 2020. Get a free copy now. - Published: 2020-03-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/the-precipice/ - Topics: AI safety technical research, Climate change, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Global health, Moral philosophy, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2019-04-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/calibration-training/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2018-10-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/support-us/donate/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- - Published: 2018-08-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/psychology-replication-quiz/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- > Which problems are the biggest, most tractable, and most neglected in the world - and what can you do about them? - Published: 2018-08-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ - Topics: AI, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Climate change, Engineered pandemics, Existential risk, Foundations, Global priorities research, Institutional decision making, Other pressing problems, Prioritisation frameworks, World problems --- - Published: 2017-04-20 - Modified: 2024-01-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/book/ --- - Published: 2016-05-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning-tool-part-2/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Exploration, How to get a job, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2016-05-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/career-planning-tool/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning --- - Published: 2016-04-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-decision/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Personal fit, Research, Skills --- > This free career guide, based on over 10 years of research alongside academics at Oxford, will help you find fulfilling work that fits your skills and does good. - Published: 2016-04-13 - Modified: 2025-10-15 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Other topics, Personal fit --- > Answer 6 questions to filter our list of the world's most biggest problems, based on research with academics at the University of Oxford. - Published: 2016-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/problem-quiz/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2016-02-17 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-planning/annual-career-review/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > A step-by-step process to help you make career decisions based on decision-making research. - Published: 2015-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-decision/article/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Risk, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-07-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/community/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations --- > Our list of the most promising high-impact career paths for helping others. - Published: 2015-07-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Earning to give, Operations --- - Published: 2014-09-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/reviews/financial-accounts/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Grantmaking --- > A list of the principles we use to guide our research. - Published: 2014-08-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/research-principles/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- - Published: 2014-08-29 - Modified: 2025-10-17 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/reviews/mistakes/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2014-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- - Published: 2014-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/credibility/reviews/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- - Published: 2014-08-20 - Modified: 2025-02-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/legal/ --- > A list of all our research into careers that make a difference. - Published: 2014-08-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/research/ --- - Published: 2014-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/work-with-us/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Skills The core 80,000 Hours team in summer 2013 We’re looking for bright and ambitious people to help us in our mission to make the world a better place in a considered, evidence-based way. We want to become the place to go for the most talented and dedicated people for advice on how to maximise the impact of their careers. To find out why working for 80,000 Hours is a great opportunity, see below. We are always looking for interns to join us on our Graduate Volunteer Scheme, for which you can apply by filling out this form. You can see more details below. We do not currently anticipate considering applications until our next recruitment round in late 2014, so if you require a reply before then please let us know at recruitment centre for effective altruism org. We are not currently recruiting for any employee roles. We advertised for several jobs in early 2014, but stopped taking applications for them at 5pm GMT on February 28th. All jobs and internships are based at our office in the centre of Oxford. We can often provide free accommodation to interns, and rent out accommodation to new employees. Internships on our Graduate Volunteer Scheme We are recruiting for people to volunteer with us full-time in Oxford. We run a Graduate Volunteer Scheme on which people intern with us, generally for at least three months and often for longer (although we are also interested in students who want to volunteer with us over the summer). We can often provide accommodation in a house with other volunteers and staff, free lunch, and expenses of up to £8 a day based on financial need, especially for longer-term interns. As you would play an important role for a significant period, we would make sure it didn’t leave you out of pocket. There are lots of different areas to work on, and there’s plenty of flexibility to adjust the role so it plays to your strengths and development aims. We make it our responsibility to ensure your time here allows you to grow as much as possible, as well as just being lots of fun! The scheme has proved very popular with our current interns, with a stimulating and dedicated atmosphere in the office and a lively and welcoming community outside office hours. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that many have extended their stays repeatedly. Once you have applied, we are happy to connect you with a current intern to discuss what it’s like to work here. We’re looking for hardworking individuals with a strong desire for personal development who are deeply interested in making the world a better place in an effective way. Interested? For more information about being a Graduate Volunteer or intern at 80,000 Hours, go here, and to apply, fill out this form. What are we looking for? The specifics of what we’re looking for depends on role and details can be found in the job descriptions. In general, we’re looking for people who have many of the following traits: Self-motivated, hard-working, and independent Able to deal with pressure and unfamiliar problems Have a strong desire for personal development Able to quickly master complex, abstract ideas, and solve problems Able to communicate clearly and persuasively in writing and in person Comfortable working in a team and quick to get on with new people Able to lead a team and manage a complex project Keen to work with a young team in a startup environment Deeply interested in making the world a better place in an effective way, using evidence and research A good understanding of the aims of 80,000 Hours and the Centre for Effective Altruism We’re particularly interested in hearing from anyone with experience in the following areas: Communications Writing Research Fundraising Entrepreneurship Leadership Management Media Design Marketing Economics Psychology Coaching Advising Operations Accounting Programming (especially Ruby on Rails) Why work for 80,000 Hours? First and foremost, “making the world a better place” is our bottom line and central aim. If you work for 80,000 Hours, you can directly help hundreds of other people have more impact with their careers. We work on this project because we think it’s the best way for us to make a contribution. Developing ways to monitor our own impact is one of our biggest priorities. But there’s more: Be part of something incredibly exciting We want to completely change the way people think about their careers, which we find to be an unbelievably exciting and motivating project. “It’s really exciting to be at the forefront of research on how to do the most good with your career. It’s such an important and neglected area of research, and all our findings are immediately applicable and decision relevant to real people’s lives.” - Roman Duda, Product Manager Do work that’s important, challenging and varied Everyone wants a job they love, as well as one that makes a difference. Job satisfaction seems to come from challenge, contribution, and variety. Working on the fundamentally interesting, neglected and important question: “how can we help people choose the best careers?” turns out to be a pretty good way to achieve these things! “One of my favorite parts of working for 80,000 Hours was that there was always something new. I got a lot of choice in what I was working on and there was a lot of task diversity. I got to see my projects to completion and had a high degree of autonomy.” - Xio Kikauka, intern Work with incredible people Everyone who works for us is talented, dedicated and ambitious, and there’s a wide community of awesome people in Oxford for you to meet. When I asked people in the office for what they most liked about working here, “great people” came up the most. ““The best thing about working for CEA is definitely the people. I have never before met such an intelligent, motivated and interesting team with a genuine desire to change the world for the better.” - Stephanie Crampin, intern Meet incredible people We work closely with academics at the University of Oxford: we share offices with the Future of Humanity Institute and are affiliated with the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, based in the same building. Our careers coaching program is attracting some of the most inspiring and interesting people in the world: we’re currently getting so many requests we have to turn away 80% of them. “The people I work with are some of the smartest, most dedicated and interesting people I know. I’ve learned so much from them, and the network that I’ve become part of is packed full of ridiculously impressive people.” - Roman Duda Become the most impressive person you can Helping you to fulfil your potential to make a huge difference is one of the most important things we can do, so we make personal development a priority. We’ll tailor your work so you can develop the skills you want, as well as explicitly setting aside time each week to work on personal development and self improvement. “I feel like I’ve made a real contribution to the charity as part of the group and had the motivation to make myself better and stronger as a person whilst doing it.” - Stephanie Crampin Everyone really wants to help everyone else on the team, as we all care deeply about enabling each other to reach our highest potential, so that we can all improve the world as much as possible.” - Roman Duda Find exciting future job opportunities One of our interns in 2012 spun off the organisation Effective Animal Activism with our help. We’re growing an amazing network of people and organisations working on the highest impact opportunities in the world - we’re in contact with some pretty impressive individuals like Nick Bostrom of FHI and Holden Karnofsky of GiveWell. If you work for us, you’ll also have: Autonomy We go for a “professional, but autonomous” work culture. We set high standards, but avoid pointless rules. For example, we encourage our employees to set a work routine that works for them and stick to it, but have no strict office hours. Responsibility As we’re a new and growing organisation, there’s a lot of opportunity to take on responsibility much earlier than you would in a large corporation. Many of our interns develop management experience by working with volunteers. Input We want everyone to have a say in how 80,000 Hours is run. We hold weekly team meetings to give everyone an input, and also run weekly lunchtime sessions on some specific area of what we’re working on to get input and feedback. It’s also just a ton of fun! The team is very sociable and we do lots of things together besides work: weekly dinners and pub trips, movie nights, and much more. Finally, there’s no better place to try and figure out your own career path. We can’t emphasise this one enough - it’s something we’ve found ridiculously valuable. One of the best ways to figure out the answers to your questions is to discuss them with other people who are thinking about the same issues. You’ll be in an environment surrounded by other people who are ambitious about making a difference with the careers, giving you ample opportunity to do this. We give each other constant feedback and advice on future career plans, and also offer formal careers advice to everyone who works with us. “I genuinely don’t think there’s a better place in the world to work if you want to figure out what to do with your own career. The time I’ve spent working for 80,000 Hours this past year has been invaluable and made me realise there are so many more exciting possibilities available to me than I originally thought.” - Jess Whittlestone, Director of Communications --- - Published: 2014-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/newsletter/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Student Groups --- - Published: 2014-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/donors/ - Topics: Career capital, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Fundraising, Global priorities research, Philanthropic advising We greatly appreciate all the support we receive to keep 80,000 Hours running! The vast majority of our donations come from individuals, who give because they expect us to deliver a large social impact. We haven’t accepted any donations from corporations. Our donors range from large philanthropists, to former coaching alumni, to members of the effective giving community who donate 10% or more of their income. As of April 2014, we have received just under £301,000 in donations. To see our income and expenses to date in more detail, please see the financial report in our latest six month evaluation. Find out more about donating to us here. Our major supporters The following people have donated over £10,000 to 80,000 Hours. £50,000 - 100,000 Frederick Mulder Charitable Trust Founder of The Funding Network, art dealer Matt Wage Analyst at major quantitative trading firm, coaching alumnus £25,000 - 50,000 Patrick Brinich-Langlois Software engineer Luke Ding Former hedge fund manager at Brevan Howard Julia Wise and Jeff Kaufman Google software engineer and social worker, members £10,000 - 25,000 Jaan Tallinn Co-founder of Skype, Kazaa, MetaMed The Van Houten Fund University of Oxford project fund, bequeathed by Georges van Houten Tony Purnell Founder of Pi Research, Professor of Engineering at Cambridge Anonymous Anonymous We’re also grateful for the support of our affiliate, the University of Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, with whom we share office space. --- > Meet the team behind 80,000 Hours. - Published: 2014-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-22 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/meet-the-team/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics Core team Centre For Effective Altruism Support Staff Our Advisors Volunteer Community --- - Published: 2014-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/support-us/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Building the effective altruism community, Career capital, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Fundraising --- > We offer career coaching and in-depth research on the careers that do the most to solve the world’s most pressing problems. - Published: 2014-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-14 - URL: https://80000hours.org/about/ - Topics: 80,000 Hours, About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- > You have 80,000 hours in your career. How can you best use them to help solve the world’s most pressing problems? - Published: 2014-07-30 - Modified: 2025-09-16 - URL: https://80000hours.org/ You've got 80,000 hours in your career. How can you use them to solve the world's most pressing problems? Our research and coaching helps you find the careers in which you can make the most difference. --- --- ## Blog post - Published: 2025-10-09 - Modified: 2025-10-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/10/if-we-cant-control-mechahitler-how-will-we-steer-agi/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, AI safety technical research, AI-enabled power grabs, Catastrophic AI misuse --- - Published: 2025-09-23 - Modified: 2025-10-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/09/survey-results-what-ai-safety-orgs-want-in-a-hire/ - Topics: AI, AI companies, AI hardware expertise, AI policy, AI safety technical research, AI-enabled power grabs, AI-enhanced decision making, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Catastrophic AI misuse, Machine learning, Power-seeking AI systems, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2025-09-15 - Modified: 2025-09-16 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/09/80000-hours-review-2023-to-mid-2025/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-09-08 - Modified: 2025-09-08 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/09/announcing-the-80000-hours-substack/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-20 - Modified: 2025-09-16 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/content-associate/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-15 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/expression-of-interest-contracting-for-video-work/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-14 - Modified: 2025-08-14 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/early-warning-signs-ai/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/operations-generalists/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/events-associate-specialist/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/people-operations-associate-specialist/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/office-associate-specialist/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/recruiting-associate-specialist/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/video-operations-associate-specialist/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/executive-assistant-to-the-ceo/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-08-04 - Modified: 2025-09-10 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/08/it-security-and-data-privacy-specialist/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-07-09 - Modified: 2025-07-11 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/07/the-ai-2027-scenario-and-what-it-means-a-video-tour/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- > AI capabilities have been advancing extremely quickly over the last few years, and with increased capability comes increased potential for harm. Already, AI systems can make scammers and hackers more productive. - Published: 2025-06-30 - Modified: 2025-07-02 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/06/beyond-the-ai-arms-race/ - Topics: Uncategorised AI capabilities have been advancing extremely quickly over the last few years, and with increased capability comes increased potential for harm. Already, AI systems can make scammers and hackers more productive. --- - Published: 2025-06-20 - Modified: 2025-10-21 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/06/expression-of-interest-head-of-recruiting/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2025-06-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/06/updates-to-our-list-of-the-worlds-most-pressing-problems/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Risk --- - Published: 2025-06-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/06/3-reasons-agi-might-still-be-decades-away/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Machine learning, Research in relevant areas, Risk --- - Published: 2025-06-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/06/technical-ai-safety-upskilling-resources/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Exploration, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2025-05-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/05/80000-hours-completes-spin-out-from-effective-ventures/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-05-08 - Modified: 2025-10-06 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/05/10-essential-resources-ai-risk/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Existential risk, Power-seeking AI systems, World problems --- - Published: 2025-04-23 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/04/open-position-engagement-specialist/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Communication, Community & coordination, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2025-04-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/04/expression-of-interest-shortform-video-editing-contractor/ - Topics: AI, Career paths, Communication, Experience with an emerging power, Skills, Software and tech skills --- - Published: 2025-04-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/04/work-on-ai-risks/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Existential risk, Global priorities research, Skills --- - Published: 2025-04-04 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/04/to-understand-ai-you-should-use-it-heres-how-to-get-started/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Experience with an emerging power, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, World problems --- - Published: 2025-04-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/04/strategic-approach/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-03-30 - Modified: 2025-06-24 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/03/podcast-host/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-03-26 - Modified: 2025-06-08 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/03/expression-of-interest-web-chief-of-staff/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-03-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/03/when-do-experts-expect-agi-to-arrive/ - Topics: AI, AI companies, AI hardware expertise, AI policy, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, China-related AI safety & governance, China-Western coordination, Forecasting, Information security, Moral status of digital minds, World problems --- - Published: 2025-03-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/03/trends-in-ai-jobs/ - Topics: AI, Career capital, Career planning, Policy and political skills, Research, Skills, World problems --- - Published: 2025-03-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/03/senior-product-manager-eoi/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2025-02-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/02/ask-an-advisor-volume-two/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Government & policy, How to get a job, Mental health, Research in relevant areas, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2025-02-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/02/expression-of-interest-writer-researcher/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2025-02-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/02/ask-a-career-advisor-switching-to-ai-and-surviving-job-hunt/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2025-01-27 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/01/transcripts-for-bastian/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2025-01-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/01/how-quickly-could-robots-scale-up/ - Topics: AI, Career paths, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Machine learning, Skills --- - Published: 2025-01-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/01/it-looks-like-there-are-some-good-funding-opportunities-in-ai-safety-right-now/ - Topics: AI, Grantmaking, World problems --- - Published: 2025-01-03 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2025/01/what-happened-with-ai-2024/ - Topics: AI, Career planning, Global priorities research, Machine learning, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2024-12-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/12/2024-in-review-some-of-our-top-pieces-from-this-year/ - Topics: AI policy --- - Published: 2024-12-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/12/giving-season/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Philanthropic advising, Risk --- - Published: 2024-11-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/11/burnout/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2024-10-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/10/what-are-experts-in-biosecurity-worried-about/ - Topics: AI, Biorisk strategy & policy, Communication, Expertise relevant to a top problem, Global health, Research, Risk --- - Published: 2024-10-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/10/updates-to-our-problem-rankings-on-factory-farming-climate-change-and-more/ - Topics: Climate change, Factory farming, Other pressing problems, World problems --- - Published: 2024-09-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/09/why-experts-and-forecasters-disagree-about-ai-risk/ - Topics: Career planning, Communication, Existential risk, Government & policy, Philosophy, Research in relevant areas, Skills --- - Published: 2024-08-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/08/updates-to-our-research-about-ai-risk-and-careers/ - Topics: AI policy, Career paths --- - Published: 2024-08-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/08/h5n1-and-mpox-assessing-the-situation/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Communicating ideas, Global health, Other pressing problems, Policy and political skills, Research in relevant areas, Risk --- - Published: 2024-08-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/08/why-orwell-would-hate-ai/ - Topics: AI, Existential risk, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Research in relevant areas, Totalitarianism --- - Published: 2024-08-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/08/open-position-advisor-2024/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2024-07-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/07/open-position-head-of-video/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Communication, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2024-07-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/07/open-position-head-of-marketing-2024/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Marketing, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2024-07-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/07/open-position-marketer-2024/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Marketing, Skills --- - Published: 2024-07-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/07/handling-mental-illness-in-your-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Mental health --- - Published: 2024-06-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/06/does-your-vote-matter-what-the-research-says/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Government & policy, Policy and political skills, Politics, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2024-06-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/06/dive-into-advanced-series/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit --- > This is the most interesting idea for a startup that I've heard recently. - Published: 2024-05-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/05/project-idea-ai-for-epistemics/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Early-stage startup employee, Entrepreneurship, Forecasting, Foundations, Founding a tech startup, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2024-05-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/05/where-are-all-the-nuclear-experts/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career paths, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Nuclear war --- - Published: 2024-04-26 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/04/overlooked-career-paths/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Communication, Government & policy, Personal fit, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2024-03-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/03/writer-writer-researcher-eoi/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2024-03-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/03/particularly-neglected-causes/ - Topics: Civilisational resilience, S-risks, Space governance, Totalitarianism, Wild animal suffering --- - Published: 2024-03-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/03/the-case-for-taking-your-technical-expertise-to-the-field-of-ai-policy/ - Topics: AI policy, Information security, Machine learning, Risk --- - Published: 2024-02-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/02/open-positions-operations-team/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Operations, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2024-02-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/02/why-you-might-not-want-to-work-on-nuclear-disarmament/ - Topics: AI policy, Career paths, Existential risk, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Nuclear war, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2024-02-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/02/skills-pages-launch/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Organisation-building, Policy and political skills, Research, Skill-building and career capital, Skills --- - Published: 2024-01-31 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/01/announcing-niel-bowerman-ceo/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, High impact executive assistance, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2024-01-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/01/forming-new-habits/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2024-01-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2024/01/2023-in-review/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2023-12-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/12/best-of-2023-podcast-highlights/ - Topics: AI, Communication, Exploration, Politics, Research --- - Published: 2023-12-29 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/12/announcing-plan/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, High impact executive assistance, Research --- - Published: 2023-12-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/12/giving-season-advice/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2023-11-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/11/a-note-of-appreciation-for-your-efforts-to-help-others/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Mental health, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2023-11-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/11/new-ai-governance-opportunities/ - Topics: AI policy, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Exploration, Government & policy, Skills --- - Published: 2023-10-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/10/staff-career-mistakes/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Skills --- - Published: 2023-09-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/09/building-career-capital/ - Topics: AI, Career capital, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Medicine, Personal fit, Policy and political skills, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2023-09-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/09/what-you-should-know-about-our-updated-career-guide/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Personal fit, Risk, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2023-09-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/09/open-positions-1on1-team/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2023-09-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/09/career-guide-launch/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Existential risk, Exploration, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2023-09-01 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/09/what-the-past-can-tell-us-about-how-ai-will-affect-jobs/ - Topics: AI, Career planning, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Job satisfaction, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2023-08-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/08/why-you-might-consider-switching-careers-and-what-it-takes-to-do-it/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Being ambitious, Career paths, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2023-08-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/08/operations-management-how-i-found-the-right-career-path-for-me/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Operations, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2023-08-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/08/what-recent-events-mean-for-ai-governance-career-paths/ - Topics: AI policy, Career capital, Career paths, Personal fit, Policy and political skills, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2023-07-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/07/why-i-think-many-people-underrate-investigating-the-problem-they-work-on/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Skills --- - Published: 2023-06-30 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/06/what-the-war-in-ukraine-shows-us-about-catastrophic-risks/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Great power conflict, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2023-06-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/06/career-rejection/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Mental health, Personal fit --- - Published: 2023-06-06 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/06/practical-steps-to-take-now-that-ai-risk-is-mainstream/ - Topics: AI safety technical research, Career capital, Career planning, Government & policy, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2023-05-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/05/the-public-is-more-concerned-about-ai-causing-extinction-than-we-thought/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Risk --- - Published: 2023-05-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/05/give-feedback-on-the-new-80000-hours-career-guide/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2023-05-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/05/how-80000-hours-has-changed-some-of-our-advice-after-the-collapse-of-ftx/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Personal fit, Risk --- > How much should you do what seems right to you, even if it seems extreme or controversial, vs how much should you moderate your views and actions based on other perspectives? - Published: 2023-05-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/05/moderation-in-doing-good/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Moral philosophy, Prioritisation frameworks, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2023-04-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/04/why-were-adding-information-security-to-our-list-of-priority-career-paths/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Information security, Personal fit, Software engineering --- > If you're looking for a career working on a problem that is massively important, relatively neglected, and potentially very tractable, reducing biorisk might be a terrific option. - Published: 2023-04-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/04/are-we-doing-enough-to-stop-the-worst-pandemics/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, COVID-19, Engineered pandemics, Other topics, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2023-04-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/04/how-much-should-you-research-your-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2023-03-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/03/concerned-about-recent-ai-progress-heres-our-best-resources-to-understand-whats-going-on/ - Topics: AI, Information security, World problems --- - Published: 2023-03-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/03/why-you-should-think-about-virtues-even-if-youre-a-consequentialist/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Personal fit --- - Published: 2023-03-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/03/80000-hours-two-year-review-2021-and-2022/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Fundraising, Job satisfaction, Research management --- - Published: 2023-03-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/03/what-bings-chatbot-can-tell-us-about-ai-risk-and-what-it-cant/ - Topics: AI policy, AI safety technical research, Existential risk, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Research in relevant areas --- - Published: 2023-02-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/02/expression-of-interest-systems-hire/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Operations, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > In a 2013 paper, Dr Toby Ord reviewed data that compared about 100 health interventions in developing countries in terms of how many years of illness they prevent per dollar. He discovered some striking facts about the data. - Published: 2023-02-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/02/how-much-do-solutions-differ-in-effectiveness/ - Topics: Climate change, Effective altruism, Foundations, GiveWell, Global health, Other pressing problems, World problems --- - Published: 2023-02-09 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/02/is-the-world-getting-better-or-worse/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Climate change, Existential risk, Factory farming, Global health, Nuclear war, World problems --- > 80,000 Hours is looking for a content associate to help us improve and grow the impact of the 80,000 Hours website, which provides free research and advice to help people use their careers to address the world’s most pressing problems. - Published: 2023-01-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/01/open-position-content-associate/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > Having kids can be challenging for anyone, and there may be unique challenges for people who aim to have a positive impact with their career. - Published: 2023-01-20 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/01/parenting-impactful-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit --- > Without making time to check in on the big career questions, you might stay too long at a job, miss opportunities for doing more good, or fail to push yourself to grow — I’ve certainly been there before. - Published: 2023-01-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/01/the-quick-medium-and-long-versions-of-career-planning/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning --- > As 2023 gets underway, we’re taking a look back at the content we produced in 2022 and highlighting some particular standouts. We published a lot of new articles and podcasts to help our readers have impactful careers — below are some of our favourite pieces from the year. - Published: 2023-01-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2023/01/2022-in-review/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Skills --- > Charitable giving can be hugely impactful — if you’re careful about where you donate. One of the simplest ways to have an impact with your career is to donate a portion of your income. But if you’re going to do that, *where* you donate can make a huge difference. - Published: 2022-12-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/12/how-were-thinking-about-where-to-donate-to-charity-this-year/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Global health, Other topics --- > Effective altruism isn’t about any particular way of doing good, like AI alignment or distributing malaria nets. Rather, it’s a way of thinking. - Published: 2022-12-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/12/four-values-at-the-heart-of-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Foundations --- - Published: 2022-11-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/11/why-being-open-to-changing-our-minds-is-especially-important-right-now/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Moral philosophy, Now vs later --- - Published: 2022-11-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/11/regarding-the-collapse-of-ftx/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, Risk --- > If you want to do the most good you can, it can be a good sign to be working on something that sounds a little weird. Our list of the most pressing problems has some pretty widely accepted concerns, to be sure: we care about mitigating climate change, preventing nuclear war, and ensuring good governance. - Published: 2022-10-30 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/10/the-importance-of-considering-speculative-ideas/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Exploration, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Moral philosophy, Now vs later --- - Published: 2022-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/10/open-position-recruiter/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- > If transformative AI is coming sooner than expected, work to ensure this transformation goes well (rather than disastrously) is even more urgent. - Published: 2022-08-24 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/08/is-transformative-ai-coming-sooner-than-we-thought/ - Topics: AI, Career paths, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2022-07-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/07/expression-of-interest-head-of-operations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Operations --- - Published: 2022-07-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/07/open-position-marketer-2022/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Marketing, Personal fit, Skills --- > This idea is about being deliberate in what you’re trying hard to achieve. It’s about trying to ensure that the subject of the majority of your effort is in fact the most important thing. - Published: 2022-06-15 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/06/know-what-youre-optimising-for/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Foundations, Institutional decision making, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/05/prevent-future-pandemics-with-these-projects/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, COVID-19, Engineered pandemics, Existential risk, Foundations, Global health, Open Philanthropy, Other topics, World problems --- - Published: 2022-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/05/ea-and-the-current-funding-situation/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Risk --- - Published: 2022-05-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/05/leadership-change-at-80000-hours/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- - Published: 2022-04-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/04/imposter-syndrome/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2022-04-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/04/open-position-writer/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2022-03-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/03/open-position-operations-specialist/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Operations, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2022-03-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/03/expression-of-interest-writer/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2022-03-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/03/23-career-choice-heuristics/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Exploration, Personal fit --- - Published: 2022-02-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/02/introducing-80k-after-hours/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Exploration, Mental health, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2022-02-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/02/expression-of-interest-popular-writing-consultant/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Skills --- - Published: 2022-01-31 - Modified: 2024-09-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/replaceability/ - Topics: Uncategorised --- - Published: 2022-01-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/open-position-head-of-job-board/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills 80,000 Hours is hiring a Head of Job Board to lead the (https://80000hours.org/job-board/). They will be responsible for setting and executing strategy to grow the job board's impact, as well as managing and hiring the job board team. More than 180,000 users visited the job board in 2021. Over the next few years, we hope to grow the job board to the point where millions of people per year use it to find out about impactful jobs. This role is based in London, UK. The salary will vary based on your skills and experience, but the starting salary for someone with five years of relevant experience would be approximately £72,000 per year. To apply for this role, please complete (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScmQaABPRi9LTgkIyYlf_cXBN0gnIMoFrZ9Syyapth9hwAnHQ/viewform) by 11pm GMT on Sunday, 27 February 2022. We are offering a £1000 referral bonus to anyone outside the Centre for Effective Altruism who suggests a successful candidate we didn't otherwise have on our radar. Please email (mailto:niel@80000hours.org) with your referrals. --- - Published: 2022-01-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/our-advisors-want-to-talk-with-more-people-than-ever-before/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics Last year, 80,000 Hours’ advisors spoke to more people than ever before -- and we are hoping to help even more people this year! If 80,000 Hours’ content resonates with you, and you want to get help applying the ideas to your career, then (https://80000hours.org/speak-with-us?int_campaign=blog-post). ##What we did in 2021 2021 was a landmark year for the 80,000 Hours one-on-one team: * **We had over 800 advising calls.** That’s the most calls per year in our 10-year history! * **We hired two new advisors**, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-lawsen-3b176121b/) and (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-reardon-021a9b3a/), to join (https://www.linkedin.com/in/habiba-i-5a1aa194/) on the team. That means we now have more people focused on helping people one-on-one than ever before. * **We spoke to about 50% of people who applied** -- and when we didn’t speak to people ourselves, we often connected them with someone else, or sent them resources to help with their career planning. We plan to continue to expand our service and help more people to find high-impact careers in 2022. So if it sounds like we can help you, apply now! --- - Published: 2022-01-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/best-of-2021/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- - Published: 2022-01-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/career-reviews-from-our-community/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Research, Software engineering --- - Published: 2022-01-17 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2022/01/open-position-advisor/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2021-11-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/11/growth-of-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, World problems --- - Published: 2021-10-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/10/effective-altruism-in-a-nutshell/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Longtermist philanthropy, Moral philosophy, Research --- - Published: 2021-08-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/08/open-position-marketer/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2021-08-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/08/open-position-head-of-marketing/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2021-08-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/08/effective-altruism-allocation-resources-cause-areas/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2021-07-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, World problems --- - Published: 2021-06-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/06/expression-of-interest-experienced-writer/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Communicating ideas, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2021-05-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/05/80000-hours-annual-review-nov-2020/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics --- > We did a survey of academic research about how much people differ in productivity. This is a quick summary of what we found. - Published: 2021-05-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/05/how-much-do-people-differ-in-productivity/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2021-04-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/04/launching-a-new-resource-effective-altruism-an-introduction/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Research --- - Published: 2021-02-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/02/why-i-find-longtermism-hard/ - Topics: Career capital, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Personal fit --- - Published: 2021-02-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/02/rob-wiblin-on-how-he-ended-up-the-way-he-is/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Other topics, User stories --- - Published: 2021-01-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2021/01/rob-wiblin-on-self-improvement-and-research-ethics/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Economics, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Psychology, Research in relevant areas --- > Good judgement is the ability to weigh complex information and is a valuable career asset. Find out what we know about how to develop good judgement. - Published: 2020-09-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/09/good-judgement/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Forecasting, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills --- > What drives career success? Discover five different theories on how to be successful in your career. - Published: 2020-09-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/09/career-success/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2020-08-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/08/global-priorities-research-update/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global Priorities Institute, Global priorities research, Philanthropic advising, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2020-08-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/08/the-emerging-school-of-patient-longtermism/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Now vs later --- > William MacAskill on 4 top misconceptions about effective altruism. - Published: 2020-08-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/08/misconceptions-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, World problems --- - Published: 2020-08-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/08/ideas-for-high-impact-careers-beyond-our-priority-paths/ - Topics: AI, Being a public intellectual, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Entrepreneurship, Government & policy, History of large societal trends, Journalism, Research management, World problems --- - Published: 2020-06-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/06/lessons-from-anonymous-interviews/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Other topics, Personal fit, Risk --- - Published: 2020-06-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/06/anonymous-answers-myths-and-other-questions/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Other topics, Personal fit, Philosophy --- - Published: 2020-04-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/04/anonymous-answers-diversity/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, World problems --- - Published: 2020-04-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/04/longtermist-policy-ideas/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Government & policy, Research, Research in relevant areas --- > We aim to sum up what we intend to provide and what we can’t within effective altruism, to make it easier for other groups to fill these gaps. - Published: 2020-04-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/04/which-programmes-within-ea/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Foundations, World problems --- > We review our progress and mistakes over 2019, and plans for 2020. - Published: 2020-04-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/04/annual-review-dec-2019/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2020-04-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/04/opportunities-to-work-on-covid-19/ - Topics: COVID-19, Other topics --- - Published: 2020-04-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/04/good-news-about-covid-19/ - Topics: Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, COVID-19, Engineered pandemics, Forecasting, Foundations, Global health, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems --- - Published: 2020-03-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/03/coronavirus-crisis-new-gcbr-profile/ - Topics: AI safety technical research, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Global health, Government & policy, Policy and political skills, Research --- - Published: 2020-03-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/03/anonymous-answers-flaws-effective-altruism-community/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, World problems --- - Published: 2020-02-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anonymous-answers-flaws-80000hours/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Advice for undergraduates, Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, Personal fit --- - Published: 2020-02-17 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anonymous-answers-effective-altruism-community-and-growth/ - Topics: Advocacy, Anonymous advice, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, World problems --- - Published: 2020-02-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anonymous-answers-general-life-advice/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Mental health, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2020-02-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/02/anon-answers-honesty/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Communication, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Risk --- - Published: 2020-01-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2020/01/anon-answers-one-way-successful/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2019-12-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/12/anon-answers-what-to-work-on/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, World problems --- - Published: 2019-12-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/12/anonymous-answers-bad-habits/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics --- - Published: 2019-11-29 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/11/anonymous-answers-risk-aversion/ - Topics: Ability, Anonymous advice, Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Other topics, Personal fit, Risk --- - Published: 2019-11-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/11/anonymous-answers-personal-reflections/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2019-11-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/11/anonymous-answers-most-overrated/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Now vs later, Other topics, Personal fit --- - Published: 2019-10-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/10/anonymous-advice-fail-at-work/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills --- > The following are excerpts from interviews with people whose work we respect and who would like to remain anonymous. - Published: 2019-10-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/10/anonymous-advice-careers/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Other topics --- - Published: 2019-09-17 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/09/have-we-helped-you-have-a-bigger-social-impact-our-annual-impact-survey/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2019-08-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/08/how-replaceable-are-top-candidates-in-large-hiring-rounds/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Replaceability --- - Published: 2019-05-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/05/rob-wiblin-on-living-well/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Existential risk, Government & policy, Personal fit --- > We review our progress and mistakes over 2018, and plans for 2019. - Published: 2019-05-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/05/annual-review-dec-2018/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2019-05-05 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/05/why-do-organisations-say-recent-hires-are-worth-so-much/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, World problems --- - Published: 2019-04-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/04/career-advice-i-wish-id-been-given-when-i-was-young/ - Topics: Anonymous advice, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Other topics --- - Published: 2019-02-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2019/02/february-job-board-updates/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2018-12-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/12/find-your-highest-impact-role-77-new-vacancies-in-our-december-job-board-updates/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2018-12-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/12/dealing-with-setbacks/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Mental health --- - Published: 2018-11-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/11/clarifying-talent-gaps/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Effective altruism, Exploration, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making, Replaceability --- - Published: 2018-10-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/new-article-advice-by-expertise/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy --- - Published: 2018-10-24 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/second-october-job-board-update/ - Topics: Career planning, Global priorities research, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Skills --- - Published: 2018-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/new-article-accidental-harm/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy --- - Published: 2018-10-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/2018-talent-gaps-survey/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Effective altruism, Foundations, Operations, Personal fit, World problems --- - Published: 2018-10-04 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/career-review-academic-research/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2018-10-03 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/october-job-board-update/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Job satisfaction, Research in relevant areas, Skills --- - Published: 2018-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/research-review-4-months/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2018-09-30 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/09/recent-research-weve-published-our-top-10-careers-for-social-impact-congressional-staffing-comparative-advantage-and-can-you-guess-which-psychology-experiments-will-replicate/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Government & policy, Personal fit, PhDs, Research --- - Published: 2018-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/09/aaas-science-technology-policy-fellowship/ - Topics: AI, AI policy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Government & policy, Research in relevant areas, World problems --- - Published: 2018-08-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/08/randomised-experiment-if-youre-really-unsure-whether-to-quit-your-job-or-break-up-you-really-probably-should/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- > On Monday we learnt that Typeform, a popular service we’ve used to create some of our online forms, has suffered a significant data security breach. Many 80,000 Hours users have have completed one or more of these forms, and a subset of their form responses were among the information that was stolen from Typeform. - Published: 2018-07-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2018/07/typeform-data-breach/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- > We review our progress and mistakes over 2017, and plans for 2018. - Published: 2017-12-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/12/annual-review/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2017-12-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/12/effective-holiday-giving-in-2017/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Philanthropic advising, Risk --- - Published: 2017-11-17 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/11/consider-applying-for-a-phd-program-now/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Graduate school, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, PhDs, Research, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2017-11-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/11/talent-gaps-survey-2017/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Operations, World problems --- - Published: 2017-10-23 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/10/our-20-most-popular-pieces-of-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2017-10-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/10/new-career-review-policy-oriented-civil-service-with-a-uk-focus/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Government & policy --- - Published: 2017-10-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/10/new-problem-profile-improving-institutional-decision-making/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Government & policy --- - Published: 2017-06-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/06/which-jobs-do-economists-say-create-the-largest-spillover-benefits-for-society/ - Topics: Art & entertainment, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Founding a tech startup, Income, Other topics --- - Published: 2017-06-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/06/the-schwarzman-scholarship-an-exciting-opportunity-to-learn-more-about-china-and-get-a-masters-in-global-affairs/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, China-related AI safety & governance, China-Western coordination, Government & policy, Specialist in emerging global powers --- - Published: 2017-05-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/05/how-much-do-hedge-fund-traders-earn/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Economics, Finance, Income, Other topics --- - Published: 2017-05-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/05/most-people-report-believing-its-incredibly-cheap-to-save-lives-in-the-developing-world/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2017-04-06 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/04/how-accurately-does-anyone-know-the-global-distribution-of-income/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Income, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making --- > A survey of the skills that are most lacking in the effective altruism community. - Published: 2017-03-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/03/what-skills-are-effective-altruist-organisations-missing/ - Topics: Building the effective altruism community, Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, How to get a job, Skill-building and career capital --- > Many people who want to make a difference are interested in careers in education. But there's many reasons education doesn't look like the best cause to enter. - Published: 2017-01-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2017/01/5-reasons-not-to-go-into-education/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2016-12-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/12/the-effective-altruism-guide-to-donating-this-giving-season/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global health, Philanthropic advising People in the effective altruism community aim to use evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to best promote the wellbeing of all. To find the highest-impact charities this giving season, they’ve done tens of thousands of hours of research and published over 50,000 words of analysis this month. We read it all, and summed up the main recommendations by area. But which of the 9 problem areas listed should you personally give to? We’ve got you covered here too. This tool asks you six questions and adjusts the ranking based on your beliefs: Quiz: Which problem should you give to? → In the full post, you can find (i) how we came up with the list, (ii) more advice on how to narrow down the list, (iii) more information on each charity. --- - Published: 2016-12-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/12/annual-review-dec-2016/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2016-12-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/12/has-80000-hours-justified-its-costs/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2016-12-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/12/metrics-report-2016/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised This is an update on the number of significant plan changes we’ve caused as of the end of Nov 2016. We define a significant plan change as: >Someone tells us that 80,000 Hours caused them to change the career path they intend to pursue, in a way that they think increases their lifetime impact. More on what counts as a significant plan change (https://80000hours.org/2015/07/new-definition-of-a-significant-plan-change/). Our total number of plan changes as of the end of Nov 2016 is **1,854**, and after impact-adjusting these it’s **1,504.8**. --- - Published: 2016-12-08 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/12/80000-hours-has-a-funding-gap/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, High impact executive assistance, World problems --- - Published: 2016-09-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/09/update-on-80000-hours-may-2015-june-2016/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised This is a quick update on our progress over the last year. Our next in-depth annual review, in which we’ll vet everything in more depth, will be in January 2017. ## Our impact across the year Here’s our key metrics for the top of our funnel. Ultimately we care about significant plan changes, which we report right below. Our newsletter now has a total of over 50,000 subscribers, which we think makes it the largest in the effective altruism community (most others have about 10,000). Our total traffic also just overtook GiveWell, which we think is the next largest by traffic (we had 880,000 users over the 12 months ending June, compared to 860,000 when calculated the same way.) --- - Published: 2016-08-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/08/plan-change-story-building-skills-in-the-private-sector-to-have-more-impact-in-the-long-run/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2016-08-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/08/is-deep-work-the-most-underappreciated-skill-for-career-success-an-interview-with-cal-newport/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Communication, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Other pressing problems, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, World problems --- - Published: 2016-07-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/07/update-on-number-of-significant-plan-changes/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised This is a brief update on the number of significant plan changes we’ve caused as of the end of Dec 2015. We define a significant plan change as: >Someone tells us that 80,000 Hours caused them to change the career path they intend to pursue, in a way that they think increases their lifetime impact. More on what counts as a significant plan change (https://80000hours.org/2015/07/new-definition-of-a-significant-plan-change/). Our total number of significant plan changes as of the end of Dec 2015 is **453**. Here’s a summary of our key figures: --- > In 2014 Maria had a general desire to improve the world, but no idea how to put that into practice. She didn't see any way to do good using her art. - Published: 2016-06-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/06/interview-with-maria-gutierrez-about-doing-good-through-art/ - Topics: Art & entertainment, Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit This week I interviewed Maria Gutierrez to learn more about how 80,000 Hours had changed her career plans. For the last year Maria has been our freelance graphic designer, producing most of the artwork on our site today. I sped up the recording so it is quick to listen to: ##Summary of the interview In 2014 Maria had a general desire to improve the world, but no idea how to put that into practice. She didn't see any way to do useful work while using her creative skills and was frustrated by this. She stumbled onto 80,000 Hours and effective altruism while browsing the internet, and its 'honesty' immediately resonated with her. It provided a much more concrete way to assess what would actually be useful to do than she previously had. It was the first time she had considered 'earning to give' as a way to do good. She realised that she could do a lot of good by using her artistic skills to contribute to any organisation that does exceptional work. She decided to make her first contribution by working for us. Maria decided to move back to Costa Rica to dramatically lower her cost of living, and thereby be able to donate more. This is possible because all the work she does is online for groups in the US and UK. She recommends other people think about doing the same thing, and we suggest some careers that are particularly promising for remote work. We discuss how the 80,000 Hours framework can be applied to others in the creative arts, and challenge the view that such skills are not valuable. Long term, Maria is weighing up earning to give as a fine artist, against doing 'direct work' as a designer for non-profits or for-profits that she thinks are having a large social impact. This raises tricky issues about personal fit, and which sacrifice she is willing to make and which she isn't. Maria doesn't think she could be happy without being challenged artistically. She also thinks she would burn out doing pure marketing. Finally, we discuss RISE (Red de Impacto Sustenible y Effectivo), en effective altruism inspired organistion for Costa Rica, which she intends to launch with a friend. Maria explains why she doesn't want to take donations away from charities that work in countries poorer than Costa Rica. --- > How does climate change rank amongst the worlds biggest problems? Should you use your career to work on this problem? - Published: 2016-05-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/05/how-can-we-buy-more-insurance-against-extreme-climate-change/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career paths, Climate change, Government & policy, Research, Risk, Skills --- > Local laws often prohibit the construction of dense new housing, which drives up prices, especially in a few large high-wage urban areas. - Published: 2016-05-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/05/the-rent-is-too-damn-high-should-you-work-on-reforming-land-use-regulations/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, World problems --- - Published: 2016-04-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/how-and-why-to-work-on-nuclear-security/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career paths, Existential risk, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Nuclear war, Research, Risk --- > We've released a new 'problem profile' on the risks posed by artificial intelligence. - Published: 2016-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-use-your-career-to-make-artificial-intelligence-safe/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Computer science, Existential risk, Foundations, Philosophy, Research, Skills, World problems --- > Smoking takes an enormous toll on human health - accounting for about 6% of all ill-health globally according to the best estimates. - Published: 2016-04-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/the-case-for-dedicating-your-career-to-tobacco-control/ - Topics: Career paths, Global health, Other pressing problems, World problems --- > Global priorities research seeks to use new methods to determine in which causes funding to improve the world can have the biggest impact. - Published: 2016-04-05 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-work-on-cause-prioritisation-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Global priorities research, High impact executive assistance, Research, World problems --- - Published: 2016-04-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-work-on-global-health-problems/ - Topics: Global health, Other pressing problems, World problems --- > Each year, 50 billion animals are raised and slaughtered in factory farms. Most experience extreme levels of suffering. - Published: 2016-04-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/new-profile-on-factory-farming/ - Topics: Factory farming, World problems --- > Natural pandemics and new scientifically engineered pathogens could potentially kill millions or even billions of people. - Published: 2016-04-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/04/why-and-how-to-use-your-career-to-work-on-biosecurity/ - Topics: Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Global health, Research, Risk, World problems --- > To get more career reviews written quickly we are going to experiment with allowing readers to submit them themselves. - Published: 2016-03-30 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/03/write-career-reviews-for-us-as-a-freelancer/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career paths, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital --- > There’s lots of skills you could learn. How can we narrow them down to the most useful ones? - Published: 2016-03-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/03/which-skills-make-you-most-employable/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital, Skills ##Summary We correlated 35 key transferable skills with salaries, then rated them on how easy they are to learn, and combined them into 11 categories. Based on this analysis, the five skills to learn that will most boost your employability are: 1. Learning how to learn and personal productivity 2. Persuasion and negotiation 3. Science 4. Communication 5. Analysis and problem solving This analysis is still preliminary, so we wouldn’t put too much weight on it. --- > If you’re working on a lake and also using your laptop to look at pictures of lakes, you might need a harder job. - Published: 2016-02-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/should-you-look-for-a-low-stress-job/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Risk, Skills Many people assume stress is obviously bad, and lots of people tell us they want to find a “low stress job”. But a (http://www.amazon.com/The-Upside-Stress-Why-Good/dp/1583335617) (and (https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en) with over 10 million views) by psychologist Kelly McGonigal claims that stress is only bad if you think it is, and that stress can make us stronger, smarter and happier. So are most people wrong, or is stress only bad if you have the wrong attitude towards it? We did a survey of the literature, and found that as is often the case, the truth lies in between. Stress can be good in some circumstances, but some of McGonigal’s claims also seem overblown. * **In summary, whether work demands have good or bad effects seems to depend on the following things:** --- > Benjamin Todd interviewed Michael Dello-Iacovo about his attempts to do good as a geophysicist inside the Australian mining industry. - Published: 2016-02-25 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/interview-trying-to-change-the-resources-industry-from-the-inside/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Engineering, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > We'd like to hire a freelance web engineer to work 2-3 days per week developing our career guide for the next six months. - Published: 2016-02-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/we-are-looking-for-a-freelance-product-engineer-to-build-our-interactive-career-guide-and-help-millions-of-graduates-have-a-greater-social-impact-1000-for-referrals/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Skill-building and career capital, Skills, Software and tech skills, Web design --- > What is the best career for someone whose main strengths are in visual design? We’ve released a new career review on web design. - Published: 2016-02-23 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/new-career-review-web-designer/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital What is the best career for someone whose main strengths are in visual design? **To start figuring that out we’ve released (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/web-designer/).** Here’s a quick summary: *Pros* * Web designers can work on a broad range of high impact projects because they are in-demand across many types of organisations, including charities, governments and startups. * As a backup, web designers can enter paths with good pay, like UX design ($80,000 median salary), and earn to give. *Cons* * Good design is hard to measure, which makes it hard to prove your abilities to potential employers, meaning entry and progression can be difficult. *Who should do it?* * You should consider web design if you studied graphic design or a related field; you’ve already spent several years developing web-design skills; and you are persuasive enable you to get a foot in the door when you’re starting out. * However if you have the technical skills to do web development, we recommend you do that instead, since it wins over web design on most dimensions (salary, number of jobs, job growth rate, quality of work is easier to measure). **(https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/web-designer/).** --- > It depends a lot on what kind of business you're trying to run. - Published: 2016-02-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/what-the-literature-says-about-the-earnings-of-entrepreneurs/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Entrepreneurship, Experience with an emerging power, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Risk, Skills --- > Once you’re done and have decided what steps to take, you can relax about your career trajectory for another 12 months! - Published: 2016-02-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/annual-career-check-in/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > One of the most common ideas in career advice is that finding a good career is a matter of finding the role that uniquely matches you. But is that right? - Published: 2016-02-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/how-important-is-finding-a-career-that-matches-your-strengths/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- > What are the pros and cons of these careers, and who do they best suit? - Published: 2016-02-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/new-career-reviews-of-headhunting-and-nursing/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Medicine --- > Lincoln Quirk is saving people 70% of the cost of sending money back to their families in east Africa. - Published: 2016-02-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/doing-good-through-for-profits-lincoln-quirk-and-wave/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Foundations, Founding a tech startup, Skills, Software engineering --- - Published: 2016-02-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/rule-breaking-in-children-predicts-future-success/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills --- > Tara saved lives working as a pharmacist in Bhutan - no really we checked, and she totally did - but she nevertheless left to try to find something better. - Published: 2016-02-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/we-can-learn-a-lot-from-tara-who-left-pharmacy-to-work-in-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Earning to give, Exploration, Medicine, Personal fit, World problems --- - Published: 2016-02-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/plan-change-story-interview-with-dillon-bowen-leader-of-effective-altruism-at-tufts-university/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Economics, Economics PhD, Exploration, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, World problems I recently interviewed Dillon Bowen, who runs the EA student group at Tufts University, about how his career plans changed as a result of interacting with 80,000 Hours. Dillon’s original plan was to do a Philosophy PhD and then go into philosophy academia. After going to a talk at Tufts by our co-founder Will MacAskill and receiving career coaching from 80,000 Hours, he started taking classes in economics, now intends to do an (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/economics-phd/) instead. More details of the key points from the interview are below. --- > When you’re part of a community doing the most good becomes much more of a coordination problem. - Published: 2016-02-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/02/the-value-of-coordination/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2016-01-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/01/10-steps-to-a-job-in-politics/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Government & policy, Politics --- > Last year I wrote about the most harmful careers and had encouraging smoking at the top. But how bad is it exactly? - Published: 2016-01-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/01/just-how-bad-is-being-a-ceo-in-big-tobacco/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Foundations, Income, Moral philosophy, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making --- > Open Philanthropy recently released a review of research on when human level artificial intelligence will be achieved. The main conclusion of the report was we’re really uncertain - Published: 2016-01-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2016/01/is-now-the-time-to-do-something-about-ai/ - Topics: AI, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy --- - Published: 2015-12-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/where-should-you-donate-to-have-the-most-impact-in-giving-season-2015/ - Topics: Career capital, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Other topics, Philanthropic advising Many of our readers choose to give away substantial sums over the ‘giving season’ around Christmas and New Year. Where should they give so that their money has the biggest social impact? This post is based on a combination of my existing knowledge, some judgement calls based on three years working in effective altruism, and brief consultation with the people involved in the groups below. It's not based on in-depth research, and the recommendations could easily change. Take this post as a starting point for your own analysis. *Note that we’re looking for the charities that help others the most, treating everyone's welfare as equal. If you have a particular attachment to a specific cause, you’ll need to factor that in separately.* This flowchart is a summary of the advice below. Read on for more details. --- - Published: 2015-12-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/interview-with-ben-who-expects-to-donate-eight-figures-for-charity-through-tech-entrepreneurship/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Earning to give, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Risk --- - Published: 2015-12-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/podcast-with-founder-of-entrepreneur-first-about-being-a-startup-founder/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Entrepreneurship, Experience with an emerging power, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital I recently interviewed Matt Clifford (left), the Co-founder & Chief Executive at (http://www.joinef.com/), which describes itself as “*Europe’s leading pre-seed investment programme for technical founders who want to work on hard problems.*” You can read a summary below. --- - Published: 2015-12-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/even-if-we-cant-lower-catastrophic-risks-now-we-should-do-something-now-so-we-can-do-more-later/ - Topics: AI, Career capital, Career planning, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Risk --- > Let’s suppose you want to minimise sacrifice and maximise the good you do. What should you choose? - Published: 2015-12-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/whats-the-easiest-way-anyone-can-have-a-big-social-impact/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Philanthropic advising, Risk Many people want a career that contributes to the world, that helps others live happier lives. To do this, some become teachers, some work in the nonprofit sector, and others work in many other sectors. Sometimes this involves significant personal sacrifice - at the very least, “socially good” jobs usually have lower earnings. Let’s suppose you want to minimise sacrifice and maximise social impact. What should you choose then? What would be good is a career option that’s: 1. Open to most of our audience (college grads in developed countries). 2. Involves little or no sacrifice. 3. Has as large a social impact as possible, with high confidence. I think a path like this exists, as I’ll argue in the rest of this post. I call it the *easy baseline*: 1. Take whichever job you’d find most personally fulfilling. 2. Give 10% of your income to the world’s poorest people. As of 2008, you can give your income to the world’s poorest people through (https://www.givedirectly.org/), a charity that provides one-off cash transfers to the poorest people in Kenya via mobile app. Every $1 you give results in $0.90 in the hands of one of the world’s poorest people. This intervention could soak up billions of dollars in the coming years, so could be pursued by many people. If you want to have a social impact with your career, giving 10% is the easiest thing you can do, and I think almost everyone reading this should do it. You can take (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/join/) to do so in just a few minutes. Below I'll explain in more detail why doing so is such an attractive option. --- - Published: 2015-12-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/plan-change-story-from-neuroscience-academia-to-cost-effectiveness-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Giving What We Can, Organisation-building, Research Hauke did a PhD in Neuroscience and was planning to go into academia. But after reading our research, he changed his plans and applied to jobs in German politics, consulting, tech-startups and our parent organisation, the Centre for Effective Altruism. He’s now Director of Research at (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/), where he researches which charities most effectively alleviate extreme poverty. --- - Published: 2015-12-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/plan-change-report-lehua-gray-closed-down-her-fundraising-startup-when-she-realised-it-wouldnt-have-impact/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Fundraising, Personal fit --- - Published: 2015-12-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/how-to-pursue-a-career-in-research-to-lower-the-risks-from-superintelligent-machines-a-new-career-review/ - Topics: Career planning, Existential risk, Foundations, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Machine learning, Personal fit, PhDs, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2015-11-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-good-or-bad-for-career-capital/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, World problems --- - Published: 2015-11-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-you-should-focus-more-on-talent-gaps-not-funding-gaps/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-11-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/take-the-growth-approach-to-evaluating-startup-non-profits-not-the-marginal-approach/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Foundations, Founding a tech startup, Research, Skills In its first 2 years, Google made no revenue. Did this indicate it was a bad idea to invest or work there? We spent the summer in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator_(company)), and one of the main things we learned about is how Y Combinator identifies the best startups. What we learned made me worry that many in the effective altruism community are taking the wrong approach to evaluating startup non-profits. In summary, I’ll argue: 1. There’s two broad approaches to assessing projects - the marginal cost-effectiveness approach and the growth approach. 2. The community today often wrongly applies the marginal approach to fast growing startups. 3. This means we’re supporting the wrong projects and not investing enough in growth. At the end I’ll give some guidelines on how to use the growth approach to evaluate non-profits. --- - Published: 2015-11-26 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/one-of-the-most-exciting-new-effective-altruist-organisations-an-interview-with-david-goldberg-of-the-founders-pledge/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Skills, World problems --- - Published: 2015-11-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/stop-talking-about-declining-returns-in-small-organisations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Philanthropic advising, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2015-11-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/safe-credentials-are-not-always-the-best-way-to-career-capital/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Exploration, Now vs later, Personal fit, Risk, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-11-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/in-case-you-missed-it-open-phil-would-like-to-fund-a-science-policy-think-tank/ - Topics: Career planning, Effective altruism, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Research, Risk, World problems --- - Published: 2015-11-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-and-how-to-found-a-givewell-non-profit/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Entrepreneurship, GiveWell --- - Published: 2015-11-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/the-story-of-80000-hours-podcast/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning --- - Published: 2015-11-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-everyone-even-our-readers-should-save-enough-to-live-for-6-24-months/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Income, Other topics, Personal fit, Risk, Skill-building and career capital Your 'personal runway' is how many months you can easily live if you stopped working. It’s a product of the cash and sellable assets you have on hand, your living expenses, and your ability to draw on your friends and family in times of need. For instance, if you have $10,000 of savings and live on $1,000 per month, your personal runway is 10 months. If you could quickly and comfortably move back in with your parents or stay on a friend’s couch, cutting your living expenses by $500 a month, then your personal runway is 20 months. If you have non-work income, that boosts your runway further. If you’re lucky enough to have a family who would support you indefinitely in a productive lifestyle, then your runway is indefinitely long. I think most people we advise should aim to have at least 6 - 12 months’ personal runway, and up to 12 - 24 could be good for flexibility. I’ve noticed some people in the community who don’t have much runway and don’t appear to be saving, because they are donating a lot of income or doing very low wage work. Unless you have family or friends who’ll support you, you should cut back on donations and save until you’ve got enough runway. Some more detail follows. --- - Published: 2015-11-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/our-new-tool-can-help-you-make-the-right-career-decisions/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2015-10-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/10/common-investing-mistakes-in-the-effective-altruism-community/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Foundations, Income, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2015-10-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/10/how-to-write-a-career-plan/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Being ambitious, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- > We estimate typical startup salaries and equity compensation, and find early-employees don't earn more than large company employees. - Published: 2015-10-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/10/startup-salaries-and-equity-compensation/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Early-stage startup employee, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Risk, Software engineering --- - Published: 2015-10-06 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/10/new-opportunities-to-work-in-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-09-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/09/the-return-to-coding-bootcamps-may-not-remain-so-high-forever/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Risk, Skill-building and career capital, Software engineering We have (https://80000hours.org/2014/06/case-series-why-and-how-to-learn-programming/) about learning to code as a way to gain useful skills for earning to give or doing directly valuable work, and (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering/). We are not the only ones who have noticed that this is a pretty great opportunity. From the LinkedIn blog: > Technical talent is in high demand. As of publishing this post, a LinkedIn job search for “Software Engineers” in the US reveals more than 100,000 open jobs. Adding a couple more tech-related roles (“User Designer,” “Data Scientist”) increases the total to more than 200,000 job openings. Job seekers looking to meet job requirements can enroll in a Master’s degree program, but that comes with a 2-year opportunity cost. Now, a shorter path is emerging: fully immersive coding bootcamps. > >Coding bootcamps typically last 6-12 weeks and require participants to show up to a class in person. Bootcamps are a relatively new model, but they’re a growing trend that could help close the skills gap. Tapping into the Economic Graph, we compiled aggregated data on over 150 bootcamp programs and more than 25,000 LinkedIn members who have indicated they are attending or have attended bootcamps to identify emerging trends. --- - Published: 2015-09-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/09/join-us-as-product-engineer-build-our-interactive-career-guide-and-help-millions-of-graduates-have-a-greater-social-impact-1000-for-referrals/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-09-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/09/are-too-many-people-going-into-biomedical-research-or-too-few/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-09-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/09/will-effective-altruism-destroy-the-arts-no/ - Topics: Art & entertainment, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Effective altruism, Foundations --- - Published: 2015-09-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/09/what-do-journalists-say-about-journalism-as-a-high-impact-career-interviews-with-dylan-matthews-derek-thompson-and-shaun-raviv/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Journalism I interviewed three journalists who have written articles that promote important causes: Dylan Matthews, Derek Thompson, and Shaun Raviv. --- - Published: 2015-09-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/09/what-do-leaders-of-effective-non-profits-say-about-working-in-non-profits-interviews-with-givedirectly-deworm-the-world-initiative-development-media-international-schistosomiasis-control-initiativ/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital Rob Mather - founder and CEO of GiveWell’s top rated charity, Against Malaria Foundation. Photo credit: Andrew Testa. I reached out to leaders at GiveDirectly, Against Malaria Foundation, Deworm the World Initiative (part of Evidence Action), Schistosomiasis Control Initiative and Development Media International to ask for their views. Here are their responses. --- - Published: 2015-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/how-can-doctors-do-the-most-good-an-interview-with-dr-gregory-lewis/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Medicine, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2015-08-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/how-to-explore-in-your-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-08-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/what-are-the-10-most-harmful-jobs/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Risk, Skills --- - Published: 2015-08-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/try-the-new-80000-hours-career-recommender-it-could-change-your-life/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning We just added a new and very cool feature to our website: (https://80000hours.org/career-quiz/). It takes about 3 minutes to use and might end up significantly changing the course of your career. Our goal is to ask you just a questions and then tell you in what careers you can have the greatest social impact. If that sounds ambitious, that’s because it is! But the thousand of people who have already used it during testing it have found it surprisingly useful. It should at least throw up options you should seriously consider before you do something else. So: 1. (https://80000hours.org/career-quiz/). 2. Once you’re done, it can email you your suggestions so you can read more about them later. 3. (https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://80000hours.org/career-quiz/). Would you get these results? Try it and find out! We expect the career recommender to remain a core part of our career guide in the future. It’s already useful, but it will become much more so over time as our research expands and we: * ‘Review’ and rate a wider range of paths, especially those in which people can achieve great things without having to have far above average quantitative or language skills. * Change the questions to more precisely measure people’s skills. * Check that it gives good answers for any possible set of inputs. ##Stay informed of significant updates by (https://80000hours.org/about/stay-updated/). --- - Published: 2015-08-10 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/4-reasons-working-at-a-foundation-is-better-than-you-think/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Grantmaking, Philanthropic advising, Working at a foundation If you're an all-rounder who wants to make a difference, consider working as a (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/foundation-program-manager/). Grantmaking can seem like an unglamorous profession - reviewing hundreds of applications for funding isn't the most exciting sounding role - but it has some major upsides if you want to make the world a better place. --- - Published: 2015-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/review-of-program-performance/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2015-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/review-of-progress-may-2015/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2015-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/plans-for-the-coming-year-may-2015/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2015-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/why-is-80000-hours-in-y-combinator-as-a-non-profit-and-whats-it-like/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Early-stage startup employee, Founding a tech startup, Skill-building and career capital --- - Published: 2015-08-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/08/summary-of-our-annual-review-may-2015/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2015-07-30 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/can-you-have-more-impact-working-in-a-foundation-than-earning-to-give/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, Working at a foundation --- - Published: 2015-07-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/replaceability-isnt-as-important-as-you-might-think-or-weve-suggested/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Economics, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Replaceability, Risk Often if you turn down a skilled job, the role simply won't be filled at all because there's no suitable substitute available. For this and other reasons we don't place as much weight as we used to on the idea of 'replaceability'. When we started 80,000 Hours, one of the key ideas we presented was the replaceability argument: > Suppose you become a surgeon and perform 100 life saving operations. Naively it seems like your impact is to save 100 people’s lives. If you hadn’t taken the job, however, someone else likely would have taken it instead. So your true (counterfactual) impact is less than the good you do directly. I still think this is a good argument, but I’m not sure how relevant it is when comparing real career options. In particular, I see the argument often being used incorrectly in the following two ways: 1. Ignoring direct harm: Suppose you’re considering taking a job that some people think is harmful (e.g. certain parts of the financial sector) in order to donate, do advocacy or build skills. You reason “if I don’t take the job, someone else will instead, so the potential harm I’ll do directly doesn’t matter”. 2. Ignoring direct impact: Suppose you’re considering working at a high-impact nonprofit. You reason “if I don’t take the job, someone else will instead, so I won’t have much impact.” I disagree with both of these claims in most circumstances. Why? --- - Published: 2015-07-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/update-how-many-extra-donations-have-we-caused/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction --- - Published: 2015-07-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-finance-report-april-2015-2/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised In this report, we outline our income, expenses, projected budget and financial situation as of the end of March 2015. --- - Published: 2015-07-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/linkedin-finds-the-most-common-ways-in-and-out-of-every-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, How to get a job --- - Published: 2015-07-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/is-wealth-inequality-so-extreme-that-its-ok-to-be-a-ruthless-trader/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Finance, Income, Other topics --- - Published: 2015-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/weve-caused-188-significant-plan-changes/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised --- - Published: 2015-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/new-definition-of-a-significant-plan-change/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills --- - Published: 2015-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/systemic-change-becomes-non-systemic-change-and-vice-versa/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy --- - Published: 2015-07-20 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/if-you-want-to-save-lives-should-you-study-medicine-probably-not/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Medicine, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2015-07-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/get-the-chance-to-save-the-world-with-this-one-weird-trick/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Now vs later --- - Published: 2015-07-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/disagreeing-about-whats-effective-isnt-disagreeing-with-effective-altruism/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Reasoning and decision-making --- - Published: 2015-07-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/defining-earning-to-give/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, High impact executive assistance, Job satisfaction --- - Published: 2015-07-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/what-people-miss-about-career-capital-exceptional-achievements/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, How to get a job --- - Published: 2015-07-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/effective-altruists-love-systemic-change/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Other topics, Politics, World problems Effective altruists are out working every day to fix society's systemic problems. It's time to definitely rebut the claim that we don't care about systemic change. Yesterday we (https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/) the idea that 80,000 Hours, and effective altruists more generally, are only enthusiastic about ‘earning to give’. While some people should earn to give, we expect the right share is under 20%, and think that ‘earning to give’ is now more popular among the people who follow our advice than it ideally would be. Today I want to put to rest another common misunderstanding about effective altruism and 80,000 Hours: that we are against systemic change. Despite being the most (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/06/effective-altruist-philosophers.html) (http://qz.com/110616/what-peter-buffett-doesnt-understand-about-the-world/) of (https://bostonreview.net/forum/logic-effective-altruism/angus-deaton-response-effective-altruism) altruism, the idea is bizarre on its face. We are pragmatists at heart, and always looking for any ways to more effectively make the world a better place. Why couldn’t pursuing broad-scale legal, cultural or political changes be the most effective approach to making the world a better place? The answer is simply that they could! So there is nothing *in principle* about the idea of maximising the social impact of your work that rules out, or even discourages, seeking systemic change. What about in practice, though? Here are some systemic changes people who identify as effective altruists are working on today: * Most of the recent (http://www.openphilanthropy.org/) research and grants, on immigration reform, criminal justice reform, macroeconomics, and international development, are all clearly focussed on huge structural changes of various kinds. * The (http://openborders.info/) website also researches and promotes the option of dramatic increases in migration from poor to rich countries. * A new startup called EA Policy, recommended for support by my colleagues at EA Ventures, is trialling making submissions to open policy forums held by the US government over this summer. * Our colleagues at the (http://www.globalprioritiesproject.org) research the most important policy priorities for governments, and how they can establish better cost-benefit and decision-making processes. * One of (http://www.givewell.org) main goals from the beginning, perhaps it’s primary goal, has been to change the cultural norms within nonprofits, and the standards by which they are judged by donors. They wanted to make it necessary for charities to be transparent with donors, and run projects that actually helped recipients. They have already significantly changed the conversation around charitable giving. * Giving What We Can representatives have met with people in the UK government about options for improving aid effectiveness. One of the first things I wrote when employed by Giving What We Can was about (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/blog/2013-04-04/was-tutankhamun-a-billion-times-more-important-than-you) by governments thinking about health services. Until recently one Giving What We Can member, who we know well, was working at the UK’s aid agency DfID. * Some 80,000 Hours alumni, most of whom unfortunately would rather remain anonymous, are going into politics, think-tanks, setting up a labour mobility organisations or businesses that facilitate remittance flows. * Several organisations focussed on existential risk (FHI, CSER and FLI jump to mind) take a big interest in government policies, especially those around the regulation of new technologies, or institutions that can improve inter-state cooperation and preclude conflict. * 80,000 Hours alumni and effective altruist (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/recommendations/top-charities/) work on or donate to lobbying efforts on animal welfare, such as Humane Society US-FARM, or are activists working for dramatic society-wide changes in how humans view the moral importance of non-human animals. It looks to me like it’s more accurate to say that effective altruists --- - Published: 2015-07-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/why-you-usually-shouldnt-work-at-non-profits-straight-after-graduation/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations I recently gave a TEDx talk at Cambridge University, where I argue that, most of the time, graduates who want to have a big social impact shouldn’t go straight to work at a charity. --- - Published: 2015-07-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/80000-hours-thinks-that-only-a-small-proportion-of-people-should-earn-to-give-long-term/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Earning to give, Finance, Personal fit --- - Published: 2015-07-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/why-are-wages-less-stable-in-skilled-professions/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Experience with an emerging power, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Risk, Skills > 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… 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. ##What’s going on? --- - Published: 2015-07-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/in-some-careers-your-parents-can-give-you-a-huge-boost-should-you-do-what-they-did/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Government & policy, How to get a job, Personal fit, Politics --- > Calculation of the chances of being elected to Congress if you reach certain posts. - Published: 2015-07-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/what-are-your-odds-of-getting-into-congress-if-you-try/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Government & policy, Law, Other topics, Policy and political skills, Politics --- - Published: 2015-07-02 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/07/i-want-to-make-a-difference-should-i-work-in-marketing/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Marketing, Personal fit, Skills 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). Read (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/work-in-marketing/). --- - Published: 2015-06-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/whats-the-best-way-to-spend-20000-to-help-the-common-good/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Now vs later, Other topics, Philanthropic advising, Research in relevant areas 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. --- - Published: 2015-06-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/i-want-to-make-a-difference-should-i-become-a-philosopher/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Foundations, Graduate school, Moral philosophy, PhDs, Philosophy To most people, this question sounds like a joke. I think that’s the wrong reaction. (Full career profile on philosophy PhDs (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/philosophy-phd/)) I think research into philosophy (certainly, at least, moral philosophy, and some other areas in political philosophy, epistemology and decision theory), is (https://80000hours.org/2012/05/how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher/) (https://80000hours.org/2012/09/how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher-part-ii/) (https://eightythousand.wpengine.com/2012/10/the-most-important-unsolved-problems-in-ethics/). 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... --- - Published: 2015-06-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/should-you-go-into-journalism-to-make-a-difference/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Journalism We just completed an (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/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. Read (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/journalism). --- - Published: 2015-06-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/should-you-do-a-computer-science-phd/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Computer science, Graduate school, PhDs --- - Published: 2015-06-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-an-economics-phd-might-be-the-best-graduate-program/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Economics, Economics PhD, Graduate school, PhDs We've released an (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/economics-phd), concluding that it looks like one of the most promising graduate study options for people who want to make a difference. Our recommendation in the 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. Read (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/economics-phd). --- - Published: 2015-06-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/advice-on-entering-a-us-economics-phd-from-the-uk-with-a-non-quantitative-background/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Economics, Economics PhD, Graduate school, How to get a job, PhDs, Skill-building and career capital 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. Here is what they said: --- > A new Effective Altruism handbook has been released, which features some of 80,000 Hours' ideas about high impact careers. - Published: 2015-06-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/announcing-the-effective-altruism-handbook/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career planning, World problems 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. - Published: 2015-06-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/new-profile-on-a-new-career-path-data-science/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Data science We've released a new (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/data-science/). Our recommendation in the profile: >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. Read (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/data-science/). --- - Published: 2015-06-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/new-in-depth-profile-on-software-engineering/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, How to get a job, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Software engineering We've released a major update to our career profile on software engineering. See the updated profile (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering-large-tech-firms/) and the full report on which it's based (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/reports/software-engineering-at-large-tech-firms/). 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. --- > It’s said that we live in an increasingly “winner takes all” economy. The following chart provides a nice illustration. - Published: 2015-06-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/the-winner-takes-all-economy/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Exploration, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills, Working in congress 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. --- > If you give to Giving What We Can, you'll have more impact than giving directly to GiveWell top recommended charities. - Published: 2015-06-09 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/donating-to-giving-what-we-can-is-higher-impact-than-donating-to-givewell-recommended-charities/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career capital, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Future generations & longtermism, Giving What We Can, Other topics, World problems (http://givingwhatwecan.causevox.com/). When I last checked, they had only reached £70,000 of their £150,000 target. Last year, (http://blog.givewell.org/2015/04/13/givewells-money-moved-and-web-traffic-in-2014/) - the charities recommended by GiveWell and Giving What We Can. 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. Here’s three reasons why to donate to GWWC. --- > What's driving the increasing in income inequality and what does it mean for your career? - Published: 2015-06-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/rise-of-income-inequality/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Economics, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills One of the most important (though (http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson?language=en)) long-term trends effecting the outlook of many careers is the rise in income inequality. In countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, the difference in earnings between the best and worst paid has risen sharply for the last few decades, with the top earners taking a higher and higher proportion of total income. From the early 1900s to the 1970s, income inequality gradually decreased. However, in Anglo-Saxon countries it began to rise again from the late 1970s. The rise was sharpest in the United States, where the income share of the top decile of earners rose from 33% to 48% in forty years, while the share of the top percentile rose from 8% to 17%. In Japan and the rest of Western Europe on the other hand, inequality was either steady or rose much more gradually. Increasing income inequality means a better outlook for many high-earning careers. It may also reflect trends in which skills are most in-demand and useful as technology changes, making it important to understand if you want good (/career-guide/framework/career-capital/) in the future. Finally, it may mean the financial rewards of being at the top of a profession (compared to the middle) are increasing, and this means the importance of (/career-guide/personal-fit/) is increasing. *This graph is taken from Pikkety (2014)* In the rest of this post, we'll look at the reasons economists have put forth for the increase in income inequality, and speculate on whether the trend will continue. --- > I stopped in mid-2014, and I do not plan to do it again. Instead, I am now writing a master’s thesis in philosophy, and I aim for a career in that field. - Published: 2015-06-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/06/why-i-stopped-earning-to-give/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Philosophy, Skills I have earned to give for 2.5 years as an Analyst and then Associate in the mergers and acquisitions team of an industrial conglomerate in Sweden. I stopped in mid-2014, and I do not plan to earn to give again. Instead, I am now writing a master’s thesis in philosophy, and I aim for a career in that field. In this post, I will describe my primary reasons for not earning to give with a focus on my main thought—that it seems easier to perform in work that one loves. My aim is not to argue against anyone earning to give; I think it is good that there is more awareness these days that earning to give is an option and others may find that it suits them better than it suits me. My purpose is rather to share my experience in case it might be of interest to people considering earning to give. Also, the recommendation from 80,000 Hours is only earn to give if you have good personal fit with the career, which fits my impression. ###My three main reasons for not earning to give are: 1. I seem to perform much better when I work directly on issues that that I think are most important from an altruistic perspective. I feel that it is difficult to be enthusiastic enough about the work in business. 2. I see few giving opportunities that I would like to support through earning to give. 3. It is challenging to have different values from one’s colleagues. --- > To find fulfilling work, don't follow your passion. - Published: 2015-05-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/05/new-tedx-talk-released/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit Check out the TEDx talk video by our Executive Director and co-founder Benjamin Todd. In it, Ben sets out what we've learned through our research about finding fulfilling work. Rather than following your passion, find something you're good at that helps others. If you aim to *do what's valuable*, passion for your work will emerge. And you can also make a big difference with your life. If you like what you see, please go ahead and share the video. We’d like to get it listed on the main TED channel! --- - Published: 2015-05-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/05/new-in-depth-profile-on-management-consulting/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Consulting, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Risk We've released a major update to our career profile on management consulting. See the updated profile (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/management-consulting/). See the new in-depth report upon which it's based (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/reports/management-consulting/). Overall, our recommendation is similar to before: > Consider a job in consulting if you have strong academic credentials and you aren’t sure about your long-term plans and want to experience work in a variety of business environments, or you want to pursue earning-to-give but not a good fit for quantitative trading or technology entrepreneurship. But we've gone much more in-depth into: * The chances of becoming a partner, showing that it's about 10% but requires a great deal of dedication. * Common exit options, showing that consultants enter a very wide range of fields when they leave. * What proportion of people who want to become consultants actually make it. * The potential for direct impact, arguing it's worse than other common alternatives. This is our first 'medium-depth' career profile, and we hope it will act as a template for further work. *Thank you to Nick Beckstead for carrying out the research.* --- > We've summarised the 9 major types of career change that our members have taken as a result of our career advice. - Published: 2015-04-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/04/our-advice-in-three-minutes/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Skills, Software engineering What are the key ways people change their career plans after reading (/career-guide/) and then speaking to (/career-advice/)? Below I’m going to list some of the most common changes people currently make: it’s a three minute intro to some of the key lessons you can take from our advice. --- - Published: 2015-04-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/04/four-big-challenges/ - Topics: Career paths, Effective altruism, Existential risk, Global health, Philanthropic advising, Research, World problems The 80,000 Hours community is involved with many different causes - from scientific research to social justice - but there are four big (rather ambitious!) causes that have, so far, gathered the most support. These are the four big challenges our community has set itself. They are all huge, but they also seem especially solvable, or especially neglected, and this means working within them offers the opportunity to make huge difference over the coming decades... --- - Published: 2015-04-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/04/10-new-organisations-founded-due-to-80000-hours/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised One of our key reasons for founding 80,000 Hours was the “multiplier argument”: When we graduated, we had two options: (i) pursue whichever career paths we thought were highest impact or (ii) do research to find *even better* career paths and spread that research to enable hundreds of people to take those paths instead of us, having hundreds of times as much impact. Given our progress at that point, it seemed like the second option was possible, and therefore higher-impact. So, three years later, how is it turning out? --- - Published: 2015-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/04/get-paid-to-do-existential-risk-reduction-research/ - Topics: AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Global priorities research, Policy and political skills, Research, Research management (http://cser.org) (CSER) is hiring for postdoctoral researchers. Existential risk reduction is a high-priority area on the analysis of the (http://globalprioritiesproject.org/) and (http://www.givewell.org/). Moreover, CSER report that they have had a successful year in grantwriting and fundraising, so the availability of research talent could become a significant constraint over the coming months. Here is Sean's announcement: >The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (University of Cambridge; (http://cser.org)) is recruiting for postdoctoral researchers to work on the study of extreme risks arising from technological advances. We have several specific projects we are recruiting for: responsible innovation in transformative technologies; horizon-scanning and foresight; ethics and evaluation of extreme technological risks, and policy and governance challenges associated with emerging technologies. >However, we also have the flexibility to hire one or more postdoctoral researchers to work on additional projects relevant to CSER's broad aims, which include impacts and safety in artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, biosecurity, extreme tail climate change, geoengineering, and catastrophic biodiversity loss. We welcome proposals from a range of fields. The study of technological x-risk is a young interdisciplinary subfield, still taking shape. We're looking for brilliant and committed people, to help us design it. Deadline: April 24th. Details (http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/6554/), with more information on our website. --- > If you’d like to work in education research and design to make a difference, how should you go about it? We recently asked Dan Greene for his thoughts. - Published: 2015-03-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/03/education-research-interview-with-dan-greene/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Data science, Graduate school, PhDs, Research, Skill-building and career capital If you’d like to work in education research and design to make a difference, how should you go about it? We recently asked Dan Greene for his thoughts. Dan is a member of our community and graduate researcher at Stanford specialising in online education. --- - Published: 2015-03-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/03/how-to-network/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, How to get a job It’s no secret that networking can be (https://80000hours.org/2013/05/how-important-is-networking-for-career-success). It's useful in helping you to find out about jobs *and* to land them. But what’s the best way to go about building a successful network? **The best advice we've come across so far on how to network is Keith Farrazzi's *Never Eat Alone*.** It’s not as evidence-based and rigorous as we’d like (and his style can be annoying!), but the core of his recommendations makes sense. --- > Animal Charity Evaluators has a researcher position available. They are looking for applicants with a passion for animal welfare and research. - Published: 2015-02-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/02/researcher-position-available-at-animal-charity-evaluators/ - Topics: Career paths, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Philanthropic advising, Research, Skills (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/) uses research, evidence, and reason to find the most effective opportunities to improve the live of animals. ACE was founded by 80,000 Hours staff working in Oxford, and has since become an independent organization based in California. In 2014 alone, ACE influenced over $141,000 in giving to their recommended charities. ####What is the position? From the (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ACEResearcherjobdescription_2014.pdf): > will involve developing and managing research department strategies and activities, including designing, managing and executing research projects, data analysis, and program evaluation. A sample project: > **Intervention evaluations**. You will research the effectiveness of a common tactic in animal advocacy, including by conducting interviews with advocates who regularly use the tactic. You will then write up your findings for use within ACE and for publication on our website. Example evaluation: (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/research/interventions/corporate-outreach/). ####More info Full (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ACEResearcherjobdescription_2014.pdf) and (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/researcher-position-application/). --- > Recruiters for elite jobs (law firms, investment banks, consultancies) pay more attention to what school you attended than anything else. - Published: 2015-02-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/02/chronical-on-elite-jobs/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Consulting, Finance, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills I just came across a study of what top-tier investment banks, law firms, and management consulting firms look for when recruiting. The author of the study interviewed over 100 recruiters at these firms to find out what criteria they used. The Chronicle of Higher Education summed up the results: If you want to get a job at the very best law firm, investment bank, or consultancy: 1. Go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or (maybe) Stanford. If you’re a business student, attending the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania will work, too, but don’t show up with a diploma from Dartmouth or MIT. No one cares about those places. 2. Don’t work your rear off for a 4.0. Better to graduate with 3.7 and a bunch of really awesome extracurriculars. And by “really awesome” I mean literally climbing Everest or winning an Olympic medal. Playing intramurals doesn’t cut it. Here’s a chart showing the key signals that recruiters used to screen candidates. Graphic re-created from original figure in Rivera (2011) --- > When committing to make a difference, it can be hard to decide if you should help now or later. We outline a method to choose between different options. - Published: 2015-02-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/02/should-i-help-now-or-later/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Earning to give, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Now vs later, Personal fit, Risk If you’re committed to making the biggest difference possible with your career, you may well find that there is a tension between *doing good now* and laying the groundwork for *doing good later*. For example: * Next year, you have two choices. You could work for an effective charity, making an immediate difference to its beneficiaries. Or you could go to graduate school and build up your (/career-guide/framework/career-capital/), (hopefully) allowing you to have a larger impact later. Alternatively: * You have a substantial sum of money. You could give it today, or you could invest it, allow it to grow, and then give the larger amount later. How can you go about deciding between these options? Here we present a summary of our findings - the full research has been published on the (http://globalprioritiesproject.org/2015/02/give-now-or-later/). ##The main factors Which option is highest-impact varies from case to case. In general, the earlier you are in your career, the less stable your view of the best cause and the more well-established the cause, the more the balance shifts from *doing good now* towards *doing good later*. Here's a summary: We'll further explain each factor below. --- > How much will your personality, values and preferences change over the next decade? Probably more than you think, so keep your options open. - Published: 2015-02-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/02/we-change-more-than-we-expect-so-keep-your-options-open/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making How much will your personality, values and preferences change over the next decade? Probably more than you think, at least according to a recent paper, (https://web.archive.org/web/20150113155248/http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/Quoidbach%20et%20al%202013.pdf) by a team of psychologists at Harvard and the University of Virginia. In a number of separate experiments, the authors asked a total of over 19,000 people between 18 and 68 to measure their current personality, values and preferences. Half of them were also asked to complete the assessment as they believed they would have done ten years earlier, while the other half were asked to predict what they would say in ten years’ time. --- > We recently hosted a panel on careers in technology, featuring four people who did arts degrees but ended up working in tech and loving their jobs. - Published: 2015-02-06 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/02/how-to-start-a-career-in-technology/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Exploration, Founding a tech startup, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital 80,000 Hours: Oxford recently hosted a panel on tech careers, co-hosted with (http://codelaborate.org), featuring four people who did arts degrees but ended up working in tech and loving their jobs. The panel included: * Matt Clifford - studied Ancient History at Cambridge before doing a degree at MIT, worked in strategy consulting but quit to start Entrepreneur First * Jackson Gabbard - studied English at a small college in the US but was one of the first engineers at Facebook London * Nabeel Qureshi - studied PPE at Oxford, worked in consultancy but now works at startup GoCardless * Steven Shingler - studied double bass at the Royal College of Music in London, but now works at Google as an engineer. --- > A recent paper suggests that up to 47% of American jobs are at risk of being automated within the next couple of decades. - Published: 2015-02-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/02/which-careers-will-be-automated/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Replaceability, Risk, Skills, World problems New and improved technologies will make jobs redundant, even as they open up new opportunities. This has always been the case, but with recent advances in Machine Learning and Mobile Robotics, changes in the labor market could be particularly extreme in the years to come. In fact, a recent paper suggests that up to 47% of American jobs could be vulnerable to automation within the next couple of decades. That paper is (https://web.archive.org/web/20150109185039/http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf) by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of the (http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/) (which is affiliated with 80,000 Hours). In the paper, widely discussed in outlets such as The Economist and The Financial Times, Frey and Osborne look at the likely impact of recent advances in order to determine which jobs are likely to be automated. --- - Published: 2015-01-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/01/the-social-impact-of-different-professions/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Effective altruism, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making Economists and Harvard and Chicago recently published a paper that contains a number of estimates of the social value produced by different professions per dollar of salary. The estimates aren’t the core aim of the paper, but are none-the-less fascinating. The first set of estimates are by one of the authors of the paper, Lockwood, and aims to stick to views that would be typical based on the the economics literature: Profession Lockwood’s estimates (additional social $ value produced per $ of salary at the margin) Academia/research 2 Advertising/marketing/sales -0.3 Agriculture 0 Arts/Entertainment 0 Business operations 0.1 Engineering/technical 0.4 Entrepreneurship 2 Financial Services -0.5 What do these figures mean? Read on for more... --- - Published: 2015-01-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/01/a-meta-analysis-may-not-mean-much/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Economics, Global priorities research, Government & policy, Other pressing problems, Policy and political skills, Reasoning and decision-making, Research Scott Alexander recently posted an interesting and provocative article: (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/) (and see the follow up post (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well-refuted/)). In the post, he points out that it's not uncommon to find two meta-analyses with opposite results on the same question. Indeed, especially when it comes to a politically divided issue, both sides can sometimes produce apparently overwhelming evidence in support of their case. --- - Published: 2015-01-07 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2015/01/opportunity-to-work-at-jpal-as-a-research-associate-just-hours-left-to-apply/ - Topics: Career capital, Career paths, Global health, J-PAL, Other pressing problems, Research, Skills, World problems The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is the world leader in conducting evidence-based research in developing countries. Their mission is to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. They are currently running a winter recruitment drive (96 total positions) which ends on at 6am EST January 8th. Applications submitted during the drive will be reviewed and short-listed candidates will be contacted. During the rest of the year, applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. ##What is the position? Research Associate (RA) positions last 1-2 years, and come in two types. Field RAs (38 positions available) are based around the world, managing field implementation of specific research projects. University-based RAs (8 positions) are primarily based in North America, focusing on data analysis of research projects. ##What are the benefits of the position? * Work directly on J-PAL research programs, which are (http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/criteria/program-evaluation) and other organizations to determine the most effective global poverty interventions (a (/career-guide/framework/cause-selection/)). * Cultivate high-quality research skills. Other organizations (http://www.povertyactionlab.org/course/ME-Management) these program evaluation techniques. * Work in a developing country, which can be (/2014/07/how-to-influence-policy-an-interview-with-owen-barder-of-the-center-for-global-development/) if you want to work in international development. * Build a network and career capital for evidence-based development work. Many NGOs now have full time positions for Monitoring and Evaluation. Some RAs go on to top PhD programs or start their own impact evaluation NGOs. * It's paid! Overall, if you've already got a graduate degree, this looks like a good way to start a career in evidence-based international development. However, we have not performed an in-depth investigation of the pros and cons of this job - this assessment is based on our background knowledge and what we've read about the positions online. --- - Published: 2014-12-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/earning-to-give-is-systemic-change/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Earning to give One of the most common criticisms of earning to give (e.g. see (http://www.varsity.co.uk/comment/8000) released yesterday), and advocating for charitable donations generally, is that it just makes thing better at the margin, and doesn’t address the “systemic”, “structural” “root cause” issues that really matter. One response to this we’ve given before is: yes that’s true, but donating is still a good thing to do. Another response we’ve given before is that if systemic change is the most important cause, donate to organisations working on systemic change. This works so long as you’re not in a job that does a lot to prevent systemic change (e.g. conservative politician, professional strikebreaker) and you don’t think the act of philanthropy itself prevents systemic change (even if donating to systemic change organisations). If you think this all sounds completely implausible, consider the example of Engles who worked as a factory manager in order to fund Marx’s research. A response we haven’t often given before, however, is just to argue that no, promoting earning to give *is* a form of important systemic change: imagine how different the world would be if almost everyone regularly donated 10% or more of their income to whichever causes they thought had the biggest impact. --- - Published: 2014-12-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/we-interview-the-uks-largest-graduate-recruiter-teach-first/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital Teach First is a two year program that places talented graduates in schools in challenging circumstances as teachers after a rapidly accelerated six week training program. It aims to offer rapid personal development while also contributing to an important social cause. It's similar to Teach for America in the US. Founded in 2002, it's now the (https://web.archive.org/web/20141218135719/http://www.teachfirst.org.uk/news/teach-first-once-again-named-country%E2%80%99s-biggest-graduate-recruiter), so we're curious to learn more. We were approached by the Teach First recruiter at Oxford, Tom Cole, and we offered to do an interview as a first step towards learning more. Teach First's popularity is equally strong in Oxford as the rest of the country: (https://web.archive.org/web/20141218141301/http://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/options-and-occupations/sectors-and-occupations/teaching-in-schools/), with (http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/DLHE_stu/SectorsandRoles?:showVizHome=no), and a significant fraction of these graduates enter Teach First. Overall, we don't yet have firm views on the option; but my initial impression is that it's a strong, if challenging, option for learning, building (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/career-capital/) and keeping your options open, which makes it an option worth considering early career if you have good personal fit, though it's probably possible to have more immediate impact earning to give. In the interview, we focus on the career capital benefits, which we've been told are often overlooked by people considering the programme. The interview was conducted via email, but we met in person with Tom Cole to discuss the content. The interview begins below: --- - Published: 2014-12-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/the-camel-doesnt-have-two-humps-update-to-software-engineering-profile/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Experience with an emerging power, Mental health, Research, Skills, Software engineering In our current software engineering profile, we say: > Programming ability seems to roughly divide into two groups: those who find it relatively easy and those who don’t. If in the past you’ve done well at mathematics and science and can think abstractly, then it’s likely you can learn to program well enough to get an entry-level job within about six months. In evidence of the first claim, one piece of evidence we cited was (http://wiki.t-o-f.info/uploads/EDM4600/The%20camel%20has%20two%20humps.pdf) called "The Camel Has Two Humps" by Dehnadi and Bornat. However, we've just discovered that Bornat has (http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hump_retraction.pdf) this paper. He says: > It’s not enough to summarise the scientific result, because I wrote and web-circulated “The camel has two humps” in 2006. That document was very misleading and, in the way of web documents, it continues to mislead to this day. I need to make an explicit retraction of what it claimed. Dehnadi didn’t discover a programming aptitude test. He didn’t find a way of dividing programming sheep from non-programming goats. We hadn’t shown that nature trumps nurture. Just a phenomenon and a prediction. > Though it’s embarrassing, I feel it’s necessary to explain how and why I came to write “The camel has two humps” and its part-retraction in (Bornat et al., 2008). It’s in part a mental health story. In autumn 2005 I became clinically depressed. My physician put me on the then-standard treatment for depression, an SSRI. But she wasn’t aware that for some people an SSRI doesn’t gently treat depression, it puts them on the ceiling. I took the SSRI for three months, by which time I was grandiose, extremely self-righteous and very combative – myself turned up to one hundred and eleven. I did a number of very silly things whilst on the SSRI and some more in the immediate aftermath, amongst them writing “The camel has two humps”. Based on this, we've removed the paper from the profile, and removed the claim about the distribution dividing into two clumps. We intend to do a more thorough review of the predictors of success in this field when we release our full profile of software engineering in the new year. Did we make a mistake in this case? The profile was only at the "considered" stage, so not the result of in-depth research. Even so, when most skills and abilities are normally or log-normally distributed, we should have been cautious about the existence of a bimodal distribution without relatively strong evidence. --- - Published: 2014-12-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/stop-worrying-so-much-about-the-long-term/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Foundations, Mental health, Reasoning and decision-making Today I’ve been reviewing our most recent round of coaching, and something struck me about the applications. Many of them were written by people who were clearly desperate to plan out the next decade of their career, or even their entire working life. As a result, they tended to feel anxious and even overwhelmed by the options available and the weight of the decisions in front of them. Might this be you? Some giveaways are phrases like “how can I find the *right career* for me?” or “I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life”. To people who feel this way, I have this advice: *stop worrying so much about the long-term.* Don’t get me wrong, *of course* your career decisions are important. 80,000 Hours is built around the idea that you can make an incredible difference through your career choices, if you choose carefully. However, I don’t think that making a detailed career plan is a particularly good way to ensure that your career goes well in the long-term. A better idea, especially at the start of your career, is to make sure you get the next step right: focus on getting into a better position, and *then* worry about what comes next when more decisions arise. This may sound counter-intuitive. So why do I recommend it? Four reasons: --- > Want to learn to code for in 16 weeks in the UK or free? A review of Founders and Coders. - Published: 2014-12-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/learn-to-code-in-16-weeks-for-free-in-the-uk-at-founders-and-coders/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Founding a tech startup, Skill-building and career capital, Software engineering ##Introduction Are you interested in doing something like (https://80000hours.org/2014/04/interview-with-buck-shlegeris-from-app-academy/) to (https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/software-engineering/), but in the UK? (http://www.makersacademy.com/) is often thought to be the best option, and we've had good reports from one of our members. But it costs £8,000. What about doing something similar *for free*? In this interview, Ben Clifford - another member who (https://80000hours.org/about/impact/studies-of-career-change/) - tells us about a free alternative called Founders and Coders. Ben recently went through the course, and is currently working at a startup in London. If interested, you can (http://foundersandcoders.org/apply.html). the deadline for the next round is on Friday. ###Summary of main points: Founders and Coders is a free coding program based in London. The course aims to make people full stack javascript developers in 16 weeks. The biggest benefits of doing a coding course are providing structure and tackling motivation problems. The weakest point of Founders and Coders is links to employers but Ben thinks this would not stop determined students can get jobs. The most important thing for getting a place is commitment to becoming a software developer. Being motivated to do good in your career also improves your chances. Applications for January close on Friday 12th December. You can attend taster days by supporting their Indiegogo campaign. --- - Published: 2014-12-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/interested-in-working-in-international-development-consider-2seeds/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career paths, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital Many people have told us that if you want to work in international development, it's very useful to spend time working in a developing country (e.g. see our (https://80000hours.org/2014/07/how-to-influence-policy-an-interview-with-owen-barder-of-the-center-for-global-development/)), and living abroad is probably useful for (/career-guide/framework/exploration-value/) too. It's also very useful to get project management experience early on in this space, because it opens up jobs in non-profits and foundations. But management positions in the developing world are rare early in your career. This made me interested to hear about 2Seeds, which gives graduates the opportunity to volunteer as a project manager in rural Tanazania for a year. I met the co-founder of 2Seeds, Sam Bonsey, at a conference, and then followed up by doing the following interview with their Outreach Manager, Abby Love. Based on what I've seen, it looks well worth considering as an early career step, especially if you're interested in working within international development. Read on to see the full interview, which was conducted by email. --- - Published: 2014-12-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/giving-what-we-can-is-seeking-a-director-of-research/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills --- - Published: 2014-12-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/12/interview-with-a-project-manager-at-the-copenhagen-consensus/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Global priorities research, World problems Ben recently interviewed Brad Wong about his career and current job at the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC), a leading global think tank which draws together over 100 top economists to work on prioritizing the solutions to the most pressing global issues. We spoke to Brad to learn more about whether working at the CCC could be a good opportunity for our members, following up on our (/2013/07/looking-for-a-seriously-high-impact-job-using-your-managerial-skills/). The CCC is hiring (http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/project-job-setting-priorities-bangladesh), in a role similar to Brad’s. These jobs can either be based in Dhaka, Bangladesh or Budapest, Hungary or in the Centre for Effective Altruism’s office’s in Oxford (shared with us!). The interview was conducted via phone call. Below we summarise the key messages of the conversation, followed by some excerpts, which have been edited and reorganised for clarity. In summary, Brad told us: * Brad manages a project to provide cost-benefit analysis of the UN’s next development goals. * Before this job, Brad completed a PhD, worked as a consultant at Booz & Company, and did strategic consulting at an Indian nonprofit, Technoserve. All three were good preparation for his current role, which requires an understanding of academic research and development, combined with the ability to manage a project and get things done. * Brad really enjoys his work at the CCC. Day-to-day, the work ranges from very exciting (networking with UN ambassadors) to quotidian (writing contracts, organising meetings, proofreading). * He’s excited about the project’s potential impact - their analysis is being used at the highest levels within the UN and there are already more than 100 media articles about the project from major outlets, such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. * Brad would like to continue working at the CCC, though long-term would like to work at a major foundation or consult for foundations. * 80,000 Hours did not directly affect his decision to work for CCC, but exposure to Givewell and 80,000 Hours significantly changed his attitude towards impact in his career. --- - Published: 2014-11-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/11/80000-hours-is-seeking-a-head-of-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills As Head of Research, you will become part of our founding team to lead our research efforts into how to select the most high-impact careers. Our research is what drives the advice we provide via our website and career coaching. Specifically, you become responsible for: Deciding what questions to investigate and personally coming up with answers to these questions, or overseeing the delegation of this research to others. Helping to translate these findings into practical products that help people make better decisions - books, web applications, workshops and others. Fitting the research into the overall strategy for the organisation. We are a small team, so you'll also have the opportunity to be involved in recruitment, fundraising, publishing our findings in the media and whatever else most interests you. --- - Published: 2014-11-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/11/the-centre-for-effective-altruism-is-seeking-a-chief-operating-officer/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Fundraising, Operations, Personal fit --- - Published: 2014-11-20 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/11/serial-social-entrepreneur-michael-norton-obe-speaks-in-oxford/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills The serial social entrepreneur, Michael Norton, recently spoke at 80,000 Hours: Oxford. Michael started his career as a scientist, merchant banker and publisher before becoming a social activist. Since then, he has helped to found over 40 charities and social enterprises, including UnLtd, which has raised an endowment of over £100 million to support thousands of social enterprises. He spoke to us about his career and what he’s learned about making a difference. What follows are some notes I made based on his presentation. All are paraphrased, and I can’t guarantee they accurately reflect Michael’s views. --- - Published: 2014-11-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/11/mid-year-review-september-2014/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised This document is an update on the priorities we set in our May 2014 team plan, as part of our annual 2013 review, for the period June 2014 - September 2014. Summary We’ve made good progress on the priorities we set in our review. In general, we’ve exceeded our goals and are on-track to make the rest by the end of the year. Some of our key achievements include: (i) published our expanded research pages, including 30,000 words of new static pages, (ii) completed our fundraising targets, and (iii) hired Peter Hartree as our part-time web developer, allowing us to exceed our targets on web development. The main problem we face is that we’ve failed to hire someone to lead on research, which has contributed to a shortage of staff capacity in this area. Over the rest of the year, we intend to focus on improving our online content and the research behind it, by (i) doing another round of work on the key web pages (ii) doing a round of coaching (iii) publishing a round of articles from our research backlog. After February 2015, we’ll do our annual review, a hiring round, and our next round of fundraising. In the rest of this document, we review in more depth (i) our big picture strategy and priorities (ii) how we’ve performed relative to the priorities we set in our last team plan (iii) the challenges we’re facing and (iv) our priorities for the next six months. --- > Keeping options open is important for everyone, it's especially important if you want to make a difference... - Published: 2014-11-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/11/why-and-how-to-keep-your-options-open/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital Keeping options open is important for everyone, it's *especially* important if you want to make a difference, because the most effective career opportunities are likely to change in the future. Indeed, we think it's usually more important to keep your options open to make an immediate impact. Many people think that 'keeping your options open' means being non-committal and avoiding tough decisions. We disagree. The best to keep your options open is to commit to building flexible abilities and resources, such as transferable skills, money and a public platform. For more, see our (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/big-picture/keeping-options-open/). --- > Suppose you could either work at a charity next year or go to graduate school. If you work at the charity, you’ll be making a difference right away, speeding up progress. If you go to graduate school, you’ll be investing in yourself and able to have a larger impact later. Which is better? - Published: 2014-10-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/should-you-wait-to-make-a-difference/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Earning to give, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Now vs later, Personal fit, Skills ##The issue One big picture consideration in career choice is the question of how important it is to make a difference now versus later. Here’s the issue: suppose you could either work at a charity next year or go to graduate school. If you work at the charity, you’ll be making a difference right away, speeding up progress. If you go to graduate school, you’ll be investing in yourself and able to have a larger impact later. Which is better? If you think it’s better to make a difference as soon as possible, the more you’ll value your immediate opportunities for impact. In (/career-guide/framework/), you’ll put more emphasis on (/career-guide/framework/role-impact/). If you think it’s better to invest and give later, the more you’ll value activities that build your skills, connections and credentials ((/career-guide/framework/career-capital)), and the more you’ll value learning about the world so you can make better decisions in the future ((/career-guide/framework/career-capital)). There’s a similar issue with charitable giving. If you have some money, you can either give today, or you can invest your money, which will grow over time, and give a larger amount later. Under what circumstances should you invest rather than give now? ##Summary Overall, we favour investing in your human capital and wealth early, so that you make a greater difference later in your career. Why? 1. You’ll be able to find better opportunities to make a difference in the future, because you’ll get wiser and be able to use better research in which causes and careers are most effective. 2. Early-to-mid career, most people can make investments that significantly increase their career capital, such as learning new skills, doing a graduate degree and building a professional network. The returns from these investments more than justify the cost of waiting. Nevertheless, there are a few other reasons to start making a difference now: it will teach you about the world; it will help you find collaborators; it’s motivating; and it will help you build altruistic habits. So, overall, we suggest that early in your career you mainly focus on building career capital and learning more, though still put some weight on your immediate impact. If choosing between two jobs, this could mean choosing the one that best builds your career capital, using immediate impact as a tiebreaker. As you get older, put more and more weight on your immediate impact. Read on to see a full discussion of the considerations and our reasoning. --- > New research on the seven top career strategies for making a difference. - Published: 2014-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/update-7-career-strategies-for-making-a-difference/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Exploration, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital We recently released a page on (research/top-careers/strategies/), featuring two strategies for building your long-run potential, and five for immediate impact: 1. (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/the-experimenter/): Finding a career that’s the right fit for you is important, but it’s also difficult to do just by thinking about it. It can therefore be a good strategy to try out a number of different areas in order to learn more about your own interests and skills. 2. (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/self-developer/): When you’ve narrowed down which area you want to enter, focus on investing in yourself to build your career capital. 3. (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/effective-work/): There are many non-profit 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 organization, it’s an option worth considering. By high-impact organisations we mean those that are well-run and work on an (/career-guide/framework/cause-selection). 4. (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/entrepreneurship/): If you’ve got potential as an entrepreneur, attempt to found new effective non-profit organisations or innovative for-profits that benefit their customers and create positive spill-over effects. 5. (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/earning-to-give/): 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. We call this strategy ‘earning to give’. 6. (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/career-guide/): 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 (/career-guide/framework/cause-selection), then this could be a way to have a large impact. 7. (/articles/advocacy/): If you can take a job that gives you a public platform, good network and credibility, you can use it to promote and unite people behind important ideas. --- > The field of research into the risks of artificial intelligence is taking off. If you're wondering how you can contribute, we'd like to hear from you. - Published: 2014-10-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/want-to-do-something-about-the-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/ - Topics: AI, AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Research Nick Bostrom's recent book, (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111), has been a great success, gaining favorable reviews in the (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/021d3484-fd1d-11e3-8ca9-00144feab7de.html#axzz3GJhwcNc0) and the (http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21611037-potential-impacts-intelligent-machines-human-life-clever-cogs), as well as (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/495759307346952192), the founder of Telsa and SpaceX. The field of research into the risks of artificial intelligence is also taking off, with the recent founding of Cambridge University's (http://cser.org/) and the (http://www.futureoflife.org/) (supported by Morgan Freeman!); continued strong growth at (http://intelligence.org/); and GiveWell's (http://blog.givewell.org/2014/06/26/potential-global-catastrophic-risk-focus-areas/) in the area. If you've read the book, and are interested in how you can contribute to this cause, we'd like to hear from you. There's pressing needs developing in the field for researchers, project managers, and funding. We can help you work out where you can best contribute, and introduce you to the right people. If you're interested, please email ben at 80000hours.org, or apply for our (https://80000hours.org/advising). --- > I’ve been earning to give as a software developer for the past several years, and it started to become clear that I could make more money in a startups. - Published: 2014-10-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/what-i-learned-quitting-my-job-to-found-a-tech-startup/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Founding a tech startup, Risk, Software engineering I’ve been earning to give as a software developer for the past several years, and it started to become clear that I could make more money in a different job. But I was torn between a finance career which put my math skills to use and founding a company where I might achieve the vocational equivalent of winning the lottery. I eventually decided to pursue entrepreneurship because I thought it would better build (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/career-capital/), i.e. it would prepare me for a wider variety of future careers. After four months of running a company that idea still doesn’t seem completely idiotic, but it doesn’t seem completely true either. I’ve encountered several people who are in similar positions, so I’d like to give an overview of my motivations (particularly the ones which haven’t been discussed here before), how I went about my career change, and of course how I *should’ve* gone about my career change. Optimizing for one narrow career path is a (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/), so I hope this post is useful to everyone, not just potential entrepreneurs. --- - Published: 2014-10-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/update-on-peters-career-story/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Software engineering Peter wrote about his (https://80000hours.org/2014/01/case-study-choosing-between-working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-earning-to-give-and-graduate-school/) on the blog back in January. After graduating, he started his software engineer internship at a startup in July. He recently wrote this update on how he's doing. --- - Published: 2014-10-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/tips-on-careers-in-journalism-from-npr-correspondent-david-folkenflik/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Journalism, Other topics David has been NPR’s media correspondent since 2004, and before that spent over a decade at the Baltimore Sun. He has won (http://www.npr.org/people/4459112/david-folkenflik) for journalism, and is the author of (http://murdochsworld.com/ ): The Last of the Old Media Empires. I had the chance to meet him at the (http://www.nexusyouthsummit.org/), where we chatted about careers in journalism for people who want to make a difference. Here’s the notes I made on the key takeaways, which I ran past David before publishing for edits (and are entirely his own views). * If you want to get a job in journalism, apply to any news organization that interests you, including all the major media organisations. Set some priorities - pay, location, size of organization, type of work, etc and select among them based on your top several priorities once you've got offers. “I applied to over 70 organisations. I got two offers, only one of which paid more than $10,000, so I went with that!” * Previously the route into the industry was to get a job at a local news station or paper. But the local news industry has shrunk significantly in recent years, so it’s a lot harder to advance from these positions today. * Build a personal library of content on Tumblr or some platform where it’s relatively easy to build a site. “There needs to be something out there you can link to.” * If you’re still in college, what should you do next? Start writing and reporting on the side to test yourself out, and to start building your portfolio. * How competitive is journalism? “You need to really want it; that’s the major filter.” It’s not a career you should drift into, but if you’re motivated, you’ve got a decent chance. * Although the industry is changing rapidly, it's not high risk if you're young and don't have a mortgage or other family obligations. And if you do, it can still be rewarding. * Journalism is a good path if you want to effect social change, but that change may be defined quite differently than it would be at a philanthropy or advocacy organization. Providing good information and analysis is a public good in itself. You’ve also got a public platform to promote neglected concerns. And there’s been a renaissance of new news outlets that openly embrace advocacy and point of view journalism. --- - Published: 2014-10-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/career-story-ben-kuhn-my-job-hunt-after-graduating/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Software and tech skills In this guest post, 80,000 Hour's member Ben Kuhn describes how he looked for a job after graduating from Harvard with a maths major. Ben's especially reflective, so it's fascinating to hear how he went about choosing between options in software, startups, finance and research with the aim of making the biggest difference. ## Background For my first few years of college I prioritized getting experience in a bunch of different potential fields--I tried working at Fog Creek, Jane Street, and GiveWell, and cofounding a startup. By the end of that I came to a couple conclusions about what I wanted to do. In terms of altruistic career choice considerations, I decided I should probably focus on doing the things I could be most awesome at, rather than trying to naively maximize earnings or maximize direct good done--basically, because I'm fairly uncertain about whether having lots of money will be helpful, and I'm fairly uncertain about what does the most direct good, but being awesome at things is a robustly good outcome that can be parlayed into many different advantages later. Historically, technology- and software-related things seemed to have some of the greatest potential for me to be awesome at them, and also the widest breadth of opportunities to improve the world with those abilities later, so they seemed like the most promising options to pursue further. But I had already done one software internship, and while it was a fun experience, I didn't want to do anything very similar--I guessed that I'd hit diminishing returns for standard software-engineering internships. I was concurrently in the process of realizing that studying at Harvard for a fourth year didn't seem especially high-value, and that I could graduate in three years if I wanted to thanks to my Advanced Placement credits. So I realized that I needed to put a lot of effort into my summer job search to make sure I found something that wasn't a repeat of my previous internship, and that I would be happy turning into a full-time job if I decided I didn't want to go back to Harvard. --- - Published: 2014-10-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/have-you-checked-out-the-effective-altruism-forum-yet/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communication, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Skills A few weeks ago, a (http://effective-altruism.com/top/) to discuss effective altruism was released. So far, the quality of the discussion has been great. If you're interested in what we discuss on 80,000 Hours, you should definitely check it out. It may also be a good place to field career-related questions - we're on there often. --- > We interviewed Holden to discuss which causes are most important to work on with your career if you want to make a difference. - Published: 2014-10-03 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/interview-holden-karnofsky-on-cause-selection/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Climate change, Global health, Personal fit, Research, Skills In August 2014, we interviewed Holden Karnofsky, the co-founder of GiveWell, to discuss how the results of (http://www.openphilanthropy.org/) (formerly GiveWell Labs) might extend to career choice. In particular, we regard Open Philanthropy as the best available single source of information about which causes are most high priority (for more, see our (/career-guide/cause-selection), and we want to explore how much the results transfer from philanthropists to people picking careers. See our (https://80000hours.org/2013/04/interview-with-holden-karnofsky-co-founder-of-givewell/). The interview was carried out in person in GiveWell’s offices and recorded. Below, we list some of the key points and excerpts from the interview edited for clarity, which were reviewed by Holden before publishing. ##Key points made by Holden * If a cause is on Open Philanthropy’s list, that’s an extra reason to seek a job in that area. * However, if a cause isn’t on the list, it may still be promising, especially if you have good personal fit with the area. Personal fit may often overwhelm considerations about the general effectiveness of a cause. * There can be other differences between the causes that are most promising for philanthropists and those that are most promising for job seekers. For instance, since OPP’s causes are often constrained by a lack of money, it may be difficult to get a job within them. * Some ideas for causes OPP isn’t investigating, but at first glance still look promising for job seekers include: environment and climate change, scientific research, for-profit work (especially in innovative areas), and foreign relations. * OPP aren't highly likely to drastically change their list of causes (especially within global catastrophic risks and political advocacy) for at least two to three years. * If you want to make a difference in the for-profit world, avoid activities that make money through (i) zero-sum games (ii) addiction (iii) a marketing-first approach. If you’ve cleared those filters, then ask (i) is this scalable? (ii) does it make people’s lives better in a significant way? (iii) are you good at this activity? --- - Published: 2014-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/wed-like-to-interview-you/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career paths, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Skills If you've got experience with a career of interest to our readers, we'd like to feature an interview with your on our blog. Similarly, if you're interviewing someone as part of your career research, we'd like to feature your notes. For instance, see this interview with (https://80000hours.org/2014/04/interview-with-buck-shlegeris-from-app-academy/) - one of our most popular ever pieces of content - and see many more (https://80000hours.org/blog/?type=interviews). **Why are we looking for interviews?** We think our readers have lots of useful knowledge to share about their careers, and we've found interviews to be one of the quickest, most transparent ways to do it. **How would we like to do the interview?** If you're interested, choose 5-10 questions, draft answers to them, and send them to ben@80000hours.org. I'll ask some follow up questions, then we'll publish the final result on the blog. If you're interviewing someone else, make sure to get their permission to post the notes. **Example questions** Some good general purpose questions are: * What did you do before this job? * Why did you take this job? * What does the job involve? * What are the main pros and cons of this job for someone looking to make a difference? * What are the best sources of further information on this area? You can see a full list of ideas for questions we often use (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tmVLrNO11hxELuUq_mb0hgeyaXSUjt-j10ZMfsd81mw/edit?usp=sharing). --- - Published: 2014-10-01 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/10/interview-holden-karnofsky-on-the-importance-of-personal-fit/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Exploration, Government & policy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital In January 2014, I interviewed Holden Karnofsky, the co-founder of GiveWell, to further discuss his views on the importance of personal fit in career choice, and how they might differ from our own. See our (https://80000hours.org/2013/04/interview-with-holden-karnofsky-co-founder-of-givewell/). The interview was carried out on Skype and recorded. Below, we list some of the key points and excerpts from the interview. These have been edited for clarity, and were reviewed by Holden before publishing. ##Summary of Holden’s key points * Your degree of “fit” with a role depends on your chances of ultimately excelling in the role if you work at hard at it, arising from the match between yourself and the requirements of the role. * Holden believes that if you want to make a difference, seeking out roles with which you have a high degree of fit should be a top priority, especially early in your career. This is because: * Fit is easier to judge than many other factors, such as how much immediate impact you have, which means it’s easier to improve your degree of fit over time. * It’s harder to change your career ‘role’ than your cause later in your career. For instance, if you become a great salesperson, it’s relatively easy to transition into an organisation that works on a different cause, but much harder to become great at some other skill. This means that early in your career it’s more important to figure out what types of roles suit you than what cause support early in your career. * There’s huge, robust benefits from being good at your job including (i) better career capital - “it gives you a better learning experience, better personal development, better overall status, better overall opportunities” - (ii) higher impact within your field. * Excelling at what you do is one of the most important rules of thumb for having more impact, partly because a lot of the world's impact comes from extreme cases, so your chances of being an extreme case may dominate your expected impact. In particular, extreme impact often arises from innovation - spotting ideas others haven’t - and this is more likely when you're at the top of your field. * Some other criteria that are important early in your career are: (i) the general status of the option (ii) the pay (iii) how much you’ll learn about yourself and your other options from taking this option. If you’re interested in finding out more about Holden’s views on career choice for people interested in effective altruism, we recommend seeing the transcript of his (http://www.givewell.org/altruistic-career-choice). --- - Published: 2014-09-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/tell-us-about-your-career/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career capital, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills If you’ve made a career decision recently, we’d like to feature your story on the blog. Here’s some examples: (https://80000hours.org/2014/01/case-study-choosing-between-working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-earning-to-give-and-graduate-school/), (https://80000hours.org/2013/10/why-i-m-doing-a-phd/), (https://80000hours.org/2013/06/maximizing-your-donations-via-a-job/). If you’re interested, please email ben@80000hours.org. --- > By moving to Thailand, you can cut your cost of living by two to six times, and probably have a higher standard of living than you would have in the US or UK. - Published: 2014-09-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/should-you-move-to-thailand/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Exploration *Chiang Mai Coffee Shop. Credit: (http://www.spartantraveler.com)* By moving to Thailand, you can cut your cost of living by two to six times, and probably have a higher standard of living than you would have in a big city in the US or UK. NomadList (https://nomadlist.io/chiang-mai-thailand) that you can live in Chiang Mai for only £400 per month, and flights from London can be had for £500 return. There's several other cities in Thailand, Vietnam and Eastern Europe, which offer a cost of living under £900 per month. In the case of Chiang Mai, this includes: * A nice, serviced apartment on short-let. * Fast internet. * Plenty of good cafes and co-working spaces. * Warm weather all year. * No commute. * Big community of international remote workers. * Eating out every meal. * No visa required for 3 months. * Set up within a day. --- > In which career can you make the most difference? We've updated our top careers list. - Published: 2014-09-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/update-in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Finance, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital In the recent (/2014/09/lots-of-new-content-released-to-the-site/), we added a new (/career-guide/top-careers/). It’s based on the popular blog post we released in February - (/2014/02/in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/) - but with several changes... --- > Why we think follow your passion is bad advice, but how it contains a some truth – it’s worth searching for a career that’s a good personal fit. - Published: 2014-09-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/update-dont-follow-your-passion/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit Some have claimed "follow your passion" is the definitive career advice of our time. The idea behind the slogan "follow your passion" is that the best way to choose a career is to: 1. Identify your passions through self-reflection. 2. Identify careers that involve those passions. 3. Try to get one of those careers. The reason this advice works is because: 1. Matching your career with your passions in this way is the best way to be truly satisfied with your work. 2. If you're satisfied with your work, you'll be good at what you do. 3. Being good at what you do is the best way to make the world a better place. We mainly disagree with the first and last claims: matching your career with your passions is not a particularly good way to find satisfying work, and being good at what you do is only one factor that matters for having a social impact. --- > A list of the principles that guide our research. - Published: 2014-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/what-does-good-research-look-like/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Mental health, Personal fit, Research, Skills We want to be transparent about how we go about our research into career choice, so in the latest site update, we added a page listing the principles we use to guide our research. The full page is (/about//credibility/research-principles/). I've copied the text below. What principles do you think we've missed? Which parts don't you agree with? --- > One of our key new pages is ‘how to choose’ - a step-by-step process for making your next career decision, based on the process we use in coaching and workshops. - Published: 2014-09-15 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/update-how-to-choose-a-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skill-building and career capital One of our key new pages is ‘how to choose’ - a (/career-guide/how-to-choose). It explains how to tie all of our information together to make a rational next decision, and is based on the process we use in coaching and workshops. In summary... --- - Published: 2014-09-14 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/lots-of-new-content-released-to-the-site/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital We’ve recently expanded our research page into a series of ten, supported by sixteen career profiles. In total, we’ve released around 30,000 words of new content. We provide an overview of everything on the (/career-guide/). The three most important pages are: 1. (/career-guide/top-careers/): Lists the most promising careers from among the (/career-guide/top-careers/career-profiles/) so far. 2. (/career-guide/how-to-choose): A step-by-step process to make your next career decision. 3. (/career-guide/framework/): A checklist of criteria to use to compare your individual options in terms of how much difference you can make. Some other important pages include: * (/career-guide/top-careers/strategies/): A list of strategies you can take to make a difference (skill build, experiment with your options, do research, earning to give, advocacy, work at effective organisations, entrepreneurship). * (/career-guide/framework/cause-selection/): A framework for comparing causes, and our list of top causes. * (/career-guide/personal-fit/): A step-by-step process for finding a career that fits, and our views on ‘do what you’re passionate about’. * (/career-guide/framework/job-satisfaction/): How to assess jobs in terms of how satisfying you’re likely to find them. Many of our views on these topics have changed since we last wrote about them. I’ll be going through some of the changes on the blog over the next couple of weeks. --- - Published: 2014-09-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/cause-prioritization-summary/ - Topics: Global priorities research, Research in relevant areas, World problems ## Introduction I recently conducted a ‘shallow investigation’ (see (http://www.givewell.org/labs/causes)) into cause prioritization, with the help of (http://www.nickbeckstead.com/). It covers the importance of cause prioritization; who is doing it, funding it, or using it; and opportunities to contribute. We had conversations with eight relevant people. The full document is (https://www.dropbox.com/s/yzpq81arki89gd9/Cause%20Prioritization%20Shallow%20Overview.docx) and the collection of related interview notes and such is (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f3zb23ztowqmw6i/AAAUX9ybAe-p2K942b_OWPWna). This blog post is a summary of my impressions, given the findings of the investigation. *** Cause prioritization research seems likely enough to be high value to warrant further investigation. It appears that roughly billions of dollars per year might be influenced by it in just the near future, that current efforts cost a few million dollars per year and are often influential, and that there are many plausible ways to contribute. It also seems like things are likely to get better in the future, as more work is done. --- - Published: 2014-09-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/09/conversation-with-paul-penley-of-excellence-in-giving/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Global priorities research, Philanthropic advising, World problems ## Participants * Paul Penley: Director of Research, Excellence in Giving * Katja Grace: Research Assistant, Machine Intelligence Research Institute * Nick Beckstead: Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute; Board of Trustees, Center for Effective Altruism ## Notes This is a summary of Paul Penley’s points in a conversation on April 3, 2014, written by Katja with substantial help from the other participants. --- - Published: 2014-08-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/08/conversation-with-paul-christiano-on-cause-prioritization-research/ - Topics: Global priorities research, World problems ## Participants * Paul Christiano: Computer science PhD student at UC Berkeley * Katja Grace: Research Assistant, Machine Intelligence Research Institute ## Summary This is a verbatim email conversation from the 26th of March 2014. Paul is a proponent of cause prioritization research. Here he explains his support of prioritization research, and makes some suggestions about how to do it. Note: Paul is Katja’s boyfriend, so consider reading his inclusion as a relevant expert with a grain of salt. --- - Published: 2014-08-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/08/conversation-with-owen-cotton-barratt-of-the-global-priorities-project/ - Topics: Global priorities research, World problems ## Notes This is a summary made by Katja of points made by Owen during a conversation on March 24 2014. ## What the Global Priorities Project (GPP) does The (https://web.archive.org/web/20160210144057/https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research/research-areas/global-priorities-project/) is new, and intends to experiment for a while with different types of projects and then work on those that appear highest value in the longer term. Their work will likely address questions about how to prioritize, improve arguments around different options, and will produce recommendations. It will probably be mostly research, but also include for instance some policy lobbying. They will likely do some work with concrete policy-relevant consequences and also some work on general high level arguments that apply to many things. Most features of the project are open to modification after early experimentation. There will be principally two audiences: policy makers and philanthropists, the latter including effective altruists and foundations. GPP has some access to moderately senior government and civil service policy people and are experimenting with the difficulty of pushing for high impact policies. ## Research areas Research topics will be driven by a combination of importance and comparative advantage. GPP is likely to focus on prioritizing broad areas rather than narrower interventions, though these things are closely linked. It is good to keep an eye on object level questions to ensure that you are thinking about things the right way. Owen is interested in developing frameworks for comparing things. This can produce value both in their own evaluations and through introducing metrics that others want to use, and so making proposals more comparable in general. --- - Published: 2014-07-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/07/foundation-influence-interview-with-kerry-vaughan/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Other topics, Working at a foundation ## Introduction Kerry Vaughan was a member of the (http://arnoldfoundation.org/) - a major strategic foundation with over $1.5B in assets - for 3 years and served as the manager of the technology and innovation group. Kerry is also a PhD candidate in philosophy with a specialization in ethics. We spoke with Kerry as part of some compensated research he was doing for 80,000 Hours about the impact one can have working at a foundation. ## Summary 1. The typical annual budget per employee at major foundations is $2 million. Each program officer oversees a budget of about $10 million. 2. The typical program officer is intelligent and well-educated, and many have graduate degrees. 3. The board of the foundation typically picks the cause areas and must approve each project. It seems difficult for program officers to influence which causes are supported. However, program officers can influence which projects are funded by selecting which non-profits get presented. --- - Published: 2014-07-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/07/how-to-influence-policy-an-interview-with-owen-barder-of-the-center-for-global-development/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Exploration, Government & policy, Personal fit, Politics, Research, Skills ## Introduction We recently interviewed Owen Barder to find out about making a difference through careers in policy. The interview was conducted in person. Below we summarize the key messages of the conversation, followed by some key excerpts which have been edited and reorganized for clarity. In summary, Owen told us: * How influence over policies works in the UK political system. In his experience the partnership between ministers, back-bench MPs and civil servants is one in which they all have an important role to play and they all depend on each other to achieve success. In addition, there is a complex ecosystem of outsiders that influence policies, which requires a combination of proper research, smart political ideas, effective communication and political leadership to influence policy change. * That the most important types of international policies can be divided into three groups: zero-sum policies in which there is a short-run trade-off between the interests of rich countries and poor countries (eg aid transfers); win-win policies which would benefit rich countries and poor countries (eg trade liberalisation); and fostering global public goods (eg R&D and global institutions). * Students interested in any career field dealing with the developing world should strongly consider traveling to and living in the developing world for some period of time. For those particularly interested in getting involved in politics, becoming a special advisor is one clear pathway, but transitions to the civil service or politics later in life are possible. --- - Published: 2014-07-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/07/careers-in-journalism-an-interview-with-larissa-macfarquhar/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Journalism, Personal fit At the recent (http://www.gooddoneright.com), I had the opportunity to speak with Larissa MacFarquhar about careers in journalism. Larissa is a journalist at the New Yorker, and next year will release (http://www.bostonreview.net/books-ideas-mccoy-family-center-ethics-society-stanford-university/lives-moral-saints), which explores the lives of those who dedicate themselves to helping others, and features a chapter on effective altruism. The following is a couple of notes on my key takeaways from our conversation, which were run past Larissa before publishing. --- - Published: 2014-07-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/07/good-done-right-audio-recordings-now-online/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career paths, Communication, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Philosophy, Research This July saw the first academic conference on effective altruism. The three-day event took place at All Souls College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford. The conference featured a (http://www.gooddoneright.com/#!programme/c1dj9) addressing issues related to effective altruism in a shared setting, including the CEO of JPAL, Derek Parfit, Nick Bostrom, Larissa MacFarquhar of the New Yorker, and many of our donors and supporters. It was a fantastic opportunity to share insights and ideas from some of the best minds working on these issues. I’m very pleased to announce that (https://soundcloud.com/gooddoneright/sets/good-done-right-2014), alongside speakers’ slides (where applicable). I’m very grateful to all of the participants for their fantastic presentations, and to All Souls College and the Centre for Effective Altruism for supporting the conference. --- - Published: 2014-07-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/07/what-does-economics-tell-us-about-replaceability/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Economics, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Replaceability, Skills ## Introduction ‘Replaceability’ has become a core concept in discussions of career choice among Effective Altruists (EAs) - put simply, people should not simply consider the ‘direct impact’ from doing a job, but instead the difference in outcomes resulting from taking that job, relative to not taking it. (/2012/11/what-s-your-true-impact/) and (/2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/) have both written blogs introducing this concept, and the importance of counterfactual reasoning in general (read these first if you’re not familiar with replaceability!); (http://rationalaltruist.com/2013/01/22/replaceability/) and (http://www.benkuhn.net/no-replace) (among others) have written blogs further exploring the concept, and its various representations and applications. Some Effective Altruists (EAs) have noted that representations of replaceability have varied in their sophistication, and (https://www.facebook.com/groups/effective.altruists/permalink/652449811478046/?comment_id=652964838093210&offset=0&total_comments=24) summarises this nicely as the ‘simple view’, ‘simplistic replaceability’ and ‘correct replaceability’. ‘Correct replaceability’ is particularly nuanced and complicated, and comprises taking into account the full set of counterfactual outcomes not only in your (potential) job, but in any other jobs affected by the employment decision, through knock-on and labour market effects. Given this, and that ‘replaceability’ varies significantly across different industries and jobs, Will MacAskill and Ben Todd asked me to think about what Economics has to tell us about the concept. For clarity, rather than think about the ethical considerations of ‘replaceability’ as a whole, they asked me to answer a sub-question, namely: *“according to mainstream economics, if I add myself to the labour pool for job type X (being a doctor, or an aid worker, or a banker), then how many more type X jobs come into being (on average)?”*. Although these issues have been discussed before, this blog post is a first attempt at providing a thorough analysis of this question. ## Summary * I set out the classical, Econ 101 supply and demand model and discuss the assumptions it makes. I argue that this is a useful framework for considering our question, then show how the answer depends crucially on the elasticities of labour supply and demand. Unfortunately, empirical economic research cannot tell us much about these elasticities for individual industries. * There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer to our question - it will vary considerably across different industries and we must try to understand how each industry functions in order to make an informed estimate. I believe that the supply and demand framework, or some variant of it, is useful for analysing our question for most jobs and industries, particularly those that are not highly specialised. * I discuss how (and whether) this framework should be applied in a few industries, most of which are seen as viable EA career paths. This framework can lead us to some (tentative) conclusions: * Entrance into industries with a quantity restriction (e.g. through a limited number of occupational licences) is likely to have (close to) zero impact on the number of jobs in that industry. This may apply to medical school and licensed professional industries (e.g. becoming a barrister in the UK). * Entrance into (narrowly defined) industries which require relatively transferable skills is likely to result in less than 0.5 additional jobs in this industry, as (potential) workers can easily substitute into other industries (labour supply is elastic). This may apply to banking and consultancy. * Entrance into industries in which (potential) workers have a strong preference to work is likely to result in more additional jobs (perhaps between 0.5 and 1), as workers will not substitute into other industries at such a high rate (labour supply is inelastic). This may apply to jobs in the charity sector. * In highly specialised industries/jobs, applying this framework may not be appropriate, as the hiring process will not resemble a competitive market. This may apply, for example, to taking a job with Givewell, who likely follow a process more akin to ‘threshold hiring’.In this case, it seems likely that taking this job may increase the number of overall jobs by close to 1. * This post only discusses one aspect of replaceability, and does not consider other issues related to the (direct) impact of a job, effects on the quality of employees, or long term effects of a job, such as creating social value. --- - Published: 2014-07-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/07/interview-with-caroline-fiennes-about-opportunities-in-effective-philanthropy/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Global priorities research, Research in relevant areas, World problems ## Introduction We recently interviewed Caroline Fiennes to find out about her ideas on opportunities to make a difference promoting effective philanthropy, and more about her organisation, Giving Evidence. The aim was to both inform our strategy as an organisation, and find opportunities for people who are interested in leading a career in this area. The interview was conducted via phone call. Below we summarise the key messages of the conversation, followed by some key excerpts, which have been edited and reorganised for clarity. In summary, Caroline told us: * Billions of pounds are donated to charity in the UK each year, but there’s little evidence which can inform donors’ decisions about where to donate. Hence, this money probably doesn’t have as much impact as it could. * One intervention would be to set up something like (http://www.charitynavigator.org/) for the UK, ideally rating charities both on organisation quality (as Charity Navigator does) *and* on the strength of the evidence behind the interventions they implement. There are many people interested in taking this project forward, but it’s difficult to raise money for it. * Another intervention is creating a platform to publicly collect and share the monitoring and evaluation data that charities already produce. Over a billion pounds is spent on monitoring and evaluation each year, but it seems that only about two percent of the studies get shared. Giving Evidence (http://giving-evidence.com/2014/06/11/info-infrastructure/) to explore how to create a system for sharing evidence in the UK criminal justice sector. --- - Published: 2014-06-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/the-payoff-and-probability-of-obtaining-venture-capital/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital Venture capital has facilitated the growth of many companies including Apple, Google and Facebook. But is venture capital a key to success for most startups? In this post, we answer three component questions: 1. What are the likely outcomes for companies backed by venture capital? 2. What fraction of companies attract venture capital? a) How many startups and venture capital deals are there? b) What proportion of applicants to venture capitalists say they accept? 3. How much work is it to apply for venture capital? We found that: * According to the data of Professors Hall and Woodward, the average venture capital-backed founder exits with $5.8 million of equity. * Roughly 1% of companies that aspire to obtain venture capital obtain it. * Finding out whether you will receive venture capital can take months to years of work. --- - Published: 2014-06-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/which-university-has-better-entrepreneurs/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Entrepreneurship, Income, Other topics, Skills ![](http://i.imgur.com/wb0QZgB.jpg) Some of the most successful companies in recent years have been founded by students of America’s most prestigious universities. The founders of Google and Facebook, from Stanford and Harvard respectively, are prime examples. So which universities have the most successful entrepreneurs? To answer this question, we’ve assessed how many students from each top US university have obtained investment in their startup, how many are worth over $30 million, and how many are worth over $1 billion. This builds upon Jonah Sinick's (http://lesswrong.com/lw/jwh/why_are_harvards_alumni_so_wealthy/) on the wealth of Harvard alumni. --- - Published: 2014-06-23 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/how-to-quantify-research-quality/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Communication, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills ## Introduction You may have recently noticed a number appearing under our blog posts, in a little green square. That’s an attempt to better track the quality of our research, which is, as far we know, the first system of its kind. This post explains why we added it, how it works, who does the ratings, and its benefits so far. --- - Published: 2014-06-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/what-is-the-average-net-worth-of-stanford-entrepreneurs/ - Topics: Career capital, Career paths, Entrepreneurship, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills In this post we estimate the mean net worth of Stanford alumni who made their wealth primarily through founding startups. Our estimate is that the mean net-worth of a Stanford alumnus who founded a corporation **$10.8 million** as of 2013. The reason we are interested in making this estimate is because it fits in with a larger (/2013/09/should-more-altruists-consider-entrepreneurship/), and within that project, into the wealth that can be gained by becoming an entrepreneur. In this post, we estimate the *total net worth* of Stanford alumni who have founded corporations then we estimate the *total number* of Stanford alumni who have founded corporations. We then arrive at our estimate by dividing the total net worth of Stanford alumni founders by the total number of Stanford alumni founders. We close with some caveats and qualifications to our estimate. --- - Published: 2014-06-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/increasing-your-earnings-as-a-doctor/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Income, Medicine, Other topics Making a difference to patient’s lives is a gratifying part of medical work. However, an (/2012/08/how-many-lives-does-a-doctor-save/) by Dr Gregory Lewis suggests that doctors may be able to make a greater improvement to people’s lives through their donations than through their practice. In part, this is because the potentially large impact of charitable donations. For instance, research by GiveWell has shown that it’s likely to be possible to save a life for less than $10,000. This raises the question 'how can doctors increase their earnings?'. In this post, we explore whether doctors can improve their earnings by: 1. Moving to a different country. 2. Choosing a highly-paid specialty. 3. Pursuing locum (contract) shifts. --- - Published: 2014-06-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/advisory-board-report-june-2014/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised As part of our (/2014/05/summary-of-the-annual-review-may-2014/), we held an advisory board meeting. Our advisory board consists of: James Norris, Alex Flint and Jeff Kaufman. The members are chosen as supporters of our mission and effective altruism, who are not otherwise involved in running the organisation. We encourage them to act as impartial critics of our approach. One is a major donor to 80,000 Hours, two are highly active in building the effective altruism community and two have entrepreneurial experience. After the meeting, James Norris issued the following statement on behalf of the board: > The advisory board met on May 9, 2014 to review the performance of 80,000 Hours over the past year. Alex Flint, Jeff Kaufman, James Norris, and Ben Todd were present. The members are in agreement that 80,000 Hours is executing well on its strategic plan and making strong progress overall. > Fundraising and website metrics are both encouraging. William MacAskill’s commissioned book on effective altruism appears to be a big win for 80,000 Hours and the community at large. However, some members cautioned it might not ultimately yield as large of a benefit as anticipated. > One ongoing concern is staffing. Salaries are slightly uncompetitive and senior leadership may be overly critical to 80,000 Hours’ success. Some members also voiced concern around maintaining a healthy public image in light of growing media attention. > Overall, 80,000 Hours appears to be intelligently and thoughtfully run by a very capable team. The advisory board is confident 80,000 Hours will continue to execute well in the foreseeable future. See the previous report (/2013/09/trustee-and-advisory-board-report/). --- - Published: 2014-06-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/06/case-series-why-and-how-to-learn-programming/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Computer science, Doing good in your current job, Experience with an emerging power, Income, Other topics, Skill-building and career capital, Software engineering Software engineering is a lucrative career with an unusually low barrier to entry. Due to its appeal, some people in our community have switched into programming via many different routes. To help guide other individuals who are considering making this transition, we’ve gathered the five people in our community’s experiences learning to code and getting employed as a programmer. * Some programmers say that they enjoy their work because of the puzzles and problems involved in programming. They also say that they enjoy being drawn into a flow state. * One undesirable characteristic of software engineering is its white male monoculture. * Other common peeves are the need to understand large existing codebases and engaging in the boring aspects of fixing broken software. * People learn to program in a variety of ways including App Academy, computer science degrees, and teaching themselves while doing another job. * It’s easier to get hired if you’ve done an internship. Applying widely also helps. One App Academy graduate applied to 30-40 companies, out of which he got 5 phone screenings / code challenges, 2 in person interviews, and one offer. --- - Published: 2014-05-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/how-much-do-y-combinator-founders-earn/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Risk ## Introduction We're interested in estimating how much tech entrepreneurs earn, since it's one of our top recommended (/2014/02/in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/), and this is in part because it seems particularly high earning (enabling (/earning-to-give), and potentially indicating the creation of a lot economic value). As part of this, we wanted to find out: *if you can get into Y Combinator, how much will you earn?* We're particularly interested in Y Combinator because it's the best known seed accelerator, and the data is available. In summary, here's what we found: * The total value of Y Combinator companies is $26 billion, of which the founders own $8 billion. * Most of the returns have gone to a tiny minority of super-successes. The founders of AirBnB, Dropbox and Stripe are worth about US$7 billion, about 80% of all founders' equity, although they account for 0.5% of the companies. * Outside of the most successful companies, it was still possible to earn significant returns. 12% of companies from the first five years of Y Combinator are now worth US$40 million or more, and a further 10% have sold for US$5-40 million. The remainder probably earned little more than their (low) salaries. * **On average, founders from the first five years of Y Combinator are now worth US$18 million after 5-9 years, giving past average earnings of US$2.5 million per year** * When it invests in its companies, Y Combinator values them at US$1.7 million, of which each founding team owns $1.6 million. This implies that founders must earn (in cash or equity) substantially more than $100,000 per year on average. * We expect the average earnings going forward to be less than $2.5 million per founder per year because of competitors to Y Combinator and regression to the mean. * Y Combinator accept 2.5% of applications. * Your personal expected earnings from applying to Y Combinator depend on your chance of being accepted and your chance of creating the next AirBnB or Dropbox. --- - Published: 2014-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/our-strategic-review-may-2014/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised ## Introduction - where have we come from? Less than two years ago, we were simply a group of student volunteers aiming to have the biggest possible impact. We thought we had some powerful ideas, which had caused (/2014/02/some-stories-of-career-change-due-to-80-000-hours/) to completely change their careers. But we didn’t know how to turn our ideas into a high impact organisation. We were doing a mixture of campaigning, community building, research and one-on-one coaching, and were unsure where to focus. Since then, we have focused our (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18i2krmxsjdt21dr7nmzz-sjpvulf8qpobbqehqyp-dm/edit#), tested several prototype programs (online content and coaching) and gained an initial (/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/) by showing these can change careers. we also think we’ve had enough impact by changing career plans to (/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/) and have overall been a (/2014/05/what-impact-has-80-000-hours-had/). In light of these milestones, this document explains how our strategy has changed over time and where it stands now. It is part of our annual review. ### Summary **We intend for the next year to be the final year of our ‘discovery phase’**. The aim of the discovery phase is to identify the most high potential business model. (By ‘business model’ we mean the combination of programs, promotion, team structure and financing strategies we use to have a social impact). **Our key focus will be on improving the quality of our prototype programs**, in order to test some of the most important remaining uncertainties in our model. Within this, we have two aims. First **we’ll focus on research** to deepen our knowledge of how to choose the most high impact careers. We think further research is likely to be valuable, both because this body of knowledge is neglected but highly important, and because we think high quality research is crucial to the appeal and impact of our programs. High quality research is the most important way for us to become more credible (therefore able to persuade more people), it’s the key factor that sets us apart from our competition in attracting users, and it’ll ensure we highlight careers that are genuinely better than those our users would have taken otherwise (a key uncertainty in our impact evaluation). At the same time, we’re unsure how rapidly we’ll be able to make progress on research. Focusing on research for the rest of 2014, tracking our progress and submitting ourselves to an external research evaluation will reduce our uncertainty about the value of further research. Second, **we’ll focus on improving our online content**. We’ll expand our research page into a series of five, covering (i) the key criteria we suggest for comparing between careers, (ii) ranked lists of promising careers and causes (iii) supporting career profiles (iv) advice on how to find a career that fits and (v) a step-by-step planning process. We’ll also add pages to guide users to the best of our old content. We’re focusing on online content because we think our online content has more potential for impact than coaching. In our (/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/), we found over 30 of the 107 significant plan changes were attributable to online content alone. This would make the online content similarly important to the coaching in terms of changing careers. Given that online content is also far more scalable than coaching, it makes sense to prioritise it to test the hypothesis that it’s a better program. Moreover, developing the online content involves the least additional work over just doing research, and we think our current offering could be significantly improved relatively easily through better summaries of our existing content. **We’ll continue with our one-on-one coaching as part of our research process**. We’ll deepen our knowledge of social impact careers by doing rounds of coaching talented, altruistic, young people, then writing up answers to their most pressing questions for the blog. We’ll also write career profiles covering the careers our coachees most want to know more about. In 2015, we plan to start our ‘execution phase’, in which we aim to realise our model’s full potential for impact. We intend to initially focus on making our online content easier to use, most likely by developing it into an online careers guide, while continuing with research. The aim is to have the careers guide in place before (http://www.effective-altruism.com/effective-altruism-outreach-plans/) on effective altruism in August 2015. After that, we may increase our outreach work to connect with our entire target market. In the longer term, we’ll aim to develop further programs to deepen engagement with our users, such as expanding the coaching service. Our aim is to become the best source of advice in the world for the most talented, altruistic young graduates, enabling them to best use their 80,000 hours to solve the world’s most pressing problems. --- - Published: 2014-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/review-of-progress-july-2013-to-april-2014/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised ## Introduction and summary The purpose of this document is to review what 80,000 Hours has achieved from July 2013 to February 2014 since our (/2013/08/our-progress/). We also review how we performed relative to our targets, and our mistakes over the period. This document is part of our annual review. In summary: * We went through three stages during the period: website redesign, testing our content, and finally conducting our impact evaluation and strategic review. Other significant priorities included writing a book proposal on effective altruism, fundraising and staff recruitment. * Our main achievements were establishing proof of concept that our programs (research and online content, supported by coaching) can change career plans, and creating a clearer strategy. * While doing this, we continued to faciliate significant plan changes, which we think justify our costs. * Other achievements included: Will landed a major book deal to write about effective altruism, we continued to build the team and CEA, we increased our financial security by reaching our target of 12 months’ cash reserves, we implemented more professional branding, we had a meeting at the UK Prime Minister’s office on careers advice policy, we helped to foster the (https://web.archive.org/web/20150219111333/https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/research/global-priorities-project), we published over 40 research blog posts, the Cambridge student group had a strong first year, and we increased our organisational transparency. * We made progress on all of our key priorities and completed most of what we set out to achieve in our last review, but ended up several months behind schedule for a variety of reasons. * Our main mistake over the period was not keeping the team sufficiently focused on fundamental strategic progress. We think we’ve already corrected this mistake. You can find more detail on our key metrics in our (/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/). --- - Published: 2014-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/80-000-hours-finance-report/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised ## Summary (N.B figures are rounded) *Current financial situation* **As of April 2014, 80,000 Hours had £148,000 in reserves.** This would represent 16 months of reserves at current rates of spending or **12.5 months of reserves if we follow our target budget, which would have us spend £130,000 over 2014.** This £130,000 would be primarily spent on staff salaries (£68,000), intern support expenses and accommodation (£24,000) and office rent (£10,000). *Historical spending* **In *2013*, 80,000 Hours spent £124,000, or around £10,000 per month**. **From *January through March 2014* 80,000 Hours spent £28,000,** or around £9,000 per month, slightly under the £31,000 budgeted. Since its founding in 2012 until April 2014 80,000 Hours has spent £176,000. *Historical income* **In *2013* 80,000 Hours received £175,000 in donations**, of which £150,000 were specifically restricted to 80,000 Hours by donors and the remainder was given without restriction to our parent organisation, the Centre for Effective Altruism. **From *January through March 2014* 80,000 Hours has received a further £92,000**, of which £73,000 was restricted to 80,000 Hours by donors. Since its founding in 2012 until April 2014 80,000 Hours has received a total of £301,000. *Fundraising targets* We are currently looking to raise an additional £40,000. This would cover our remaining shortfall for 2014, and give us the option to hire an additional staff member to focus on research and coaching. Making this goal would mean we could end fundraising for the rest of 2014, and fully focus on developing our programs. --- - Published: 2014-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/team-plan-may-2014/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised In this document, which is part of our annual review, we outline our priorities over the rest of 2014. We also list the organisational metrics we intend to track and some of the challenges we anticipate facing. To see how this plan fits into our overall strategy, see the (/2014/05/our-strategic-review-may-2014/). To see what we did over the last year, see our review of progress. In summary, over the rest of 2014 we intend to focus on deepening our knowledge of social impact careers and improving the prototype of our online content. We’ll do this by expanding our research pages into a series of six separate pages, then completing several rounds of coaching and writing up research, with the aim of coaching at least 40 people, writing five reports on their most pressing questions, and writing five career profiles on the most asked about careers. At the end of the year, we’ll update the research pages based on what we’ve found, and perform a research evaluation to measure our progress. In addition, it’s highly important to build the capacity of our research team. Our main goal in this area is to find an outstanding candidate who can start working at 80,000 Hours as a staff member within the next 18 months, specialising in research. Other priorities include maintaining six months of reserves and building team capacity, through training the team and hiring new staff. --- - Published: 2014-05-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/summary-of-the-annual-review-may-2014/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised ## Introduction In this document, we present some concluding comments about our annual review and provide a guide to the rest of the documents. The summary of our previous review is (/2013/09/summary-of-our-six-month-evaluation/). ## Overview comments With the end of this annual review, 80,000 Hours has reached an important milestone. Over the last year we performed a major impact evaluation. We found that as of December 2013 we’ve caused 107 ‘significant plan changes’ - a metric we developed to track our impact. You can see some examples (/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/#appendix---studies-of-career-change). given this, we think we’ve achieved initial proof of concept that our prototype online content, coaching and community can change careers. we presented an overview of the evaluation (/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/) and an in-depth analysis of the plan changes (/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/#appendix---studies-of-career-change). we think this proof of concept is sufficiently compelling to move our focus on to improving the quality of our programs. On this basis, (/2014/05/our-strategic-review-may-2014/). To complete our ‘discovery phase’, (/blog/338-team-plan-april-2014)(/blog/338-team-plan-april-2014) we’ll deepen our knowledge of social impact careers through research. We’ll also improve our online content. We’ll do this through successive rounds of coaching people and writing answers to their most pressing questions. We’ll summarise our findings on a series of six research pages, which we’ll submit for external evaluation. In 2015, we intend to move into our ‘execution phase’, in which we’ll aim to take the model we’ve discovered to its full potential. We envisage initially focusing on further improving the quality of our programs, in particular by writing a careers guide. We aim to finish this in time for the press campaign surrounding the launch of Will MacAskill’s book on effective altruism in August 2015. Securing this book deal with Gotham Books (Penguin US) and Guardian-Faber was another major success of 2013. As part of CEA’s (http://www.effective-altruism.com/effective-altruism-outreach-plans/), it may become a major source of new users. After that, we may move our focus to outreach to ensure our programs connect with our entire target market. Or we may develop further programs, such as training a social impact career coach for every top university. Ultimately, we want to become the best source of advice in the world for the most talented, young graduates who want to make a positive impact, enabling them to best use their 80,000 hours to solve the world’s most pressing problems. While our key goals in the discovery phase are clarifying our strategy and testing our programs, we think our impact evaluation showed we’re (/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/)(/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/) through the value of the plan changes our users have adopted. Since we think the value of the plan changes we have caused is only a (/2014/05/what-impact-has-80-000-hours-had/)(/2014/05/what-impact-has-80-000-hours-had/), this implies we’ve used resources highly effectively. Besides proof of concept and focusing our strategy, we had (/2014/05/review-of-progress-july-2013-to-april-2014/), including good progress building the team, (/2014/05/80-000-hours-finance-report/) and (/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/) in reach and impact. Overall, we’re very excited about the next year. --- - Published: 2014-05-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/plan-change-analysis-and-cost-effectiveness/ - Topics: Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Risk ## Introduction This document is part of our annual review. In section one, it aims to resolve some key uncertainties within our (/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/): 1. How many significant plan changes has 80,000 Hours caused? 2. What were these changes? In section two, we move on to consider: 3. What costs has 80,000 Hours incurred in causing these changes? 4. Does the value of the significant plan changes justify total historical costs? In the (#appendix---studies-of-career-change), we also include 27 studies of career changes. --- - Published: 2014-05-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/what-impact-has-80-000-hours-had/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised ## Introduction What impact has 80,000 Hours had since we started in 2011? This document is not meant as an impact assessment; rather, its aim is to lay out the ways in which we’ve plausibly had an impact, and summarise what we currently know about them. Our impact can be compared to our (/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/). By the end of 2013, we had spent £147,000 and used about thirteen years of labour from the team, which we estimate had an opportunity cost of about £233,000 in forgone donations. --- - Published: 2014-05-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/how-well-are-our-programs-performing/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised ## Introduction and summary In this document, which is part of our annual review, we overview the performance of our programs and their costs from founding to the end of 2013. Our programs consist of online research, coaching, community building and events. In this document, we examine how successful they have been in gaining audience, engaging and informing that audience, and ultimately in changing their career plans for the better. The key question we want to answer is: do we have proof of concept that our programs can repeatedly change the careers of our target audience for the better? Our key findings are: * We’ve been successful in reaching people and engaging them with little investment in outreach. * Out of several thousand engaged users, 107 have made significant career plan changes, and a significant proportion of these have followed through with their plan changes. * Overall, we think we have proof of concept that our programs can repeatedly change careers for the better. * In total, 80,000 Hours has received about £147,000 of donations and has taken 13 years of labour from the team. Our main uncertainties are: * How valuable is a plan change, taking into account what the person would have done otherwise? We have performed further analysis of this question in our analysis of plan changes. We plan to further investigate this question by performing a research evaluation and continuing to track our users over time. Some important sub-questions include: * How high value are ‘conventional careers’ compared to ‘effective altruist’ style careers? * What’s the chance of one or two people in the group having extreme impact, such as founding a highly influential organisation, donating tens of millions of pounds to charity, or being elected to office? * Are these plan changes due to 80,000 Hours or another group in effective altruism? We also investigate this issue in our analysis of plan changes. In the future, we may be able to carry out a randomised controlled trial of some of our programs to learn more. * How useful are the benefits of our programs compared to the information and support our users could have found elsewhere? * Will our users stay engaged for a couple of years, or many decades into the future? * How confident can we be that future work will lead to more plan changes? * How much personal value do our users gain from our programs? Would they pay for coaching? * How is impact allocated between our different programs? Would the plan changes attributed to coaching have been caused anyway due to our research and community? --- - Published: 2014-05-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/what-we-can-learn-about-career-choice-from-the-terman-study/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills The Terman study is the longest running longitudinal studies ever to be carried out in psychology. The study included 1,528 of the most intelligent children born between 1900 and 1925. It started in 1921, and the participants have been followed up every four to five years ever since. Data was collected on their personality, habits, life-choices, health and much more. This allows researchers to track the results of different life choices over decades. Two of the leading researchers working on the Terman study recently released a book: (http://www.amazon.com/The-Longevity-Project-Discoveries-Eight-Decade/dp/B00AZ8AX6S), which aims to uncover the factors that lead to the participants having long and healthy lives. The book has a fascinating chapter on career choice (though I’d recommend the whole thing). Here’s a summary of the key conclusions: *The factors leading to career success* * **Intelligence predicts success, but it’s no guarantee.** All of the participants in the Terman study were very bright, but a quarter ended up in less prestigious occupations, like clerical workers and craftsmen. Only one fifth ended up ‘highly successful’ - prominent doctors or lawyers, accomplished in the arts, or leading scientists. One fifth ended up ‘unsuccessful’ within their professions. * **The more successful, the longer they lived.** The most successful men lived on average five years longer than the least. In fact, Terman’s rating of success at age 30 predicted life-span decades later. * **This effect was not explained by greater wealth, avoiding smoking and drinking, a happier marriage, more education, or conscientiousness (although conscientiousness did explain part of the effect).** * A stable career with a clear progression of rising responsibilities also predicted longevity, compared to a ‘drifting’ career through many different professions. * Continuing to work into old age was a significant predictor of longevity. * Overall, **the findings do not suggest that avoiding stress and responsibility is a good strategy for having a healthy life.** Rather, they suggest that the becoming the type of person who perseveres to achieve ambitious goals leads to both success and health. * This links to a broader theme in positive psychology - in (http://www.amazon.com/Flourish-Visionary-Understanding-Happiness-Well-being/dp/1439190763/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397941364&sr=1-1&keywords=flourish), Seligman proposes that achievement is one of the five key components of a flourishing life. --- - Published: 2014-05-06 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/biographies-of-top-entrepreneurs/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Entrepreneurship, Experience with an emerging power, Founding a tech startup, How to get a job, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Skills Lots of the people we coach want to know how to become a successful technological entrepreneur. One approach to this difficult question is to assess which unusual traits are common among the most successful tech entrepreneurs. In this post, we review the biographies of the ten richest tech entrepreneurs. Here is what we found: * All attended American Universities, though only half graduated (3 to start companies but 2 dropped out before they started their companies), and none have postgraduate qualifications. * 8 of the 10 entrepreneur’s Wikipedia page had stories or achievements demonstrating exceptional tech skills or interest in technology. (Azim Premji (Wipro) and Lawrence Ellison (Oracle)) are the only two whose Wikipedia pages do not demonstrate exceptional talent/interest in tech. * Fewer demonstrated early interest in business - Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell being the only exceptions * Only three took a job after finishing university and before starting a company. * Jeff Bezos, worked in multiple computer science-related jobs * Larry Ellison, worked for a data company while developing his product * Paul Allen, worked in programming before starting Microsoft --- - Published: 2014-05-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/05/shared-values-predict-startup-success-an-interview-with-saberr/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Entrepreneurship, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital ## Introduction As part of our ongoing research we have been looking at the best ways to go into entrepreneurship. When we (/2013/10/interview-with-matt-clifford/), of Entrepreneur First about the question, he suggested talking to Saberr. Saberr are a small startup focussed on the question of predicting the success of teams in business settings, and they have already had some impressive successes. We spoke to Alistair Shepherd by phone, one of the two original founders of Saberr, about their perspective on forming a successful entrepreneurial team. The following is a selection of highlights from the call, edited and reorganised for clarity. ## Key points According to research by Noam Wasserman most startups fail because of their team, suggesting team composition is important for entrepreneurial success. While standard personality tests have (/2013/04/how-important-is-fitting-in-at-work/) to be very successful at predicting success in careers, Saberr have achieved some impressive, if small scale, predictive success using a model based on value alignment and behavioural diversity. --- > Buck Shlergeris is a teaching assistant at App Academy. We interviewed him on how to enter, what you do on the course and what the benefits are. - Published: 2014-04-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/04/interview-with-buck-shlegeris-from-app-academy/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Computer science, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Income, Other topics, Skill-building and career capital, Software engineering Buck Shlegeris is a teaching assistant at (http://www.appacademy.io/) in San Francisco. Buck plans to use his earnings in programming to give to charities that improve the future. We discussed whether 80,000 Hours members can start a career in programming by doing a coding bootcamp. Below are some edited notes from our conversation. **Summary of main points:** * People can enter training at App Academy from an unrelated background such as philosophy or other humanities with a few weeks of preparation. * The application includes some programming challenges and takes takes 10-20 hours to complete. * The course requires 60+ hours of work per week for 12 weeks. * 90% of App Academy students make it to graduation. By asking for help if you are failing to progress, you can probably further reduce the chance of dropping out. * Over 95% of App Academy graduates seeking employment as programmers attain it. * The average income of graduates is $100k in San Francisco’s Bay Area, with 90% securing an income from $80-120k. In New York City, the average income is $84k. --- - Published: 2014-04-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/04/the-undercover-economist-speaks-to-80-000-hours/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Research in relevant areas, Risk Tim Harford recently spoke to us at Oxford. He’s a journalist for the *Financial Times* and the best-selling author of the (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-Harford/dp/0349119856), which we’d recommend as a popular introduction to Economics. He also wrote (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapt-Success-Always-Starts-Failure/dp/0349121516), which argues that trial and error is the best strategy for solving important global problems. The arguments he makes fit with some of the arguments we have made for (/2013/07/your-career-is-like-a-startup/). Tim gave a talk on innovation, similar to (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEoqRJ86X9g). The talk introduced a distinction between two types of innovation, and asks, which one is more important? 1. **Marginal improvements** - incremental improvements to existing systems. 2. **Revolutionary improvements** - transformations of existing systems to create new ones. --- - Published: 2014-04-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/04/the-copenhagen-consensus-speaks-to-80-000-hours-about-global-prioritisation/ - Topics: Global priorities research, World problems In October, Bjorn Lomborg from the (http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/) led a global priorities setting session at 80,000 Hours: Oxford in the Oxford Union. The video of the event has been uploaded by the Union. In the session, Lomborg guides the audience through the pros and cons of different uses of development aid, and asks them to put them in order of priority from the perspective of maximising the welfare of the global poor. Throughout the session, live votes are taken from the audience via wifi. More on the Copenhagen Consensus... --- - Published: 2014-04-09 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/04/how-much-do-people-pursuing-earning-to-give-actually-give/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Philanthropic advising ## Introduction The purpose of this document is to estimate: 1. How much do people pursuing earning to give donate, and how much can we expect them to in the immediate future? 2. How much more giving has 80,000 Hours caused? The second part fits into our upcoming impact evaluation. ## Summary ### How much do people pursuing earning to give donate? * We estimate there’s at least 100 people pursuing earning to give in the effective altruism community, based on survey data from the effective altruist organisations. * From our own surveys, we’ve found 39 people pursuing earning to give whose career plans have been changed by 80,000 Hours. * A random sample of ten of these 39 reported total donations to high impact and meta-charities over the last three years of £210k. * The top three donors we know among the group of 39 gave £230k over the last three years. * The members of the random sample of ten estimate they will donate £1.6m over the next three years to high impact charities and meta-charities. The top five donors we know expect to donate £2.1m over the next three years. If a significant number continue earning to give, donations will be substantially higher after 2016 due to rapid expected earnings growth. * The majority of the donations are expected to be to effective altruist organisations, followed by GiveWell recommended charities. * The estimates are complicated by: (i) the difficulty forecasting salary (ii) the chance of mass drop outs from earning to give (iii) biases in reporting (iv) dependence upon a couple of individuals, who account for a large fraction of the donations. * Overall, our best guess estimate is that the group of 39 has donated £230k - £400k over the past three years, and will donate about £2m over the next three years (with an 80% confidence interval of £500k - £4m). * The entire earning to give community of around 100 is likely to be donating about twice as much. ### How much more giving has 80,000 Hours caused? * We asked the random sample of ten from among the group of 39 to estimate how much of their expected giving to effective charities is due to 80,000 Hours. On average, they estimated 30%. * We searched the group of 39 for the donors who attributed the most donations over the next three years to 80,000 Hours’ influence. Collectively, the top five attribute £565k. More detail on each individual is in the (/2014/04/how-much-do-people-pursuing-earning-to-give-actually-give/#appendixindividual-studies-of-career-change). * These estimates are complicated by all the issues that complicate the overall estimates of donations, plus additional biases and the difficulty of separating our influence from the rest of the effective altruism community. * Based on the survey data and these considerations, our overall estimate is that 80,000 Hours has caused £50k of donations over the past three years. We expect to cause £500k of donations over the next three years, and substantially more after that, although our estimates are highly uncertain. The increase over the next three years is because more of the community will soon start work, and others are expected to see rapid salary growth during their first years of employment. --- - Published: 2014-04-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/04/80-000-hours-visits-number-10/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills In December, Will and I had the opportunity to visit Number 10 Downing St. to meet with policy advisors to discuss government policy on careers advice. After the meeting, we wrote up a (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8OdBVMpAjJHZnZHVzN1OEJhdGM/edit) Below, you can find the executive summary. --- - Published: 2014-03-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/03/review-of-progress-on-the-website/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised This document outlines the website updates from the period of August 2013 to January 2014. It's part of our annual review, the rest of which will be released on the blog over the next month. The most significant change was a site redesign, followed by several new features such as a hierarchical categories system, a research rating system, and newly designed pages. Throughout this period we've decided on having a more focussed brand and website in the future. In the next year, technical development will primarily support website maintenance and organizational research. --- - Published: 2014-03-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/03/80-000-hours-impact-survey-evaluation/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills To understand our impact and learn how to improve as an organisation, we recently ran an open survey of our users. We released the survey on 7th January through social media, our blog, newsletter emails and some individual emails. The following post analyses the 206 responses we had received by the 7th February. ## Summary * The survey identified sixty three people who said engaging with 80,000 Hours significantly changed their career plans. These people could specify the changes and how they came about. We know from other sources of a further forty people who changed plans, bringing our total to over one hundred. * About a third of the changes resulted only from reading online content. This is the first systematic evidence that our online content can change plans without one-on-one contact with the team. * One-on-one coaching, discussion with people in the community and attending events were all significant in changing plans. * We also collected evidence of impact beyond plan changes. We found for every three plan changes, there was a ratio of 1.5 people introduced to effective altruism for first time who now identify as supporters, and two people who changed their attitudes towards careers. * Giving What We Can, Less Wrong, word of mouth and Peter Singer’s TED talk also bring people to the effective altruism community. * Important sources of promotion for 80,000 Hours seem to be word of mouth, Less Wrong, our Oxford and Cambridge events, online search, social media and Peter Singer’s TED talk. * The rate at which we caused people to change plans roughly doubled when we became a full-time rather than voluntary organisation. This rate has been roughly steady since. * After seeing what kind of help people want, we decided to increase the priority put on bringing back some simple member networking tools. * We identified several themes in the feedback, detailed later in the post. * We received thirty very positive testimonials, which we take as a strong show of support. * We collected data on the careers and causes that supporters of 80,000 Hours commonly pursue, detailed later in the post. --- - Published: 2014-03-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/03/coaching-applications-analysis/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Who has been applying to (/speak-with-us/) from 80,000 Hours? In this post, we analyze our coaching applications to understand what kinds of people are requesting coaching. ## Summary ### Data sources and quantity We analyzed responses from our (/speak-with-us/). These consisted of multiple choice questions, text-response paragraphs, and CVs or resumes. This analysis looked at all 91 Social Impact Coaching responses from Oct 15th 2013 to Jan 22 2014. ### Key questions **What were the key demographic characteristics of the audience?** - Only 30% were from the UK. 38% were from the US, with others spread around the globe, especially Australia and Canada. - 73% were in their twenties, and 20% were over 30. - We estimated that approximately 40% of applicants were not students. **Where do most coaching applicants come from?** - The most important source was personal referrals at 28% of applicants. - Next, came the student groups in Oxford and Cambridge, which yielded 24% of applicants. - Google search was a surprisingly common source at 16% of applicants. - Two other important sources were the CFAR/LW community and Peter Singer’s TED talk. **How high achieving is the audience?** Our impression of the audience was that they were extremely ‘high achieving’ from the standpoint of intelligence and general prestige. It seems like we have a surprisingly high number of top young academics, entrepreneurs and charity workers applying. This could have been biased because it has become known that 80,000 Hours coaching applications are highly competitive. Therefore it may be that many applicants who didn't feel impressive did not apply. **How knowledgeable about effective altruism is our audience?** Approximately 1/4th of the applicants seemed to be very familiar with effective altruism, 1/4th somewhat familiar, and the other 1/2 seemed unfamiliar (see the 'Knowledge of effective altruism' rating below for more details). About 45% said that they support one of the causes common in the effective altruism community. **How altruistic is the audience?** They appear to be highly altruistic on average, with 30% pledging at least 10% of their income to charity and over half saying that positive impact is the main or only relevant factor in choosing their career. We might expect this to be biased upwards because it was obvious from the application which answers we’d prefer. From examining CVs qualitatively, we classified about ? of the audience as ‘highly altruistic’. **Is there a subsection of the audience who might be willing to pay for coaching?** We’re interesting in the possibility of making part of the coaching self-funding. Our best guess was that the people who will be most willing to pay for coaching are people from tech and finance backgrounds aged 25-35. We found that about 20% of the requests fell in this category, which was higher than our expectations. **How has our audience changed over time?** There was a 0.17 correlation between audience ID (the order in which they joined) and the achievement score. Therefore it seems like the applications are becoming slightly higher in average achievement, which is a positive sign. However, it’s hard to draw firm conclusions because the period of time was very short (October 15th 2013 to Jan 15th 2014). **What were the most common types of question?** The vast majority of questions were about choosing careers. Approximately 30% of questions seemed directly focussed on optimizing social impact as opposed to improving the career from a personal perspective. Taking other parts of the applications into account, it seemed that most applicants primarily care about social impact. After reviewing these questions we came up with an (##main-questions-methodology) of categorizing questions. ### Additional findings Doing this analysis required us to personally read each application and skim each resume. These were highly revealing. 1. Entrepreneurs, global ‘shapers’, international lawyers, genius geeks, and lots of otherwise different groups all share uncertainty but desire to do good in the world. Our audience base seemed diverse indeed. 2. Some applicants discussed frustrating experiences at the forefront of careers in several ‘ethical’ industries. For instance, several applicants experienced frustration at the difficulties of getting positions at international nonprofits (and some of these people spoke several languages and did diverse work on many different continents). These could represent very useful opportunities to learn from this community, perhaps in direct interviews. 3. Many of these applicants could probably benefit greatly from meeting each other. They are, on the whole, extremely intelligent and talented, but often confused. Many are looking for future startup or nonprofit co-founders. We’re not sure what organization or who should facilitate connections in the community, but this seems like a really valuable service. 4. 80,000 Hours’ coaching service attracts a large community that is not familiar with effective altruism. Much of this seems to be what is call the ‘Globalists’ above. This group seems to have very different goals and needs from the ‘Rationalists’. It may make sense for 80,000 Hours to either focus on one of these groups, or at least experiment more with the ‘Globalist’ group. 5. We noticed that a significant number of the applicants wanted to do one of the following: a. Consult international NGOs on effectiveness b. Create new social ventures to help the world, (often not particularly effective altruism inspired) c. Technology related to decision making, policy making, or global poverty This leads us to believe that impressive new organizations doing (a) or (c) may be able to find many excellent employees. It may be useful to create an incubator or social groups to encourage (b). --- - Published: 2014-02-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/interview-with-matt-gibb/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Earning to give, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, How to get a job, Skill-building and career capital, Skills ## Introduction Matt Gibb has been involved with 80,000 Hours since its inception. Early on, he was influenced by the idea of earning to give and has been pursuing this for the last few years through entrepreneurship. When we spoke to him he was focussed on a company (https://www.facebook.com/dropkickr) at the startup incubator (http://betaspring.com/). With dropkic.kr, Matt has tied himself and his co-founders to the mast by adding a legally binding agreement to the company charter to donate ? of any proceeds they from selling their stake to GiveWell or Giving What We Can recommended charities. > Charitable Contributions. **Each Founder hereby agrees that**, upon the earlier to occur of a Sale of the Company or a Transfer of all Company Securities held by such Founder (such time, the “Charitable Contribution Trigger”), **such Founder shall contribute not less than one-third (1/3) of such Founder’s Aggregate Proceeds** (measured as of, and after giving effect to any amounts received by such Founder as a result of, such Sale of the Company or Transfer) (such amount, the “Charitable Contribution Amount”), **to one or more global health-related charities as may be recognized by (http://givingwhatwecan.org/) and (http://givewell.org/) or any similar or successor research organization**; provided, however, that each Founder shall be entitled to deduct from such Charitable Contribution Amount, on a dollar-for-dollar basis, the amount of any and all global health-related charitable donations made by such Founder from and after the date hereof and prior to such Charitable Contribution Trigger. (emphasis added) He has some experience as a successful entrepreneur, having co founded (http://promopush.com/login/). in 2010 an electronic dance music promotion company, now servicing 250,000 customers including Sony Music and a subsidiary of Universal music. We talked to him about his experience in tech entrepreneurship and his views on getting into it for those just starting out. What follows is a edited and reworked version of the interview. ## Summary of Matt’s points * The best way to learn what you need in order to make a successful startup is by trying, so the best path into entrepreneurship is to aim to start as soon as possible. * For those interested in entrepreneurship web startups are a good option because they are the cheapest to start, but the startup costs of new businesses in physical products is dropping rapidly. * When starting out as an entrepreneur it is much more important to focus on execution than the idea, because it is unlikely the idea you end up with will be the same one you started with. * The demand for technical skills in backend or frontend development outsrips supply in the startup world, so they are very valuable skills to learn if you want to become an entrepreneur. --- - Published: 2014-02-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/case-study-should-i-finish-my-degree/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Experience with an emerging power, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills ## Introduction Martin is taking a year out from an applied science degree at a Russell group university to work in industry. He came to us very undecided about his path after graduation and wondering whether he should finish his degree at all. The following is our notes on what was discussed and the results that followed. ## Lessons learned * We discovered there is fairly strong academic evidence for (/2014/01/the-value-of-a-degree/). * Career capital, earnings potential and keeping your options open have been highly relevant factors for assessing entry level jobs for most students who have come to us so far, who don’t already have several strong options on the table. * We want to prepare an overview of the options in finance, since lots of people have asked us about this. --- - Published: 2014-02-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/case-study-earning-to-give-compared-to-medical-research/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Finance, Medicine, Research in relevant areas ## Introduction Ramit came to us with a simple question: should I try to train as a medic with the aim of doing biomedical research, or should I seek a high earning job in finance and pursue Earning to Give? He’s currently doing both - working as a quantitative financial analyst giving away more than a third of his salary (he was an early stage funder of Give Directly) and taking pre-med courses part time, as well as other projects! Ramit’s initial thought was that the biomedical research path would be better. Read on to find out how he came to change his mind, and came up with a new set of next steps. --- - Published: 2014-02-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/should-you-do-a-degree/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital As university fees have continued to increase, there has been debate in the press over whether doing a degree is still worth it: the Telegraph asks (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/student-life/10036720/University-was-it-worth-it-The-9000-question.html) and a Daily Mail headline reads: (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229587/Value-university-education-falls-Graduates-degree-earn-22-decade.html). The same debate is raging in the US, and has received excellent in-depth analysis by (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/26/introducing-the-tuition-is-too-damn-high/) The question of whether or not to do a university degree has arisen in our careers coaching. In a recent case study, we were asked by our coachee whether they should finish their degree. We’ve previously been asked by a member whether they should start a degree, and we’ve discussed career decisions with (/2013/09/case-study-designing-a-new-organisation-that-might-be-more-effective-than-givewell-s-top-recommendation/), who decided to put their degree on hold in order to start Effective Fundraising. So, we decided to write up our thoughts. This article is aimed at the UK, though we think many of the ideas apply in other countries. In summary: * If you have the option of doing a degree, it’s normally best to take it. There are several good reasons to think it’s one of the best ways to boost your career capital. * We’re open to the idea that there can be better paths, but our guess is that they’re relatively rare, because they would need to offer unusually high social returns or be unusually good for building career capital. * If you’re not going to do a degree, some alternatives that we guess might be particularly promising include learning a high-earning trade, learning to program, working at a small company, and founding a new project. --- - Published: 2014-02-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/internship-opportunities-at-80-000-hours/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital We are looking for interns to join our Graduate Volunteer Scheme, which involves a period of 6-10 months of work in our Oxford-based office (although we are also interested in students who want to intern with us over the summer, and sometimes consider 2-3 month placements). We have roles in research, outreach, operations, fundraising, tech and design. Taking up a Graduate Volunteer position is a great way to gain experience for your future career, as well as meet a diverse range of interesting and highly motivated people, and do a lot of good. As a Graduate Volunteer, there are lots of different areas to work on, and there's plenty of flexibility to adjust the role so it plays to your strengths and development aims. We make it our responsibility to ensure your time here allows you to grow as much as possible, as well as just being lots of fun! Many interns say the experience was a significant boost to their career, and we introduced several to the people who set them up with their current jobs. You can see why past interns have found the Graduate Volunteer Scheme a great experience at the bottom of this post. The scheme has proved very popular with our current interns, with a stimulating and dedicated atmosphere in the office and a lively and welcoming community outside office hours. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that many have extended their stays repeatedly. Once you have applied, we are happy to connect you with a current intern to discuss what it's like to work with us. Read more about (/recruitment##why-work-for-80000-hours). We're looking for hardworking individuals with a strong desire for personal development who are deeply interested in making the world a better place in an effective way. (/recruitment##what-are-we-looking-for) We can often provide accommodation in a house with other volunteers and staff, free lunch, and expenses of up to £8 a day based on financial need, especially for longer-term interns. As you would play an important role for a significant period, we would make sure you weren't left out of pocket. --- - Published: 2014-02-12 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/an-estimate-of-the-expected-influence-of-becoming-a-politician/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Government & policy, Personal fit, Politics ## Introduction How much influence could you have by becoming a politician? Common sense says that politicians have a lot of influence, and it’s a serious contender as a high impact path for someone who’s altruistically motivated. But aren't the chances of success incredibly low? Our guess was that even though the chances are low, the potential impact is still very high. So, when we were asked about UK politics in a recent case study, we decided to make a more detailed estimate of the expected influence to feed into an overall analysis of politics as a career path. We found that chances of success are low, but for some students they’re not low enough to offset the very large potential influence. The UK government budget is £720 billion, and even a small chance at influencing a budget that large could be highly significant (and the impact of politicians extends well beyond budgets). We've extended our analysis of (/2012/02/how-hard-is-it-to-become-prime-minister-of-the-united-kingdom/), to make a rough estimate that **such a student can expect to be able to direct £7.5 - 75 million to the causes they support** from their chances of making it into elected office. For a student similar to an Oxford PPE graduate, this suggests the path is competitive with the most high potential (/earning-to-give) careers - such as those in finance - in terms of financial influence, which when combined with politicians’ law-making powers and advocacy opportunities could put politics clearly ahead. Aren't politicians highly constrained by existing policy, what other politicians want, the desires of the electorate and other factors? Yes, but these factors have already been included in the estimate. Read on to see the full process. ## Summary of the estimate Our preliminary estimate is that an Oxford PPE graduate who aims to become a politician in the UK, could expect to influence **£150 million** of government spending, arising from their chances of making it into office. A number of factors decrease the impact of that money; giving a quality-adjusted estimate of **£7.5 - 75 million**, falling towards the lower end if you’re primarily interested in very specific interventions (e.g. supporting a certain organisation) rather than broader ones (e.g. promoting evidence-based policy). This is the amount of government spending the graduate might be able to direct towards the causes they support. For students without the typical attributes of Oxford PPE students, chances are significantly reduced. For instance, repeating the calculation but considering students from Oxford and Cambridge as a whole suggests expected influence on the order of £1 - 10 million. More generally, the expected influence is highly sensitive to the individual’s degree of fit with politics i.e. it could be substantially higher for someone with strong success in student politics at Oxford, and near zero for many others. Our proposed estimate is extremely coarse. We rely on a crude economic model of influence within government, assume that this influence in aggregate accounts for all public spending, and try to estimate the share of influence possessed by a number of relevant groups. We believe this model is much stronger than it appears casually, and do provide some justification for some of the simplifying assumptions at the end of the document. We also explain some important caveats, such as our uncertainty over the prominence of MPs and ministers, and focussing mainly on Oxford PPE. Nevertheless, it is certainly an extremely crude model. The error on this estimate is at least an order of magnitude or so, and if there are significant issues with the methodology they may actually be even larger. To compensate for this we have made conservative estimates throughout, and still arrived at a remarkably high number. Since the conclusion of this calculation is also supported by the common sense position that going into politics is high potential for students with the right characteristics, we conclude that the expected influence of entering this path is indeed very large. --- - Published: 2014-02-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/assessing-the-social-value-produced-by-founding-google/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Founding a tech startup, Uncategorised 80,000 Hours has outlined (/2013/09/should-more-altruists-consider-entrepreneurship/) tech entrepreneurship could be a particularly promising career path. One relevant factor is that the technology sector is a candidate for a sector of the economy that produces significantly more social value than its total earnings. Some reasons for this are: * Anecdotally, people report that they benefit substantially more from certain technologies than they pay for them. For example, Google provides services to Google users at the very low cost of unobtrusive advertisements, and Google users benefit substantially relative to this cost. * Technological innovation has been a large driver of economic growth, and economic growth helps people who haven’t been born yet, who don’t pay for past technological innovation. --- - Published: 2014-02-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/the-centre-for-effective-altruism-is-looking-for-a-director-of-development/ - Topics: Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Fundraising, Job satisfaction, Skills We are looking for a Director of Development to join our team in Oxford! The right candidate would play a vital role growing and sustaining the donor base that enables 80,000 Hours and our sister charity Giving What We Can to serve their charitable missions. You can read more about the role below. If you’re interested in this opportunity please apply (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Z2V9juGx0UmydzLGK3zJvelbuQEnso0UdbhYLh5AAQA/viewform) by 28th February (and if you know anyone else who might be interested, we encourage you to pass this opportunity on to them). Note that this is just one of many job and internship opportunities that are available with our parent charity, the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) - for a full list, see (http://home.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers). See also our description of (http://home.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/careers/why-work-with-us). --- - Published: 2014-02-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/in-which-career-can-you-make-the-most-difference/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Economics, Economics PhD, Effective altruism, Foundations, Founding a tech startup, Government & policy, Law, Medicine, Politics, Software engineering, Working at a foundation ## Introduction Previously, we introduced a way to (/2013/07/how-to-assess-the-impact-of-a-career/) in terms of their potential for positive impact, but which careers actually do best on these criteria? In this post, we’ll apply an adapted version of this framework to some career paths that seem particularly promising for recent graduates. Using what we’ve learned over the past two years of research and coaching over 100 people, we’ll provide a ranked list of options. ## Summary * If you’re looking **to build career capital, consider entrepreneurship, consulting or an economics PhD.** * If you’re looking **to pursue (/earning-to-give), consider high-end finance, tech entrepreneurship, law, consulting and medicine**. These careers are all high-earning in part due to being highly demanding. Our impression is that **software engineering, being an actuary and dentistry are somewhat less demanding but also highly paid.** * If you’d like **to make an impact more directly, consider party politics, founding effective nonprofits, working inside international organisations, government or foundations to improve them, and doing valuable academic research.** * If you’d like **to advocate for effective causes, consider party politics, journalism, and working in international organisations, policy-oriented civil service or foundations.** * **Some career paths that look promising overall are: tech entrepreneurship, consulting, party politics, founding effective nonprofits and working in international organisations.** * Some paths we think are promising but are largely neglected by our members and would like to learn more about are: party politics, working in international organisations, being a program manager at a foundation, journalism, policy-oriented civil service and marketing. --- - Published: 2014-02-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/some-stories-of-career-change-due-to-80-000-hours/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills What kinds of career changes has 80,000 Hours caused? The following is a collection of 15 examples we prepared as part of a grant application in October 2013. The examples were written by us, but each was sent to the relevant person by email, who was encouraged to point out inaccuracies or exaggerations of our influence. **The exact wording for each example has been approved by the career changer**. ? have been anonymised. In addition, we prepared 4 more similar examples, but don’t have permission to share those publicly. We aimed to select the more impressive examples that we were most familiar with, so the selection is biased towards people we know personally and from the first two years of our existence (Feb 2011 - Feb 2013). We’re exploring the career changes we have caused among our readers and coachees more broadly through our (/2014/01/has-80-000-hours-helped-you/) and upcoming coaching evaluations. Nevertheless, **we think this collection of examples is a good proof of concept.** They show that talking to people about our ideas in the context of a community can lead to significant changes of career plan, more thoughtfulness and stronger intentions to make a difference. They also help estimate a lower bound on our impact. Just considering those who switched to pursuing earning to give, we’ve already tracked donations of ~$150,000 to GiveWell recommended charities or effective altruist organisations. The amount donated over the next couple of years seems clearly set to rise. * The people already donating can expect substantial salary increases as they move into their second and third years in employment. * Richard and Adam have only just entered employment. * Sam Bankman-Fried has accepted a job at a proprietary trading firm, and is on track to donate as much as Tim. * Matt’s startup is in an incubator, and he has legally bound himself to donate 33% of his exit value. Given this, we’re confident that more than $1mn will be donated by this group in the next 3 years. We think there is also substantial value among those not pursuing earning to give: * One is a Marshall scholar, and starting a promising academic career. * One went to work at GiveWell. * One has founded a network to promote effective altruism in healthcare. In addition, we played a substantial role in the creation of (http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/), which performs research into the most effective ways to promote animal welfare and now has an annual budget of $80,000. ACE developed out of Effective Animal Activism, which was founded by an intern at 80,000 Hours during their internship. 80,000 Hours contributed to the initial concept for the charity and provided it with technical support, as well as assistance fundraising and hiring full-time staff. Moreover, EAA was legally part of 80,000 Hours for 6 months, before being spun-off and independently registered. The full stories are below. --- - Published: 2014-02-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/02/5-ways-to-make-a-big-difference-in-any-career/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Fundraising, Giving What We Can, Other topics, Volunteering At 80,000 Hours, we’re focused on finding the very best opportunities for you to do good with your career. We’re worried that sometimes this continuous focus can be demoralising. After all, it’s hard to find the best opportunities. Moreover, we’re worried that sometimes our members lose sight of the fact that *you can make a big difference in any career.* We don’t mean (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/19/make-a-difference-jim-ziolkowski-walk-in-their-shoes_n_3922625.html), (http://www.generationon.org/global/65-ways-make-difference), or (http://www.wikihow.com/Help-Change-the-World). We mean you can transform the lives of hundreds of other people, in any career. So, we decided to write this note explaining how... --- - Published: 2014-01-31 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/80-000-hours-is-hiring-careers-analyst-job-available/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills As we continue to expand our team in Oxford, we are looking for someone to join 80,000 Hours full time as a Careers Analyst. Details of all the positions we’re offering can as always be found on our (/recruitment). This is your chance to help us fulfill our mission of helping thousands of the most talented and dedicated people work on solving the world’s most pressing problems. That’s a big project, and we’re growing fast, so we’re looking for bright and ambitious people to join us. If this sounds like something you’d like to be part of, then apply to work for us! You can read more about the position below. For more on why working at 80,000 Hours is an incredible opportunity, see (/recruitment##why-work-for-80000-hours) ### Details of the role As an 80,000 Hours Careers Analyst, you will play a key part in growing the organisation as we expand over the coming years. We are looking for someone to become part of our founding team, in order to: * Give one-on-one coaching to amazing people who want to change the world, as part of our case studies. * Do research into ?nding the most promising career opportunities in the world. * Promote our research in the international media, online and through other outreach. * Monitor our impact. --- - Published: 2014-01-30 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/case-study-can-i-earn-more-in-software-or-finance/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Computer science, Doing good in your current job, Finance, Income, Other topics, Software engineering Jessica is a software engineer at Google, who donates much of her income to GiveWell recommendations and 80,000 Hours. She plans to continue pursuing earning to give, and came to us wondering whether she might be able earn more using her skills; in particular by switching into finance or moving to Silicon Valley. ## Summary of lessons learned We found: * An engineer at Google can expect to earn about $150-$200 p.a. after 3 years of experience, which will then grow at 2-6% p.a. afterwards. * Google engineers are among the most highly paid engineers in big companies. * Google engineers do not appear to earn more in Silicon Valley compared to major East Coast cities, although software engineers on average earn more in the Valley. * She may be able to earn more by switching into finance, but we need to do more research. --- - Published: 2014-01-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/interview-with-leading-hiv-vaccine-researcher-prof-sir-andrew-mcmichael/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Existential risk, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Research, Research in relevant areas, Skill-building and career capital ## Introduction Continuing our investigation into medical research careers, we interviewed Prof. Andrew McMichael. Andrew is Director of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford, and focuses especially on two areas of special interest to us: HIV and flu vaccines. ## Key points made * **Andrew would recommend starting in medicine for the increased security**, better earnings, broader perspective and greater set of opportunities at the end. The main cost is that it takes about 5 years longer. * In the medicine career track, you qualify as a doctor in 5-6 years, then you work as a junior doctor for 3-5 years, while starting a PhD. During this time, you start to move towards a promising speciality, where you build your career. * In the biology career track, get a good undergraduate degree, then do a PhD. It’s very important to join a top lab and publish early in your career. Then you can start to move towards an interesting area. * After you finish your PhD is a good time to reassess. **It’s a competitive career**, and if you’re not headed towards the top, be prepared to do something else. Public health is a common backup option, which can make a significant contribution. If you’ve studied medicine, you can do that. **People sometimes get stranded mid-career, and that can be tough.** * **An outstanding post-doc applicant has a great reference from their PhD supervisor, is good at statistics/maths/programming, and has published in a top journal.** * If you qualify in medicine in the UK, you can earn as much as ordinary doctors while doing your research, though you’ll miss out on private practice. In the US, you’ll earn less. * Some exciting areas right now include stem cell research, neuroscience, psychiatry and the HIV vaccine. * **To increase your impact, work on good quality basic science, but keep an eye out for applications.** * **Programming, mathematics and statistics are all valuable skills**. Other skills shortages develop from the introduction of new technologies. * **Good researchers can normally get funded**, and Andrew would probably prefer a good researcher to a half million pound grant, though he wasn’t sure. * He doesn’t think that bad methodology or publication bias is a significant problem in basic science, though it might be in clinical trials. --- - Published: 2014-01-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/has-80-000-hours-helped-you/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas We want to find out. We’re doing a survey to understand how we may have helped readers like yourself. **This will help us measure our impact.** We take this really seriously, because we want to know how effective we are, and how our service can be improved. If you've found our content useful, please give us five minutes of your time in support. If you haven't found our content useful, we also really want to hear from you. This is your chance to tell us what we should do different. Take our survey before midnight January 31st, and we'll enter you in a draw to win $100 as an Amazon Gift Card or donation to a charity of your choice. (/survey/form) The full results will be published on the blog. --- - Published: 2014-01-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/80-000-hours-is-hiring-lead-developer-and-tech-design-interns-needed/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, How to get a job, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital As we continue to expand our team in Oxford, we are seeking three new team members to join us some time between March and September this year: 1. A Lead Developer to develop our website as a paid employee 2. A tech intern to work on a range of web projects as a member of our (/recruitment##graduate-volunteers-and-internships) 3. A design intern to illustrate our ideas as a member of our (/recruitment##graduate-volunteers-and-internships) --- - Published: 2014-01-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/reasoning-about-influence-in-politics/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Government & policy, Politics, Working at a foundation Understanding a politician’s influence at first appears to be hopelessly tangled. A politicians’ influence is very tenuously related to the vote they can cast in parliament, and is mediated by a complicated process involving respect for precedent, social consensus, explicit and implicit negotiation, explicit and implicit appeals to popular opinion, and so on. Fortunately, on closer inspection many of these challenges can be ameliorated. In the following research notes, we introduce an argument that the naive answer is about right: **if there are 100 politicians with one vote each, then each politician has about 1% of the total impact of the politicians**. The result is highly useful in making estimates of the influence you might expect to have by becoming a politician, or indeed in any situation when a group of people negotiate over an outcome e.g a company board setting strategy, or a committee of grant makers allocating funding. Note that the following are only preliminary research notes that were made while doing a case study, and not the results of in-depth analysis, so we’re cautious about the conclusion. Nevertheless, we’re keen to share the ideas and seek feedback. --- - Published: 2014-01-15 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/the-value-of-a-degree/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills ## Introduction Many of our readers are students, and some have come to us wondering whether they should start a university degree or complete one they have already started. One thing to consider in making this decision is what effect getting a degree will have on your lifetime earnings. So in this post we summarise our reading of some of the empirical literature on this question, mostly focused on the UK. ## Summary * There appears to be a consensus in the empirical literature that getting a degree provides a large financial return on the costs in increased lifetime earnings (generally better than an investment with a 10% return and maybe closer to 15%). * The most common way of studying the question of economic returns is to use correlations in data containing information on education, earnings and other variables (performing “ordinary least square regression” on it). * The obvious worry with this method is that the same abilities that help earn a higher income might cause people to go to university rather than the other way around. This is called *ability bias*. The standard view in the literature, however, is that this issue only has as minor effect on estimates of the return to education. * The literature here supports the common sense position that an undergraduate degree is generally a good investment in your career. --- - Published: 2014-01-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/neglectedness-and-impact/ - Topics: Effective altruism ## Summary Let’s suppose there’s a cause that you care about much more than society at large. In your eyes, that cause is neglected. All else equal, you should have more positive impact by working on a neglected cause, because other people won’t already be taking the best opportunities within it. But how much more positive impact can you expect? The following is a set of research notes we made while performing a case study, which we’re making available for feedback on our thinking. It argues for a simple result: **If you care about an output K times more than society at large, then (all else equal) you should expect investing in gaining that output to be K times more effective than making other investments.** For instance, most people don’t put a high weight on avoiding animal suffering. Let’s suppose you do. In fact, you estimate that you care about it roughly 10 times more than the average person (i.e. you would be satisfied investing 10 times the amount of resources to avoid the same amount of animal suffering compared to the average person). Then, you should expect that investing to end animal suffering is, all else equal, roughly 10 times more effective than making other investments. This seems like it might be a highly relevant consideration in picking causes. If the argument is correct then, all else equal, we should expect more neglected causes to be more effective. Our current position is that the arguement below shows that we should weight neglectedness to some extent in picking causes, but we’re not yet sure how highly we should weight it because we’re not sure: (i) how important neglectedness, as modelled in this way, is compared to other considerations we could investigate (ii) how tractable it is to investigate. The research note also explores how important this consideration is to members of 80,000 Hours, the effect of adding further considerations, and how the result might be applied in practice. --- - Published: 2014-01-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/case-study-choosing-between-working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-earning-to-give-and-graduate-school/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Software engineering, World problems ## Introduction Back in May 2013, I realized I would be graduating in a year and wondered a lot about what I should pick for my first career. The questions I had at the time were: 1.) Should I aim to work in an effective altruist organisation, go to graduate school, or should I earn to give? 2.) Where should I look for employment if I want to earn to give -- law, market research, or programming? I spent a little time considering other options (finance and consulting careers), but the bulk of my time was spent comparing EA org employment, grad school, and the three earning to give careers. ## Lessons learned * Direct work in EA is promising, but there are limited employment opportunities and a generally strong base of talent to draw from that makes replaceability an issue. * Graduate school also seems promising, but programs with high direct impact seem limited in employment opportunities. * It’s important to consider factors about the career other than salary when doing earning to give. Law was my best earning to give opportunity at first glance, given that it had the highest salary of the options I was willing to consider. But when I looked more deeply at non-salary factors, it became my worst option. * Market research and computer programming are my most promising paths and I should consider both further. They allow good salary potential while offering many other benefits. * Publishing my ongoing thought process was valuable in ways I couldn’t even imagine at the time, creating the opportunity to meet people I couldn’t have met otherwise. * Spending time directly in Oxford was also incredibly valuable in meeting with people that could help me think through my decision process. * An analytically-minded person can train in programming quickly enough to seriously consider programming as a career path. While I started with intermediate computer programming knowledge in irrelevant computer languages, it took me about 150 hours of training over 20 weeks to know enough to interview competently. I don’t know if this is a unique case, though. --- - Published: 2014-01-06 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/research-into-the-earnings-of-software-engineers/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Income, Other topics, Skills, Software engineering ## Introduction We recently did a case study for an individual who has worked at Google for several years in an East Coast city, earning between US$140k and US$180k, and donating a large fraction to GiveWell recommended charities and 80,000 Hours. They asked us the following questions about their expected earnings in software engineering: 1. What are my prospective earnings if I continue as an engineer at Google? 2. Could I earn more by moving to Google HQ in California? 3. Could I earn more by joining a start-up in Silicon Valley? 4. Could I earn more by becoming a programmer in finance? We interviewed five people about these questions (see full details at the end of this post) and did a simple analysis on (http://www.glassdoor.com). In this post we present notes on our findings. ## Summary of findings In summary, we found: 1. They can expect their salary to increase 2-6% per year if they stay at Google. 2. They probably can’t earn more by moving to Google HQ in the Bay Area, though we encouraged them to ask more people about this. 3. They can probably expect to earn more by joining a start-up. But we're still investigating this issue so aren't confident. 4. We’re unsure whether they can earn more by entering finance, though there is potential for significant salary increases so we recommended they speak to a head-hunter, and eventually apply to several companies. --- - Published: 2013-12-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/12/a-framework-for-strategically-selecting-a-cause/ - Topics: Career planning, Foundations, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems ## Introduction and summary We could have all the influence in the world, but if we focus on the wrong opportunity, we’re not going to have much impact. How can we make sure we work on good opportunities in our careers? At 80,000 Hours, we (/2013/12/why-pick-a-cause/). By (/2013/12/why-pick-a-cause/), we mean a set of opportunities for making a difference such that the people working on them tend to share common knowledge, skills and core values. But how can we compare causes in terms of potential for impact? In this post, we present our answer, which we think differs considerably from how people normally go about choosing a cause, which focuses mainly on (/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1/). Your degree of passion is important, but it's just one factor among several others, which we'll describe in this post. Our answer to how you can compare causes in terms of the impact you can have with your human or financial capital, is in the form of a framework you can apply. **Note that what follows is just our current best answer - it’s likely to change, and involves many judgement calls that some people may not agree with.** In a later post, we’ll apply this framework to a selection of causes we think are particularly promising. In summary, we think you should look for the best overall combination of the following three factors, the names of which we took from GiveWell Labs: 1. **Important: If we make more progress on this cause, the world will be made a better place.** By ‘world made a better place’ we mean that lots of people will be made better off in important ways. Causes can also be important indirectly, because progress on them lets us make progress on other important causes or provides valuable information about which causes are best. 2. **Tractable: There are definite interventions to make progress within this cause, with strong evidence behind them** For instance, there are definite opportunities for progress, backed by widely accepted theory, randomised control trials or a track record of success. 3. **Uncrowded: If we add more resources to the cause, we can expect more promising interventions to be carried out.** Uncrowded causes are often undervalued or neglected by society. There may be a shortage of important actors within the cause. We think you can assess causes by: * Assessing these factors and their subfactors by asking experts and gathering other relevant data (e.g. data about how many people are affected by a problem, how many people are working on the cause). * Drawing on cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analyses prepared by the (http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com), (http://www.povertyactionlab.org/) and other academic research. * Using the results of (http://www.givewell.org/givewell-labs), which aims to assess causes from the perspective of a donor (with the caveat that the best areas to lead your career within are likely to be different from the best areas to donate to). In the rest of this post: * (/2013/12/a-framework-for-strategically-selecting-a-cause/##further-explanation-of-the-factors) * (/2013/12/a-framework-for-strategically-selecting-a-cause/##summary-checklist) * (/2013/12/a-framework-for-strategically-selecting-a-cause/##how-can-you-apply-this-framework-to-compare-two-causes) * (/2013/12/a-framework-for-strategically-selecting-a-cause/##why-this-framework) --- - Published: 2013-12-17 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/12/an-interview-on-which-skills-most-boost-your-employability/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Skills We recommend reading the following interview by Peter Hurford (an 80,000 Hours coachee, and volunteer at CEA) with Satvik Beri. Peter performed the interview as part of research into his career decision. We post it here because Satvik has invested a lot of thought into how to maximise his earnings in order to do earning to give, and we think he adds some new considerations to the discussion. --- - Published: 2013-12-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/12/a-comparison-of-medical-research-and-earning-to-give/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Earning to give, Medicine, Research, Research in relevant areas ## Introduction and Summary We recently did a case study with Ramit (see the full case study write up (/2014/02/case-study-earning-to-give-compared-to-medical-research/)). He was wondering whether to start a medicine degree, with the aim of going into research, or to continue in finance doing earning to give, where he already has a job as a quant researcher earning in the range of $150,000 per year. We did an in-depth comparison of the expected impact of the two paths to help him decide. The rest of this post contains our case study research notes on the comparison. If forced to guess now, we lean in favor of earning to give, though we think it’s very high priority to gain more information. Ramit is going to try to better assess his degree of fit with medical research, perhaps by working as a researcher during the summer, and learn more about his earnings prospects in finance by making applications and speaking to a headhunter. We’ll review our decision when we find out more. In the rest of the post, we explain our reasoning: 1. We outline our general approach 2. We define a number of factors to compare the two options 3. We evaluate the two paths based on the factors 4. We make our overall conclusions Note that there were several potentially important issues we didn’t address, including job satisfaction and which path is best for career capital in careers besides finance and research. --- - Published: 2013-12-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/12/why-pick-a-cause/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Prioritisation frameworks, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems ## Introduction We normally find our coachees benefit from (/2013/08/introduction-to-our-career-model/), like global health or mitigating climate change, which they can use to (/2013/07/how-to-assess-the-impact-of-a-career/). Why? In this post, we outline four reasons to pick a cause. In our one-on-one coaching, the idea of picking a cause has been something that many people hadn't heard of, or thought about, and hearing about it has led to some significant career changes. Note that when we say “pick a cause” we mean (/2013/07/your-career-is-like-a-startup/) (or perhaps pick 2 or 3 causes you find it difficult to choose between). We don’t mean pick a cause and stick to it for ever. Nothing in career choice is certain, so don’t get hung up on uncertainty. Make a best guess and be prepared to revise it. In the rest of the post, we overview our reasons for picking a cause: 1. Picking a cause is one of the best things you can do to increase your impact. 2. We think picking a cause provides you with a useful level of direction in planning your next steps, which is neither too narrow nor too broad. 3. Picking a cause seems to be a useful way to narrow down careers based on personal factors and deeply held value judgements. 4. Having a cause can be motivating. We’ll also give a couple of other lines of evidence. --- - Published: 2013-12-04 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/12/more-evidence-on-the-competitiveness-of-charity-jobs/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital ## Introduction Here’s a (http://www.ft.com/cms/f63bed82-98bd-11dd-ace3-000077b07658.html), “Charities: Passion and skills in aid of a good cause,” on changes in the nonprofit sector’s employment landscape. The report provides evidence of increased competition over jobs, which is attributed to strong interest among recent graduates, greater professionalization across the sector, higher salaries, and an increase in the number of business people switching into nonprofit positions. The report was published in 2008 by the Financial Times, but our sense is that the trends described have likely continued. The report features excerpts from an interview with a recruiter specialising in nonprofit careers. --- - Published: 2013-12-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/12/economics-phd-the-only-one-worth-getting/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Economics, Economics PhD, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital ## Introduction Here’s a (http://qz.com/82743/a-phd-in-economics-is-the-only-one-worth-getting/) by Noah Smith, professor of finance at Stony Brook University. We think it’s an interesting argument, though there's much more we need to investigate to work out whether this is an especially promising path for 80,000 Hours members. Regardless, we think that many of our readers will find this article and several of the embedded links useful. If you're persuaded, Smith also coauthored a guide on how to (http://qz.com/116081/the-complete-guide-to-getting-into-an-economics-phd-program/). --- - Published: 2013-11-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/summary-of-our-thoughts-on-how-to-pick-a-degree/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Now vs later ## Introduction I recently came across (http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/j2t/i_am_switching_to_biomedical_engineering_and_am/), which prompted me to summarise our current thoughts on how to pick an undergraduate degree. I’d like to caveat that most of the following is just a judgement call, based on listening to what thoughtful, successful people have said about the topic (e.g. see (/2013/11/careers-advice-from-top-tech-entrepreneur-marc-andreessen/), (http://www.everydayutilitarian.com/essays/my-conversation-with-satvik-beri/)), my experiences of coaching, and thinking through the issues. Where there is further research on the claims, I’ve linked to it. Otherwise, assume it's just my judgement call. Note that I don't think I'm going to say anything that's particularly controversial or against common sense. ## In summary - what’s best? It’s highly important to go to a prestigious university, do something you’re good at (which probably means picking something enjoyable and motivating) and use free time to meet people and learn useful skills. With this constraint in mind, and if you broadly want to keep your options open, try to do the most impressive subject you can, ideally one which gives you skills in applied maths, statistics or programming. Top subjects would be things like: Maths (especially if combined with applied courses), Physics, CompSci, Engineering, Economics and Pre-Med. If you’ll hate these subjects or find them really hard, however, it’s probably best not to do them! Note that there’s a tension between academic success and gaining connections, work experience and other skills. If you’re interested in a research career, then go for academic success. Otherwise, concentrate on getting ‘good enough’ grades (a 2.1 in the UK or a GPA around 3.4 in the US), and use the rest of your time to meet interesting people, get useful skills and do something impressive. That’s because our impression is that most employers (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-for-earning-to-give-and-research/). --- - Published: 2013-11-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/an-attempt-to-create-a-new-amf/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Effective altruism, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Global health, Global priorities research, Research, World problems There are several health interventions that have been found in academic papers to have a cost-effectiveness that’s similar or better than distributing insecticide treated bed-nets, but which lack a high quality charity to implement them. For someone with the right entrepreneurial skills, it could be extremely effective to create such a charity. One example of a promising intervention is using mass media to promote positive health behaviours. (http://developmentmedia.net/) is attempting to become a highly effective, transparent, scalable charity that implements this intervention. Clara Marquardt, a member of (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/), recently interviewed Will Snell, a member of 80,000 Hours and the Director of Public Engagement & Development at DMI. Before scaling up, DMI decided to gather more evidence about the effectiveness of using mass media to promote health, since the existing evidence is patchy. In the interview, **Will explains how DMI overcame numerous challenges to design, fund and carry out a $12mn randomised control trial into the effectiveness of their program**. He also explains the story and mission of DMI, giving an insight into the advantages and challenges of running an impact-focused charity. --- - Published: 2013-11-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/careers-advice-from-top-tech-entrepreneur-marc-andreessen/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Founding a tech startup, Job satisfaction, Risk, Skill-building and career capital, Skills We just came across a series of four careers advice posts by Marc Andreessen (hat tip, Satvik Beri). We’re always on the look out for thoughtful careers advice from very successful individuals aimed at people looking to make a big impact - we think it’s one of the best sources of careers advice, and we think these posts qualify. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen) co-authored Mosaic (the first web browser), founded Netscape, and then led a successful career in venture capital. The advice is particularly orientated towards people who want to enter the technology industry, which we think is a (/2013/09/should-more-altruists-consider-entrepreneurship/) to social impact. --- - Published: 2013-11-20 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/interview-with-malaria-vaccine-researcher-katie-ewer/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Research in relevant areas ## Introduction A recent case study candidate asked us whether he should enter vaccine research. As part of our research for that study, we contacted the (http://www.jenner.ac.uk/), an international centre based in Oxford that develops vaccines for infectious diseases . Our aim was to interview one of the scientists to better understand how careers in this sector tend to go, and to get their thoughts on a variety of important questions (especially those concerning vaccines) for our case study candidate to cross-check against other interviews we have done with medical researchers. Katie Ewer, a cellular immunologist based at the Institute, agreed to talk to us. We sent her a list of questions by email (see the appendix), and discussed them on Skype. Below, we present a summary of her responses and key quotes from the Skype call. ## Key updates for us * Katie was less keen on starting your career by studying medicine than our (/2013/11/interview-with-a-cambridge-professor-of-medical-genetics-on-research-careers/), because she didn’t think the benefits are worth the lost time, which made us less certain about this question. * We updated slightly in favor of the idea that most of the benefits of doing vaccine research on a specific disease are flow through effects i.e. advances in one vaccine have many benefits for other vaccines, reducing pandemic risk, and medical research more generally. This suggests that ability at research is relatively more important than the priority of the research question than we previously thought. * Katie suggested without prompting that research into neglected tropical diseases might be particularly neglected, which fits with previous research done by Giving What We Can into the (http://www.sabin.org/). * Katie, as with everyone else we’ve spoken to, said that strong motivation by the subject is very important, because the work is tough and the pay is low. * Katie thought that the vast majority of people would be better off supporting research through earning to give than by becoming researchers, though talented people should do research, which fits with our view. * A useful way to test out a medical research career is to take a research assistant job over the summer. * We found that careers in medical research might be more flexible than we had first thought. --- - Published: 2013-11-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/career-opportunities-for-economics-phds/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Economics, Economics PhD, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills ## Introduction This post presents some research notes we made while investigating the value of economics PhDs. We were motivated to do this research because we have some reasons to think that an economics PhD is a particularly good way to build career capital and keep one’s options open. We have coached several individuals who are considering applying to economics PhD programs. We lacked information about a) how useful an economics PhD is for high impact careers outside of academia and b) how important attending a top ranked program is for different career options. With more information, we can be more confident in determining whether an economics PhD or an alternative is the best option in individual cases. ## Summary Key findings from our research are: * A majority (about 60%) of economics PhDs place into academic positions immediately following graduate school. About one-in-six place into government, and a similar percentage place into the private sector. Very few place into nonprofits or think tanks. * Program tier does not appear to affect what sector one places into, but placement types can vary widely between individual programs. * Within academia, professorships in top departments are largely held by graduates of top tier programs. For example, twenty-six percent of faculty at the top 15 departments earned their PhDs at Harvard or MIT. * One-in-three professors at LSE and Oxford, top ranked departments outside of the US, went to a 1st tier program in the US. * Prestigious awards within economics tend to go to individuals who graduated from top-ranked programs. --- - Published: 2013-11-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/interview-with-a-cambridge-professor-of-medical-genetics-on-research-careers/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Effective altruism, Foundations, Medicine, Reasoning and decision-making, Research in relevant areas ## Introduction I recently interviewed John Todd, a Professor of Medical Genetics at Cambridge, as part of a series of interviews we’re carrying out for a case study. The aim of the series is to find out what key people in the field think about: 1. What opportunities are best in the medical research field? 2. What’s the balance between talent constraints and funding constraints? 3. Who’s a good fit for medical research? 4. Would our case study candidate be a good fit? 5. How to go about this kind of career ## Summary The main points made in this interview were: 1. John would prefer a good person in his lab to an extra £0.5mn in annual funding. Generally, there are enough grants, so finding good people is a bigger constraint than money. 2. People with both medical knowledge with statistical and programming skills are highly sought after. 3. Within medical research, it’s not straightforward to try to “pick” an area to work on and it changes quickly, though there are some broad strategies to use (e.g. pick diseases neglected by pharma, take a longer term perspective, avoid bandwagons) 4. If you want to fund medical research, it would be difficult to beat going with the Wellcome Trust or Gates Foundation. Likewise, if you want to find the best areas to work on, these foundations are a good start. 5. Getting an MD, then doing a PhD as a registrar is a good way in. If you have programming and statistics, you don’t need the PhD. 6. He prefers Academia to Pharma. --- - Published: 2013-11-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/case-study-working-in-the-financial-sector-to-promote-a-flourishing-long-term-future/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Finance, Global priorities research, World problems ## Introduction This post is a write up of an in-depth (/speak-with-us/overview), exploring one person’s decision about where to work in the financial sector, from the perspective of helping the long-run future. ## Key recommendations made * If you particularly care about (/2013/08/how-important-are-future-generations/), (/2013/10/influencing-the-far-future/) some of the interventions that have been pursued. * We rate cause prioritisation research and advocacy as high priority (to be explained in an upcoming post) * If you’re pursuing prioritisation research within finance and don’t want to pursue earning to give, then we recommend generally aiming to build career capital, building a community of people who support prioritisation, and promoting areas of social finance that seek to assess the social value of different projects. Though note that this is a judgement call. ## What we learned * We prepared (/2013/10/influencing-the-far-future/) of ways that people are trying to improve the far future. * The direct impact of doing ‘impact investing’ (attempting to invest in socially beneficial companies) doesn’t seem high relative to donations to cost-effective charities, but the industry might be improvable, could produce useful research and could move more resources into altruistic causes (as we’ll explain in an upcoming report). * Impact investing seems like a reasonable area for someone looking to build career capital and promote prioritisation, though we don't have much confidence in this. --- - Published: 2013-11-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/live-q-a-in-oxford-with-dame-stephanie-shirley/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup ## Introduction We recently held a public Q&A with Dame “Steve” Shirley at our Oxford student group. In the talk, Dame Stephanie filled us in on her fascinating life, which includes pioneering work in tech entrepreneurship (during which time she took on the name “Steve” in order to secure meetings in the male dominated industry, and built a company of 300 female programmers), followed by a philanthropic career in which she has founded 5 non-profits, became the first UK Ambassador of Philanthropy, and donated £67mn (primarily towards fighting Autism but also interdisciplinary research into the social consequences of the internet at the Oxford Internet Institute). She plans to donate 95% of her wealth. We held the talk in order to hear about the career ideas of someone extremely successful in areas that are particularly interesting to us (tech entrepreneurship and philanthropy). This blog post highlights three questions and responses that are of particular interest to our members. --- - Published: 2013-11-06 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/what-should-you-do-with-a-very-large-amount-of-money/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Existential risk, Foundations, Global priorities research, Institutional decision making, Other pressing problems, Other topics, Research in relevant areas, World problems A philanthropist who will remain anonymous recently asked Nick Beckstead, a trustee of 80,000 Hours, what he would do with a very large amount of money. Nick, with support from Carl Shulman (a research advisor to 80,000 Hours), wrote a detailed answer: (http://www.effective-altruism.com/a-long-run-perspective-on-strategic-cause-selection-and-philanthropy/). If you’re looking to spend or influence large budgets with the aim of improving the world (or happen to be extremely wealthy!) we recommend taking a look. It also contains brief arguments in favor of five causes. --- - Published: 2013-11-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/thoughts-on-my-experience-working-at-givewell/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, GiveWell, Global priorities research, Other topics, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas, World problems ## Introduction In this post, I offer some thoughts on my experience working at GiveWell. I’ve had a number of different people ask me about this, and I think many people interested in effective altruism are curious about working there. So I thought I would explain my views in detail so that others who are thinking about working there have more information. ## Summary In summary: 1. I worked at GiveWell for two months in 2012, during which time I mainly did literature reviews and constructed cost-effectiveness models for a few different interventions (breast-feeding promotion, vaccination for neonatal tetanus, vaccination for meningitis, and vaccination for measles). 2. While there, I primarily learned about how to do a literature search, how to evaluate research (especially causal attribution in economics), and how to construct cost-effectiveness models. I also learned a lot about how to run an effective organization in general, which may have been the most valuable part of the experience. 3. For people who may be a good fit and have the opportunity to work at GiveWell, I recommend trying it without hesitation. I believe that working at GiveWell is an outstanding opportunity for personal development and having an impact. I also found it a very enjoyable place to work. 4. I didn’t end up working at GiveWell because the work they wanted me to do didn’t line up well with the work that I wanted to do, working there offered me less autonomy than my best alternative (working at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford), and I believed that working at the Future of Humanity Institute would offer me more job security and options in the future. --- - Published: 2013-10-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/why-consider-becoming-a-trader/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Computer science, Earning to give, Economics, Finance, How to get a job, Statistics ## Introduction The following is an article by 80,000 Hours member, Joe Mela, about (i) why he thinks trading can be better than other finance jobs (ii) what the work’s like (iii) who might especially suit it. Joe has over 5 years experience in trading, and was keen to share his perspective with other 80,000 Hours members on why this might be an especially promising career path. ## Summary In summary, Joe thinks: If you have excellent quantitative skills, have yet to start your career, and are thinking of earning to give, you should consider going into a (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7672274.stm) or other assets. You can reach a seven figure bonus within five years by working on interesting problems. You'll work with really smart, focused people and have transferable skills if you choose to leave. --- - Published: 2013-10-28 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/linearity-a-useful-assumption-in-evaluating-careers-and-causes/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Research, Risk, Skills ## Introduction When analysing the good done by different paths, **we’ve often found it useful to assume that the value of your resources are linear** - i.e. donating $2mn is roughly twice as good as $1mn, persuading two people to support a cause is roughly twice as good as persuading one person, and so on. For more in-depth examples, see our upcoming analysis of the value of becoming a politician or (http://rationalaltruist.com/2013/05/02/economics-of-small-changes/). This assumption, however, faces a number of objections. In this post, Paul Christiano, a Research Associate at 80,000 Hours, **responds to these objections to linearity, arguing that it’s normally a reasonable approximation to make.** ## What do I mean by “linearity”? More precisely, the assumption is: *The value of a resource is very likely to be linear when considering changes that are a small fraction of the current supply of that resource; is very likely to be diminishing through most of the range; and is likely to be increasing only as you come to control the majority of that resource, and even then only in some cases.* In the abstract it's not a very objectionable sounding claim, but below I go over a few common objections in particular cases. Note that "current supply" means resources that would be used in the pursuit of similar goals. When it seems like the current supply is negligibly small, I think we are probably drawing the boundaries wrong: don’t consider money being spent on a very narrow cause, consider money being sensibly spent on improving the world, etc. In the most extreme case, where the relevant supply of resources really is tiny, then this number will still be driven up by incidentally relevant behavior by people with completely different goals. Of course I don't think this is an ironclad law, but in practice I rarely believe objections people make against local linearity. That said, there is lots of room for me to revise my views here. First, I should say that linearity seems to be the right prior presumption. If we do something twice, a priori we should suppose that the second time we do it will have the same (expected) effect as the first time we do it. So I see my role here (at least with respect to linearity) as defending the prior presumption from various objections that might be raised. --- - Published: 2013-10-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/interview-with-the-world-health-organisation/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Economics, Global health, Job satisfaction, Organisation-building, Research, Skills, Working at a foundation Jeremy Lauer is a researcher at (http://www.who.int/choice/en/), a project of the World Health Organization to encourage cost-effectiveness via both research and communication with policy-makers Rob Wiblin and I sat down to interview Jeremy and learn about WHO-CHOICE, a potentially promising career path for 80,000 Hours members interested in promoting cost-effectiveness research - one of our high priority causes to investigate. ## Summary Jeremy’s main points were: * WHO-CHOICE is about giving countries the tools needed to establish priorities in the health sector and make good, high-impact-for-money policy. * The landscape of global public health is starting to shift to a time where, more and more, “best buys” and “magic-bullet solutions” such as vaccines are fully funded. This is exciting because it means people are getting important treatments, but it is also daunting because the next generation of interventions will involve more complex technical work and clearer communication with the public. * If you have a strong economics background, are quantitatively minded, and also have interests in epidemiology, biostatistics, or computer programming, a career at WHO-CHOICE or a similar organization could be rewarding and impactful. --- - Published: 2013-10-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/why-i-m-doing-a-phd/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Foundations, Graduate school, Institutional decision making, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making, Research, Skills, User stories, World problems I’ve just started a PhD in Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. People who have thought hard about how to make a difference seem to disagree about the value of PhDs. Having thought about this quite thoroughly for my own situation, I’ve decided to write up my decision process. Hopefully some of the considerations that were relevant for me will be generally applicable and useful to others making similar decisions. ## Summary Essentially, I’m doing a PhD because: * I want to use my career to do as much good as I can. However, I’m quite uncertain about which causes are most important and what I should do with my career long term. This means I want to spend the next few years learning and building "career capital" to keep my options open for whatever is highest impact later. * I believe that the PhD I’m doing is the best way for me to do this right now because: * It gives me the opportunity to build skills across a variety of disciplines/areas, whilst expanding my network and also giving me credentials that will help me later * At the same time, the research itself could be valuable - I’ve got a lot of flexibility with what I focus on, within an area that has the potential to be very important and useful (improving rationality/decision making) * I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to work on other high impact projects during the next few years alongside my PhD - volunteering for 80,000 Hours being just one example --- - Published: 2013-10-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/more-on-what-really-matters-for-finding-a-job-you-love/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Skills We think being satisfied in the work you do is really crucial if you want to make a difference: you won’t be motivated otherwise. This is why we’ve spent time over the past year trying to (/2012/12/our-research-on-how-to-find-a-job-you-love/), to help you find a job you’ll love and make a difference in. In doing this, we found something a bit surprising: the common view that you should find a career that is a (/2013/04/how-important-is-fitting-in-at-work/) for your (/2013/08/does-your-personality-matter-in-picking-a-career/) doesn’t have much support in the job satisfaction literature. The evidence seems to point towards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_satisfaction##Job_characteristics_model) (things like having variety, a sense of contribution, and clearly defined tasks) being more important than your personality fit. Of course, we don’t think that this is the end of it - that all that matters when it comes to job satisfaction are five simple factors. So we’ve spent a bit more time delving into the job satisfaction literature to get a better sense of what personal or social factors might be most important alongside this. One finding that seems to be fairly well supported is that, whilst “personality fit” might not matter that much, feeling *socially supported* at work on the other hand, does. *In summary:* * Feeling like you are socially supported at work - that you are able to get help and advice from your supervisors and coworkers - correlates with increased satisfaction at work * This is pretty intuitive, and seems to be both due to the direct benefits of social interactions, and the fact that support from coworkers also means we’re less likely to suffer from stress * This suggests it may be worth explicitly focusing on finding a working environment where you feel supported e.g. having a manager who you can go to with problems, perhaps above things like “personality fit” or “being the right type of person.” It also means that organisations (like 80,000 Hours!) should make creating this environment high priority --- - Published: 2013-10-11 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/interview-with-the-founder-of-giving-games/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Entrepreneurship, World problems Like both Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld, Jon Behar left a lucrative job at a hedge fund to create a startup called (http://www.apaththatsclear.com/). Here, he runs “Giving Games” which engage people around the world in discussions about effective giving. Rob Wiblin and I sat down to interview Jon Behar and learn more about his career choices and what it’s like to leave your job to pursue dreams of running effective altruist projects. Jon's main points were: * It can be worthwhile to take some time off to think about things if you no longer are enjoying your job. * Working on something that you think is important can make you more motivated and more productive. * When starting an effective altruist project, it could be important to consider how you could partner with an existing organization rather than proliferate the large amount of EA orgs that exist. * The best way to get into a career in any field is to find people who are already in that field and ask them for advice, even if you don’t know them. You’ll be surprised by the number of people who agree to speak with you. --- - Published: 2013-10-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/interview-with-matt-clifford/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Computer science, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Risk, Skills, Software engineering In 2011 Matt Clifford and Alice Bentick, left their consulting jobs in McKinsey to found their own non-profit, (http://www.entrepreneurfirst.org.uk/). Their idea is to take about 30 talented and ambitious graduates each year and help them form teams and start companies, in order to promote entrepreneurship as a career path. They have already achieved some impressive results with their first cohort group of 32 graduates founding 11 companies which collectively achieved a market valuation of £22 milion In their first funding round. As part of our research on the best routes into entrepreneurship we talked to Matt Clifford about this questions. ## Summary Key points Matt made in the interview: * A high level of technical skills seems to be the most important single attainment of someone interested in becoming a tech entrepreneur. * Startups inevitably involve failures and things going wrong, so determination is an important trait for entrepreneurs. * If you are interested in starting a startup consider developing domain expertise in a sector other than tech that is ripe for disruption. * It remains hard to find good data on indicators of success in entrepreneurship, current research is more qualitative and indicative. --- - Published: 2013-10-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/influencing-the-far-future/ - Topics: AI policy, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Longtermist philanthropy, Philanthropic advising ## Introduction In an earlier post we reviewed the arguments in favor of the idea that we should primarily assess causes in terms of whether they (/2013/08/how-important-are-future-generations/). We think this is a plausible position, but it raises the question: what activities in fact *do* help improve the world over the very long term, and of those, which are best? We’ve been asked this question several times in recent case studies. First, we propose a very broad categorisation of how our actions today might affect the long-run future. Second, as a first step to prioritising different methods, we compiled a list of approaches to improve the long-run future that are currently popular among the community of people who explicitly believe the long-run future is important. The list was compiled from our knowledge of the community. Please let us know if you think there are other important types of approach that have been neglected. Further, note that this post is not meant as an endorsement of any particular approach; just an acknowledgement that it has significant support. Third, we comment on how existing mainstream philanthropy may or may not influence the far future. --- - Published: 2013-10-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/10/the-value-of-economics-phds-a-conversation-with-robin-hanson/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Economics, Economics PhD, Graduate school, Skill-building and career capital ## Summary **Purpose of the call:** We organized this call to learn more about the value of getting a PhD in economics to help advise people considering that path. **Why this person:** We sought Robin’s thoughts because he is a like-minded economics professor with whom we already had a relationship. We discussed what career options are available to people who get PhDs in economics, who is a good fit for a PhD in economics, and how to maximize one’s impact in economics. We did not discuss highly data-oriented questions, such as PhD acceptance rates, tenure rates, and portions of economics PhDs working in different areas. An economics PhD is 1. generally necessary for becoming an economics professor 2. can be a promising route (among some other potentially promising routes) to finding work in think tanks, government agencies, international organizations such as the World Bank, 3. can be helpful for getting a job in consulting. Good indicators of fit for an economics PhD include aptitude for math, interest in economics, being open-minded about research topics, being able to work on challenging tasks with little direction from others, and being willing to put in a lot of hours. A firm grasp of basic economics concepts and theory, developed through years of practice, is very valuable for understanding how the social world works, which is helpful for evaluating causes and interventions. --- - Published: 2013-09-30 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/should-more-altruists-consider-entrepreneurship/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Earning to give, Entrepreneurship, Founding a tech startup, Risk One thing you might consider, if you’re aiming to do the most good with your career, is going into entrepreneurship. In this post I’ll summarise our reasons for thinking for-profit entrepreneurship is a promising career path for altruists, and outline our plans for research which will form the later parts of this blog series. In summary: * For-profit entrepreneurship is potentially one of the highest earning careers, making it an attractive option for earning to give * It seems more promising than other high-earning careers for doing good directly, because you have the option to sell products that help the world, and contribute to innovation in the economy * Furthermore, we think that startups may be one of the best ways to build career capital early on in your career --- - Published: 2013-09-15 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/we-re-looking-for-donations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, High impact executive assistance, Research, Skills Do we provide useful research or coaching? Support our service: we’re looking for donations to develop 80,000 Hours. We set up 80,000 Hours because we believe it is our best opportunity to make the most difference in the world. There’s an enormous opportunity to help thousands or even millions of people to find the opportunities that enable them to make the most difference. We’re looking for donations to help develop our content over the next two years, test to see if it works, and, if it works, prepare to take it to scale. During that time, we also anticipate carrying out hundreds of in-depth consulting sessions with the most high potential, altruistic young people in the world, spinning off high impact projects and raising millions for charity. --- - Published: 2013-09-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/case-study-designing-a-new-organisation-that-might-be-more-effective-than-givewell-s-top-recommendation/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Entrepreneurship, Fundraising Several months ago, we (/2013/03/how-to-create-the-world-s-most-effective-charity/) an easy way to create a charity that’s more effective than (http://www.givewell.org) top recommendations. It’s a simple idea: create an organisation that does nothing except fundraise for GiveWell’s top recommendations. It (/2012/10/why-don-t-charities-spend-more-on-fundraising/) to raise more than $1 for every $1 invested in fundraising, so it seems relatively easy to act as a multiplier on donations to other charities, and thus create an organisation with a cost-effectiveness ratio that’s higher than the charities themselves. We were thrilled, therefore, to find that two 80k members, Joey and Xio, are planning to start an organisation that does exactly this. It’s called Effective Fundraising. Their plan is to start by writing grants for (http://www.againstmalaria.com/) (AMF) and (http://www.thehumaneleague.com/) for six months. If it goes well, they could hire more people. Longer term, they could expand into others kinds of fundraising. They chose grant writing because (i) surveys of average fundraising ratios found that grant writing earns an average return of around $8 for every $1 invested, which is higher than most other forms of fundraising (ii) the money can be raised within 6-18 months, unlike ‘chugging’ (asking for donations on the street) or door-to-door which takes several years to pay off. We think: 1. Working on Effective Fundraising looks like a very strong option for building career capital. 2. They could consider running more experiments before committing to grant-writing for 6 months. 3. They may be having less impact than they could because they may not be supporting the most high priority causes. 4. They should strongly consider hiring someone else to work for Effective Fundraising as a grant writer. --- - Published: 2013-09-05 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/making-a-difference-through-social-entrepreneurship-an-interview-with-tom-rippin/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Entrepreneurship, Job satisfaction, Skill-building and career capital I spoke with (http://onpurpose.uk.com/portfolio-item/tom-rippin/), founder and CEO of (http://onpurpose.uk.com/on-purpose-explained/our-purpose-2/), a leadership programme aimed at *"attracting and developing talent to address the greatest issues faced by society and the environment."* We talked about: * Tom’s own career path and what led him to founding On Purpose * Why he thinks that social enterprise has the potential to have an enormous positive impact on the world * What constraints the social enterprise movement faces at the moment * How On Purpose is working to address these issues, and how they plan to assess their own impact --- - Published: 2013-09-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/summary-of-our-six-month-evaluation/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised *This is the final post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This report overviews our entire six month evaluation. Our Six Month Review is divided into 9 sections. Click on the links to see the full reports. You can see a commentary on this review by the trustees and external advisory board of 80,000 Hours (/blog/252-trustee-and-advisory-board-re). * (/2013/08/our-progress/) * (/2013/08/metrics-report/) * (/2013/08/evaluation-of-80-000-hours-as-project/) * (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8OdBVMpAjJHQWJEZC1QeFhIYnc/edit) * (/2013/09/team-plan/) * (/2013/09/finance-report/) * (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OFOtzhrTHfw7CkDjDEQ7l4JQrw02hZrESauGV10xCgs/edit) * (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-Jhoc5Aa_5WU09CcU1Sb254NlU/edit?usp=sharing) * (/meet_the_team) --- - Published: 2013-09-03 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/trustee-and-advisory-board-report/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Research, Skill-building and career capital *Our trustees and advisory board have reviewed our six month evaluation. This report presents a summary report from each group, outlining their main concerns with and comments on the overall progress of the organisation.* Our trustees are Toby Ord, Nick Beckstead and William MacAskill (who is also our President). Will issued the following statement: --- - Published: 2013-09-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/team-plan/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Fundraising, Organisation-building, Research, Skill-building and career capital *This is the fifth post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This report outlines our key priorities for the next six months. ## Summary and Discussion * We continue to see the top priority as further investment i.e. developing our business model, content and the organisation’s robustness. * The flagship goal in this area is carrying out 30 case studies, which will form the centre of our content and evaluation efforts. * Also important is: (i) more impact evaluation in general (ii) fundraising enough to keep up with our expanding budget (iii) increasing our talent pool through training and outreach (iv) increase the appeal of our content to successful young professionals through rebranding (v) having high quality research on our key ideas to support the case studies on our blog. * Outreach is less high priority, except insofar as we do enough to ensure a strong stream of candidates for case studies and internships, and build up credibility (e.g. receiving press coverage and impressive affiliations). * We’re also not yet focused on scaling up delivery, because we think it will be overall faster to spend more time developing our content at this stage. --- - Published: 2013-09-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/09/finance-report/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised *This is the fourth post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This report outlines our key financial metrics. ## Summary **80,000 Hours is seeking to raise £360,000 over the next year to cover operating expenses for July 2013 – June 2015.** This would cover all of 80,000 Hours’ expenses for this year and give 80,000 Hours 12 months of cash reserves, which would be very valuable for improved organizational planning and stability. Raising £245,000 by June 2014 would give us 6 months of cash reserves. This will enable us to carry out our plans to develop and promote our content about which careers make the most difference, as outlined in (/2013/09/team-plan/). **80,000 Hours’ current financial situation**: As of 20 August 2013, 80,000 Hours has about £30,000 of cash on hand, which is about 2 months of reserves. 80,000 hours’ estimated budget for July 2013 – June 2014 is £160,000. 80,000 Hours’ estimated budget for July 2014 - June 2015 is £230,000. In the last year, 80,000 Hours raised £100,000, so we would like funds raised this year to increase by £260,000. --- - Published: 2013-08-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/evaluation-of-80-000-hours-as-project/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised *This is the third post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* In this report, we answer a set of critical questions for 80,000 Hours stakeholders. These questions are inspired by (http://www.givewell.org/about/self-evaluation), but also include further questions that we think are important for 80,000 Hours, including several we have been asked by our stakeholders. --- - Published: 2013-08-28 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/metrics-report/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised *This is the second post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* This post outlines the key outreach and community metrics that we track week-to-week. --- - Published: 2013-08-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/our-progress/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised *This is the first post (of a series of six) on our six month evaluation* The purpose of the evaluation is to explain to key stakeholders our progress, plans for the future and how we think we're performing as an organisation. The main model for our evaluation process is (http://www.givewell.org/about/self-evaluation). In this report, we outline how we see our main achievements and mistakes over the last six months. ## Summary * Our key priority was further developing our business model and content strategy, and we’re pleased with our success in this area. We made two rounds of improvements, culminating with adopting the (/2013/07/we-re-changing-our-career-coaching/). * Our next major priority was further building 80,000 Hours and the Centre for Effective Altruism as robust, effective organisations. We made mistakes in this area, but overall I think we made strong progress. We successfully coped with a doubling of the number of people working at the Centre for Effective Altruism. * While prioritising developing our business model and organisation building, we’ve also performed strongly in outreach. Increasing web traffic by 47% and recruiting about 400 new members was well ahead of expectations. * We made many mistakes this period, but I'??d classify most as minor mistakes. The worst mistake was that the operations team ran out of capacity in March, slowing down our overall progress. * Overall, I think we’re in a strong position to carry out our plans over the next six months. --- - Published: 2013-08-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/how-important-are-future-generations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Existential risk, Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Moral patients, Moral philosophy, Prioritisation frameworks At 80,000 Hours, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2XNfeIASoA) the (/causes) in which you can make the most difference. One important consideration in evaluating causes is how much we should care about their impact on future generations. (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxuYmVja3N0ZWFkfGd4OjM4ZDVlYjY4ZTkzMzFlZjE) by a trustee of (http://centreforeffectivealtruism.org/) (our parent charity) Nick Beckstead, argues that the impact on the long-term direction of future civilization is likely to be the most important consideration in working out the importance of a cause. --- - Published: 2013-08-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/our-first-career-workshop/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Last month, 80,000 Hours ran its **first ever career workshop**! This post is a quick summary of the workshop: what we covered, what career changes it led to, and how it was received by our attendees. --- - Published: 2013-08-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/why-the-myers-briggs-test-is-not-useful-in-picking-a-career/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit While investigating how to give good careers advice, we asked ourselves whether the Myers Briggs test, the world’s most widely used personality test, might be useful. We’ve concluded that it probably isn’t. --- - Published: 2013-08-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/does-your-personality-matter-in-picking-a-career/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit In order to work out current best practice within career advising, we looked into personality testing. Several people I have asked for advice have recommended that we consider using it. Having investigated the leading personality tests, however, we’ve concluded that they’re not very useful in choosing your career. This is because they haven’t been shown to predict the real world outcomes that matter: (i) finding careers you will find satisfying (ii) finding careers that you will succeed in. --- - Published: 2013-08-07 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/introduction-to-our-career-model/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital Drawing on similarities between an individual planning their career and a startup business, we've realised the importance of learning and adapting to change early in your career. Rigid career plans don't seem that useful, and could even be harmful - but you do still need some means of direction and motivation for the future. One promising solution we've found is the idea of having a "career model": identifying your aims and values, and making a best guess of how you might achieve them. What's key is that this model is designed to be tested and adapted as you learn. --- - Published: 2013-08-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/08/we-re-looking-for-a-director-of-fundraising-and-a-finance-manager/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Fundraising, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Hopefully you've seen by now that 80,000 Hours is hiring! In addition to the positions advertised previously, we're also looking for a Finance Manager and Director of Fundraising. Both would be full-time paid positions based in Oxford, and you'd be working across both 80,000 Hours and our sister organisation Giving What We Can. The deadline for all positions is Friday 16th August at 5pm GMT. --- - Published: 2013-07-31 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/show-me-the-harm/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Finance, Job satisfaction, Risk, Skills Does Earning to Give do more harm than good? It is often claimed that philanthropists do more harm earning money than good making donations. We saw (http://www.benkuhn.net/etg-objections) raised many times during the recent (/2013/06/80-000-hours-in-the-washington-post-our-responses-to-the-coverage/) of (/earning-to-give). Our response is that although the objection may be true for (http://blog.givewell.org/2009/12/14/charity-isnt-about-helping/), when donors are (http://www.givewell.org/) it's difficult for the expected harm to outweigh the good done by the donations. In this post, I make some very rough estimates of how harmful finance would have to be in order for it to outweigh the good done by the donations of someone Earning to Give to effective charities. --- - Published: 2013-07-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/your-career-is-like-a-startup/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital We think that we can draw many useful insights about career planning from thinking about how startups operate successfully. There seem to be a lot of direct analogies between startup strategy and career planning: both mean finding a niche where you can excel and beat the competition, and both require doing so in a highly uncertain and changing environment. So what can we learn about career planning from startup strategy? --- - Published: 2013-07-25 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/how-to-assess-the-impact-of-a-career/ - Topics: Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital How do you even begin going about trying to assess the impact of a career? It might seem impossible. But if you don't try to weigh up your options, you'll end up doing far less for the world than you could otherwise. It's not an easy question, but it is a fascinating one that has a great deal of importance for the world. After talking one-on-one with around 100 people about their careers, asking people who have made a big impact, and thinking through what matters, we’ve developed an initial simple framework for assessing the value of different careers. --- - Published: 2013-07-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/80-000-hours-is-hiring/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital We want to change the world by revolutionising something incredibly important: the way people think about and spend their careers. Our mission is to help talented and dedicated people have the biggest possible positive impact with their careers. This is a big project, and we’re growing fast, so we’re looking for bright and ambitious people to join us. If this sounds like something you’d like to be part of, then apply to work for us! --- - Published: 2013-07-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/looking-for-a-seriously-high-impact-job-using-your-managerial-skills/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Global priorities research, Research management, World problems We recently interviewed Roland Mathiasson, vice president of the (http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com) (CCC), a leading global think tank which draws together over 100 top economists to work on prioritizing the solutions to the most pressing global issues. The Center’s leader, (http://www.lomborg.com), was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine and has been repeatedly named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by *Foreign Policy*. We initiated the interview after being contacted by Roland about a job opportunity with CCC... --- - Published: 2013-07-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/the-future-of-humanity-institute-is-hiring-a-high-impact-project-manager/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Future of Humanity Institute, Global priorities research, Research management We recently secured funding for a Research Collaboration with Amlin Insurance focusing on systemic risks associated with risk modelling. This is a unique opportunity to build a world-leading research programme. We’re looking for someone who can not only manage this project, but who also has the drive and initiative to find new sources of funding, network with leading experts, and design future plans for the project. We’re also looking for someone who understands and is motivated by the aims of the FHI; the post-holder will have the opportunity to contribute across the board to FHI projects, and may be a crucial part of the FHI’s success going forward. It’s a two year position, but there will be the possibility of extension depending on the success of the project and the acquisition of further funding. All the details can be found (http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/vacancy-academic-project-manager-at-the-future-of-humanity-institute/) --- - Published: 2013-07-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/how-important-is-keeping-your-options-open/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Earning to give, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit Why do so many elite graduates go into finance and consulting? At Princeton, for example, (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/out-of-harvard-and-into-finance/) The Aspen Impact Careers recently conducted research that attempted to work out why so many elite graduates enter finance and consulting (unpublished). They found several important factors, which chime with (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-16/harvard-liberal-arts-failure-is-wall-street-gain-commentary-by-ezra-klein.html) in the media. But they proposed that the single biggest factor was a desire to keep options open. Entry level consulting and finance jobs successfully market themselves as a great general purpose training and a ticket to all sorts of other jobs in the future. The same is true of Teach for America. The demand is real, and all three have been rewarded with strong applications. From an entirely personal point of view, it makes sense to prioritise keeping your options open in the first couple of years of your career. You have little idea what you’ll enjoy or be good at when you start working, or what opportunities will come your way in the future. A good way to deal with the problem is to take the job that most keeps your options open. That way you can learn more about what you enjoy, but retain the ability to switch into another job if it turns out you don’t enjoy your first one. --- - Published: 2013-07-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/we-re-changing-our-career-coaching/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital We’re changing how we do our career coaching. For at least the next couple of months, we’re only going to be coaching one or two people each week, but we’re going to spend up to a week of research on each one. We call these our case studies. Why the change? Why are we going to turn away at least 80% of our coaching requests? This post explains how and why our new approach will be more in depth. --- - Published: 2013-07-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/07/effective-animal-activism-a-spin-off-of-80-000-hours-has-hired-a-full-time-executive-director/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Philanthropic advising, Research Effective Animal Activism (EAA) will now become entirely independent from 80,000 Hours, and has a separate board of trustees consisting of (/members/brian-tomasik), (/members/eitan-fischer) and (/members/robert-wiblin). In the rest of this post, I let Jon explain the new mission and direction of the organisation. --- - Published: 2013-06-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/maximizing-your-donations-via-a-job/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills, Software engineering Want a systematic approach to getting your dream job, whether for earning to give or for working at one of the top organizations? Read this guest post from a Google employee, Alexei Andreev, on how he got his job and how you can do the same. --- - Published: 2013-06-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/want-to-make-a-real-difference-in-development-aidgrade-is-hiring/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Government & policy, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital Want to really add value and innovate in international development? AidGrade, a fantastic new organisation with precisely this aim, are currently hiring. If making a huge difference using your quantitative skills sounds like something you're interested in, read on for a full description from Eva of what AidGrade are looking for and offer. --- - Published: 2013-06-19 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/how-to-add-value-in-international-development-an-interview-with-eva-vivalt/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Research, World problems I recently interviewed (http://www.evavivalt.com/), who works for the World Bank and is the founder of AidGrade, a new organisation that evaluates and recommends different development programs on the basis of effectiveness. AidGrade’s mission is “to improve the effectiveness of development efforts by understanding and encouraging what works using rigorous, actionable and engaging evidence.” You can find out more about AidGrade on their website (http://www.aidgrade.org). --- - Published: 2013-06-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/where-can-i-earn-the-most/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Income, Other topics, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital Since one way that you can have a big impact with your career is through earning to give, we want to investigate which careers hold the best earnings prospects. Our most recent research looked at the typical career paths and salaries for five different careers: Accounting, Consulting, Investment Banking, Law and Medicine. We found that investment bankers have the highest earning potential and in the UK: they can expect to earn between £8m and £40m over the course of their career. --- - Published: 2013-06-10 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/why-earning-to-give-is-often-not-the-best-option/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics A common misconception is that 80,000 Hours thinks (/earning-to-give) is typically the way to have the most impact with your career. We've never said that in any of our materials. All we have said, for instance in (http://www.academia.edu/3619295/Replaceability_career_choice_and_making_a_difference), is that there is strong reason to think that Earning to Give is better than taking a typical nonprofit job. When it comes to how to make the most difference with your career, we think there's huge room for debate. Whether it's best for someone to pursue Earning to Give normally depends on difficult to estimate empirical considerations unique to the situation, like some of those mentioned (/2012/09/how-good-are-the-best/), whether your cause is more talent-constrained or funding-constrained, what other people are doing, and issues like what else you could do with an Earning to Give job (often high earning jobs give you a useful platform to advance high impact causes independent of the money you donate yourself). When people have come to us in the past interested in pursuing Earning to Give, we've advised some to do it, and others not to do it. See our recent (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oihS0Cx8Lcs) for some examples. This is why we welcome a recent article by ex-Givewell employee Jonah Sinick on why Earning to Give might not be optimal... --- - Published: 2013-06-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/80-000-hours-in-the-washington-post-our-responses-to-the-coverage/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk The concept of (/earning-to-give) was featured in the Washington Post last week. See the article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/). In combination with Peter Singer’s TED talk on (http://effective-altruism.com/node/4), which mentions 80,000 Hours, we’ve been receiving very heavy and sustained web traffic - over 10,000 visitors in just two weeks. The Washington Post article generated a number of high profile responses, including an opinion piece in the (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/opinion/brooks-the-way-to-produce-a-person.html?ref=davidbrooks&_r=0), a piece in the (http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/349841/rise-singerians-reihan-salam), and a mention on (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2334682/Young-professionals-joining-Wall-Street-save-world.html) - the world’s most read online newspaper. (Unfortunately they call us 8,000 Hours!) There was much praise for the idea of Earning to Give and Effective Altruism, as well as the dedication of the people mentioned. Many of the criticisms, including those reflected more generally in the comments, are criticisms or misunderstandings we have addressed many times in the past, for instance in our (/about/faq##faq-what-is-earning-to-give), in this series of (/2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/) (/2012/07/collective-action-working-in-unethical-industries-part-2/) (/2012/07/universalisability-immoral-industries-part-3/), and in Will’s (http://www.academia.edu/1557895/Replaceability_Career_Choice_and_Making_a_Difference). --- - Published: 2013-06-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/80-000-hours-mentioned-in-ted/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Communication, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy Peter Singer gave a TED talk on "The Why and How of Effective Altruism," which you can watch (http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_effective_altruism.html), which mentions 80,000 Hours. It's been interesting to look at people's reactions both on the TED website, and on YouTube... --- - Published: 2013-06-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/06/how-to-create-a-donor-advised-fund/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Other topics What can you do if you're pursuing (/earning-to-give) but aren't currently sure what organisation to donate to? You can set up a donor advised fund which has all the psychological and tax benefits that go along with donating, while still holding off on your decision as to which charity is best. In this post (/members/ben-west) tells you how. --- - Published: 2013-05-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/can-you-measure-the-good-you-ll-do/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas, Skills The idea that it’s impossible to measure which career lets you make the most difference is silly. If it were true, then packing meat for a living would be, for all we know, as good for the world as running Oxfam or being a great President. Why, then, do we so often meet the idea that ‘you can’t measure the good done by a career’? - an idea that quashes debate about what’s best to do, and thus leads millions of ambitious young people to do less for the world than they could. Here’s the mistakes I think are being made. --- - Published: 2013-05-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/the-worst-ethical-careers-advice-in-the-world/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Personal fit, Skills What are you going to do with your life? If you’re like most young people, you care about making a difference. But who’s there to help you with that? So much of the career advice out there today is unhelpful cliches. Here’s some of the most common career advice we’ve found over the last six months that you shouldn’t follow. --- - Published: 2013-05-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/what-should-i-read-if-i-m-new/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Research Are you new to 80,000 Hours, and wondering where to start? We've put together this summary of our most popular blog posts from over the past year to make it much easier to get a quick overview of our key content and ideas. Even if you've been around the site for a while, you might might find something here you've missed or forgotten about! --- - Published: 2013-05-20 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/the-best-career-advice-you-ll-never-hear-in-a-graduation-speech/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills “Follow your passion” is the stupidest career advice I’ve ever heard. Why? Because my passion in life is for singing bad karaoke. My friend Dodgy Dave’s passion is for dealing crack cocaine. Some of my friends have many passions. Most of my friends have none. “Do what you’re good at” is better, but still stupid. It gets things the wrong way around. For almost all activities, being “good at” something is the result of (http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/everything/ericsson2007a.pdf) (pdf). In choosing a career, you’re almost always making the decision about what to become good at, not the other way around. How, then, should you find a job you’ll love? --- - Published: 2013-05-17 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/biases-how-they-affect-your-career-decisions-and-what-to-do-about-them/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Other pressing problems, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems A large and growing body of research suggests our reasoning is far from perfectly "rational." This means that an important part of designing a process for choosing a high impact career has been looking into the extent to which these biases tend to affect peoples’ career decisions, and what can be done about them. It turns out that we likely don’t know as much as we think we do, and our judgements can often be mistaken in ways that affect our career decisions negatively. Just being aware of this also doesn’t help much. Rather we need to be more sceptical of our decisions than we might be inclined to be, and take a more systematic and evidence-based approach to career choice. --- - Published: 2013-05-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/how-to-double-your-donations-with-no-extra-effort/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Philanthropic advising, Skills 80,000 hours is all about making a difference in an effective way and one of the most effective things you can do is donate to a cost effective charity. There has been some talk of (/2012/03/why-doesn-t-everyone-use-matching-donations/) and how it might not always increase how much money is ultimately donated. But there is a type of matching that can be very powerful. Some companies offer large matching contributions and sometimes offer more than a dollar per every dollar donated. Some companies also offer (http://www.doublethedonation.com/VolunteerGrants.html) for volunteer hours or matching donations for participating in walks/runs/events for charity, and also match gifts made by retirees and/or spouses. If you're pursuing an Earning to Give career, then a good matching scheme could be even more important than what industry you enter. In many cases it's probably easier to find an employer who matches than to earn a much bigger salary. --- - Published: 2013-05-13 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/estimation-part-ii-how-much-will-you-earn/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Earning to give, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Risk, Skill-building and career capital *How much could I earn during my life as a lawyer? How many people could this campaign reach? How long will it take to complete this research?* Answers to questions like these would be extremely useful when planning your career, if only we knew what the answers were. We can make estimates for questions like these by breaking them down into more manageable sub-questions and answering these instead. This post will take you through the best process for combining these estimates so that we can answer the bigger questions and then compare different options for important decisions. --- - Published: 2013-05-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/estimation-part-i-how-to-do-it/ - Topics: Career planning, Communicating ideas, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skill-building and career capital Trying to answer questions about the impact of a career is difficult, and trying to decide between different career options is even harder. If I asked you *‘How many people will benefit from research into anti-malarial vaccination?’* or *‘How many malaria nets would a £1000 donation to the Against Malaria Foundation get?’*, your first answer will probably be that you don’t know. After this you will probably try to google the answer, but in most cases the information that you need is either not easily accessible or it would cost you a lot of time and money to find it. Finally you might guess or estimate an answer. But are some guesses or estimates better than others? In this post we will look at processes you can go through to make an estimate and how to make sure that your estimate is as good as it can be. --- - Published: 2013-05-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/looking-for-a-seriously-high-impact-job-using-your-analytical-skills/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Experience with an emerging power, GiveWell, Global priorities research, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Skills, World problems Recently we (/2013/04/interview-with-holden-karnofsky-co-founder-of-givewell/), co-founder of the independent, nonprofit charity evaluator (http://www.givewell.org/). We recommend GiveWell as a leading source of information on where to have the largest impact with your charitable donations. Our conversation suggested that GiveWell might be one of the highest impact career opportunities in the world. There's reason to think that GiveWell has the potential to be an extremely impactful organisation, but they are short of some key types of staff. If you fit their criteria, then this is a position really worth considering. Read on for excerpts from our conversation on (i) what GiveWell does and why it's important (ii) what kind of people will do well there (iii) how you can get a job there. --- - Published: 2013-05-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/how-important-is-networking-for-career-success/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Exploration, How to get a job, Leverage --- - Published: 2013-05-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/05/intelligence-matters-more-than-you-think-for-career-success/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital When you’re trying to have an impact, it's useful to know how successful you'll be in different careers so you can pick the right one. But how can you do this? There are a few predictors of success that have been studied by psychologists, but the results aren’t widely known. The scientific consensus is that the best way to predict someone’s career success is to assess their general mental ability (GMA), which is similar to what most people mean by “intelligence”. You might find this surprising, so I’m going to summarise the evidence backing it up. Then I’ll talk about: * Why GMA is so important in work - mainly because people with higher GMA learn faster. * Which other factors affect success - job complexity, personality, and experience. * What this all means for your career - choose jobs that fit your GMA and find the best ways to increase your chances of success. --- - Published: 2013-04-29 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/interview-with-holden-karnofsky-co-founder-of-givewell/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, GiveWell, Global priorities research, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills, World problems Holden Karnofsky is the co-founder and co-executive director of (http://www.givewell.org/), an independent, nonprofit charity evaluator. We recommend Givewell as a leading source of information on where to have the largest impact with your charitable donations. In 2012 GiveWell moved over (http://blog.givewell.org/2013/03/12/givewell-annual-review-for-2012-details-on-givewells-money-moved-and-web-traffic/) to its top charities and the amount of money moved by GiveWell has so far been roughly doubling each year. GiveWell also recently formed a (http://blog.givewell.org/2012/06/28/givewell-and-good-ventures/) with (http://www.goodventures.org/), a new multi-billion dollar foundation which aims to do as much good as possible. This has already had huge impact, for example at the end of 2012, Good Ventures awarded (https://www.facebook.com/notes/good-ventures/giving-season-grants-to-givewells-top-charities/542998472395716) to GiveWell’s top recommended charities. --- - Published: 2013-04-26 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-much-is-50p-worth-to-you/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Global health, Moral philosophy Suppose we meet on the street one day and I tell you that, through no fault of my own, I’m having to live on just a pound a day for food and drink. Would you give me just 50p, knowing this could greatly improve my day without really affecting your own at all? I’m pretty sure you would. Between the 29th April and the 3rd May, I and a number of others from 80,000 Hours and Giving What We Can will be "living below the line" - spending no more than a pound a day on food and drink. Admittedly we're doing this out of choice, but those who live below the poverty line in reality do so by force of circumstance, and suffer a great deal more. So if you'd buy me something to eat, or give me 50p if I was doing this through no fault of my own, please instead make a donation to one of the charities we're doing this to raise money for --- - Published: 2013-04-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-important-is-fitting-in-at-work/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit For most people, having a career which is a good “fit” for their personality and interests is extremely high priority. Unsurprisingly, the notion of “person-environment fit” is fundamental to most careers advice. The general idea is that a) people have different personalities and interests, b) different types of people are suited to different working environments and c) finding the right working environment for your personality and interests is crucial to finding a job you’ll enjoy and be successful in. However, despite several decades of research attempts, psychologists have failed to demonstrate that fit with the workplace has any substantial effect on job satisfaction or job performance. This suggests the normal approach of (i) working out your interests and personality and then (ii) finding a job to match them might be wrong - it doesn’t seem to help you find a job you enjoy or are good at! This is surprising: it seems intuitively obvious that your fit with your work environment is important. It might be that the effect is too complex to be picked up in the existing studies, and that improved survey design would uncover a stronger connection. **But we should also consider whether being a good fit with your work is less important than we first think.** --- - Published: 2013-04-22 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/is-us-gun-control-an-important-issue/ - Topics: Global health, Government & policy, Moral philosophy, Other pressing problems, Prioritisation frameworks, Research in relevant areas, World problems After the shocking massacre in Connecticut it looks like gun control is going to draw a lot of attention from Obama and Congress this year. This got me thinking about how important gun control might be as a political cause. The potential good achieved by focussing on this policy is in large part determined by the damage done by guns in the first place. In that light, does it deserve it? --- - Published: 2013-04-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/tiny-steps-towards-an-incrementally-better-world/ - Topics: Career planning, Community & coordination, Personal fit, Skills Robin Hanson is an American economist who recently blogged about an elegant way to help others at little personal cost. The logic goes like this... --- - Published: 2013-04-17 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/is-most-research-a-waste/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Effective altruism, Government & policy, Research, Research in relevant areas Worldwide, over US$100 billion is invested every year in supporting biomedical research, which results in an estimated 1 million research publications per year A recently updated systematic review of 79 follow-up studies of research reported in abstracts estimated the rate of publication of full reports after 9 years to be only 53%. An e?cient system of research should address health problems of importance to populations and the interventions and outcomes considered important by patients and clinicians. However, public funding of research is correlated only modestly with disease burden, if at all. --- - Published: 2013-04-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-to-prioritise-meta-skills-part-iv/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Prioritisation frameworks, Skill-building and career capital Some activities have many more times more impact than others. For example, if you’re learning a new skill you’ll improve very quickly at the start as you learn the fundamental skills and then your progress will slow. For example, in language-learning the first hundred words you learn are (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law). Someone who makes sure they learn the most common words can thus reach conversational fluency several times faster than someone who picks more randomly from the most common couple of thousand words. --- - Published: 2013-04-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/dramatically-increase-your-productivity-by-using-a-task-management-system-meta-skills-part-3/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Mental health, Other pressing problems, Skill-building and career capital, World problems Many of us at 80,000 Hours have found that having a good task management system - a list of tasks with a process for maintaining it - is important for being productive. The most popular sysetm is called Getting Things Done and you can read a summary of it (http://www.wikisummaries.org/Getting_Things_Done:_The_Art_of_Stress-Free_Productivity). --- - Published: 2013-04-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-to-finally-do-what-you-ve-been-putting-off/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Exploration, Mental health, Other pressing problems, Personal fit, Skills, World problems Commitment devices have boosted my productivity from spending hours or even days procrastinating to consistently achieving my aims. The idea is that you make it costly to fail to do what you say you’ll do. For example, you tell a friend that you have to do 8 hours work a day or you pay them £50. Or maybe you have to shave one side of your body if you fail (I know someone who had to do this!) --- - Published: 2013-04-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/increase-your-productivity-to-boost-your-impact/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital To have impact you need to choose the right career. But that’s not all. If you can build your knowledge and productivity faster than everyone else in your career then you’ll rise from average in your field to the top and have much more impact. So how can you do this? --- - Published: 2013-04-03 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/opportunity-to-intern-with-80-000-hours-178/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Experience with an emerging power, Fundraising, Organisation-building, Skills If you’re here, you probably have some idea of what 80,000 Hours is about. We’re trying to become the world’s best source of advice on how to make as big a positive impact as possible. That’s a big project, and we’re growing fast. To support this growth we now need someone to help manage our finances and fundraising, so if you’d like to join the team this is your chance! (http://bit.ly/15EGoWr) or read on for more details... --- - Published: 2013-04-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/how-to-improve-your-memory/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Personal fit, Research, Skill-building and career capital, Skills Learn more effectively using a spaced repetition system If you can accelerate your learning then you’ll be able to learn more information useful for your job. You also get compound benefits from knowledge. The more you know, the more easily you can learn related topics and make links between different areas of knowledge to come up with novel solutions. There are lots of useful things you could learn: if you’re a student you could study your subject more efficiently. If your job involves a lot of networking you could use spaced repetition to learn names and information about people that you need to remember. Every time you come across something useful you didn’t know, you can make a new flashcard in seconds. --- - Published: 2013-04-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/04/six-month-review-of-80-000-hours-june-nov-2012/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised In December we conducted the first review of our progress as a full-time organisation. In a spirit of transparency, we’re posting the results on our site. The review consisted of: 1. A detailed report on our stated goals, our delivery on these goals, our impact over the period, our goals for the future and a proposed budget prepared by the Executive Director. 2. This report was brought to the three trustees of the Centre for Effective Altruism (the registered charity which 80,000 Hours is a part of) who decide whether to approve the budget. 3. It was also brought to the three members of our Advisory Committee. These are three supporters of 80,000 Hours who aren’t involved in our day-to-day operation who provide an outside view on our strategy. --- - Published: 2013-03-13 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/03/should-you-plan-your-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills Should you try to plan your career? On the one hand, goals provide direction and motivation. Especially if you care about really making a difference, you don’t want to be just stabbing in the dark. Yet at the same time, the world around you is constantly changing, as are you - isn’t it naive to plan for the future when you have no real idea what the job market will look like, what the world’s biggest needs might be, and what you might want personally --- - Published: 2013-03-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/03/internship-opportunity-in-promoting-charity-cost-effectiveness/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Communication, Effective altruism, Research, Skill-building and career capital, Volunteering Are you interested in learning how to research charity effectiveness? Want training in communicating the idea of effective giving? Or want experience in the non-profit sector? Our sister organisation, (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org), is running a summer internship programme for students interested in promoting effective charitable giving. On the two-week programme (16th-27th September 2013) interns will gain training and experience in the area of their choice; either cost-effectiveness research or communications. For more information, go (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/getting-involved/work-with-us/september-internship) --- - Published: 2013-03-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/03/when-to-go-with-your-gut-in-career-choice/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills People often talk about how you should just “go with your gut” when choosing a career. But how useful is this advice, really? In general, we should be wary of our intuitions about careers. This doesn't mean intuitions have no part to play in career choice, but it's worth double checking them. --- - Published: 2013-03-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/03/how-to-create-the-world-s-most-effective-charity/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Entrepreneurship, Fundraising GiveWell’s charity recommendations – currently (http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/AMF), (http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/give-directly) and the (http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/schistosomiasis-control-initiative)– are generally regarded as the most reliable in their field. I imagine many readers here donate to these charities. This makes it all the more surprising that it should be pretty easy to start a charity more effective than any of them. All you would need to do is found an organisation that fundraises for whoever GiveWell recommends, and raises more than a dollar with each dollar it receives. Is this hard? --- - Published: 2013-03-01 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/03/how-much-do-taxes-matter-if-you-re-giving-to-charity/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction Suppose you're looking to donate as much as possible to charity, and are choosing between two jobs. Should you worry about the taxes in each location? Since you can claim back taxes on charitable donations, many people think you don't need to worry about this issue. --- - Published: 2013-02-25 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/how-to-find-out-earnings-for-different-jobs/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Experience with an emerging power, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Skills When you’re thinking about earning money to donate it to charity, you need compare different jobs on how much you’ll earn over your lifetime. We have an on-going project to help you work out which career path has the highest expected earnings for you. In this post I’m going to guide you through one of the best sources of earnings information - salary.com - and show you how to use it --- - Published: 2013-02-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/the-single-number-that-best-predicts-professor-tenure-a-case-study-in-quantitative-career-planning/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, PhDs, Research, Skill-building and career capital *Cal Newport is the best-selling author of (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455509124), which argues, as we have, against the common sense careers advice 'do you what you're passionate about'. He has also written about how to optimise academic study, for instance in (http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-College-Surprising-Countrys/dp/0767917871/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361515147&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+win+at+college). In this post he discussed a predictor of success in research, how it might be used, and suggests that we need more quantitative career planning. It is reposted with his permission from his (http://calnewport.com/blog/).* --- - Published: 2013-02-18 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/bringing-it-all-together-high-impact-research-management/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, PhDs, Research management, Skill-building and career capital There's a general misconception that researchers are the only people who really contribute towards scientific progress. But there's a lot of incredibly important work, besides research itself, that's vital to producing important research, and such work is often underappreciated. We don’t realise how important other people working in academia are: people in administration, management, or communications. Their work is crucial; they bring it all together. --- - Published: 2013-02-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/two-questions-you-won-t-want-to-ask-yourself-but-should/ - Topics: Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Other pressing problems, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills, World problems Most of us spend a lot of time visualising scenarios we’d like to happen, thinking about reasons the things we believe (or the things we want to believe) are likely to be true. We very rarely do the opposite: really thinking through worst case scenarios, or actively looking for reasons our deepest held beliefs are false. Why would we want to do this? We might found out something we don’t want to know. But this is *exactly why we should do it.* --- - Published: 2013-02-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/advice-on-going-into-a-research-career-an-interview-with-richard-thaler/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Economics, Expertise relevant to a top problem, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Research, Skills I've recently been following a great new blog doing interviews with "research heroes" in the field of judgement and decision-making called InDecision. Some of these interviews seem like they could be really useful and interesting to anyone wanting to make a difference in a research career, and the blog's editors have kindly agreed to let us repost some of them. First up: Richard Thaler, most famously co-author of global best-seller Nudge. --- - Published: 2013-02-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/common-mistakes-in-careers-advice-when-should-you-trust-sayings/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills “Look after the pennies, and the pounds will look after themselves.” Often in careers advice, as in life generally, you will be handed some proverb. But sometimes these sayings aren’t true, how can you know when to trust them? **A common mistake in career choice is to blindly accept common ideas like this without good reason.** You can’t always rely on hard studies being available, you have to rely on your intuitions a lot of the time. One way of using your intuition better that I’ve found effective is to follow this plan: * Reverse the principle and see if the opposite idea makes sense * Tell two stories, one to explain the principle, one to explain the reverse. * Use these stories to find out when to trust the principle. --- - Published: 2013-02-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/the-best-resources-for-planning-your-career/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills When you’re choosing between career options you need detailed information on different aspects of your career so you can evaluate potential impact, work out what skills are needed, and see whether you’d like to pursue that career. Unfortunately much of the information you need doesn’t exist. For instance, you can easily find minimum entry requirements for different roles, but there’s isn’t much on how to judge your (/2012/12/how-to-judge-your-chances-of-success/) once you’ve got the job. Some important information does exist, such as evidence-based ways to (/2012/12/our-research-on-how-to-find-a-job-you-love/) a particular job, but it isn’t covered by conventional careers advice. And it’s difficult to find any information at all about more entrepreneurial paths. On the other hand, the existing resources are great for certain types of information. Governments collect detailed information on types of roles, what they involve, what skills and qualifications are required, basic salary data and industry trends. There are also some private providers of career information and advice, including advice on how to get into certain types of jobs. We’re going to prepare career profiles on specific careers that will help you work out whether to pursue that option . But in the meantime, here’s our first thoughts on the best resources that are already out there. --- - Published: 2013-02-03 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/vegetarian-research-the-value-and-the-need/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Factory farming, Research in relevant areas, World problems For-profit companies (including the meat, egg, and dairy industries) spend countless dollars each year on market research to figure out the best ways to persuade the public to consume their products. Vegetarian advocacy organizations have until recently spent virtually nothing to determine the best ways to persuade the public, despite the fact that their entire success as a movement depends on getting individual members of the public to change their dietary behavior. Until things began to change this past year, there had been virtually no research on the impact of various programs (i.e., no formal comparing of veg advocacy programs against one another to determine which are most cost-effective), and also no component testing of specific aspects of a program (for example, does video A or video B persuade more people to go vegetarian?). --- - Published: 2013-01-31 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/encourage-discussion-not-defensiveness/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Communication, Community & coordination, Mental health, Moral philosophy, Skills Rather than encouraging constructive discussion, presenting new ideas - especially about moral issues - can often spark confrontation. Why is it so hard to communicate new or controversial ideas? How can you improve the way you frame your case to encourage discussion, not defensiveness? --- - Published: 2013-01-29 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/career-advice-for-high-impact-activism/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Other topics, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Volunteering Nick Cooney is the Founder and Director of The Humane League – (http://www.effectiveanimalactivism.org/Top- charities) top recommended charity - and the Compassionate Communitites Manager at Farm Sanctuary. He’s also the author of (http:// www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/cooneyontitles.html), which is about how we can use an understanding of psychology to make social advocacy more effective (we recommend it!). As a member of 80,000 Hours, we asked him to share his thoughts on how to create impact with your career. --- - Published: 2013-01-27 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-putting-it-all-together/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills It’s time. This is where you pull together (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-for-earning-to-give-and-research/) the (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-what-do-employers-want/) you have (/2013/01/10-steps-to-choosing-your-degree/) to work out what you will be most likely to succeed at and which degrees will set you up to do good. --- - Published: 2013-01-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/10-steps-to-choosing-your-degree/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills I talked earlier about how (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-what-do-employers-want/). This is pretty similar to conventional advice on choosing a degree. But I found a lack of practical step-by-step guides to picking the right degree for you. This guide gives you a structured way to gather all the relevant information and to make a decision on your degree. Without a structured process it’s easy to narrow down your options too fast, to ignore important evidence, and to apply your evidence inconsistently. --- - Published: 2013-01-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-what-do-employers-want/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning In my (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-for-earning-to-give-and-research/) I looked at the role of degree choice for professional and academic careers. Now let’s branch out and look at the more general role of degree choice. This matters for people interested in (/advocacy), (/innovation), (/improving) as well as (/earning-to-give) in non-professional careers. At this stage in our research, it seems that degrees in more quantitative subjects improve your employment prospects and your flexibility, which is important for making a difference. The next most important thing is to pick a degree you expect to do well in. But, again, we’ll be refining that view as we explore more of the evidence. --- - Published: 2013-01-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-for-earning-to-give-and-research/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas, Skills One of the most important early career decisions many people face is what to study at university. This is the first of a series of posts on degree choice intended for people who mean to go to university. Degree choice plays an important role in your ability to make a difference later in life. People probably don’t put enough effort into systematically thinking about degree choice. In this post I’ll look at the importance of degree choice for professional careers and academic careers. In the (/2013/01/how-to-choose-a-degree-what-do-employers-want/) I look at the importance for general career choice. --- - Published: 2013-01-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/how-to-make-a-difference-in-research-an-interview-with-nick-bostrom/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Future of Humanity Institute, Research, Research in relevant areas Rob Wiblin and I interviewed Nick Bostrom, founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, about his career and ways to do high impact research. --- - Published: 2013-01-14 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/3-ways-to-broaden-your-career-horizons/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making One huge barrier to making good career decisions is thinking too narrowly. There are just too many options, and too many different ways to compare them, to possibly hold all of this in our minds at once. But this means we could end up missing valuable options or important considerations. Why do we do this, and how can you broaden your options? --- - Published: 2013-01-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/save-time-through-smart-buying/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy When people say that time is money, they mostly mean that you can earn money with your time. But it works both ways. In a previous post I discussed (/2012/12/spending-money-to-save-time-virtual-assistance/). Here I will discuss some ways that you can spend money on goods or services to save you time. --- - Published: 2013-01-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/trading-donating-and-charter-cities-an-interview-with-ben-gilbert/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Finance, Other pressing problems, World problems Ben Gilbert’s an 80,000 Hours member who previously worked as a trader in the City, but now focuses his attention on the effective giving community and the development of charter cities. We met in Oxford to discuss his career, jobs in trading and his plans for making a difference in the future. --- - Published: 2013-01-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/should-you-go-into-research-part-2/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Personal fit, Research Why do the best researchers get almost all the attention? One factor is the Matthew effect, in which “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” In this context, the Matthew effect means that the most accomplished researchers get increasing amounts of credit and attention. --- - Published: 2013-01-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2013/01/are-you-cheating-career-choice/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Communicating ideas, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Often when faced with a really difficult question, people “cheat” by opting to answer an easier but related one, without realising they’re doing it. Sometimes this is a helpful tactic, but it can be a huge source of error. Could you be doing this with your career decisions? People often end up cheating and answering an easier question because the real question is so complex that they don’t even know how to go about answering it. What we’re aiming to do is provide you with the tools and guidance you need to answer the questions “Which career is right for me?” and “How can I make a difference in my career?”, so that you don’t need to cheat. --- - Published: 2012-12-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/the-power-of-effective-activism/ - Topics: Advocacy, Career advice & strategy, Communication, Doing good in your current job, Other topics, Skills The power of persuasion for making a difference is often underappreciated. If you can convince just one other person to care about a cause as much as you, then you’ve easily doubled your impact. But people’s efforts at influencing others often aren’t as efficient as they could be. By stepping outside your circle of personal contacts and choosing a strategic approach, your time and influence can go ten or even a hundred times further. --- - Published: 2012-12-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/our-research-on-how-to-find-a-job-you-love/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit *Note: this post has been superseded by our (https://80000hours.org/career-guide/framework/job-satisfaction/) and (/career-guide/job-satisfaction/job-satisfaction-research/).* Many people aren’t as satisfied as they could be with their careers. This is a big problem: not only is the person less happy, they also end up making less difference in society. The even bigger problem is that people don’t seem to know what to do about this - how to find a job that they’ll find satisfying. There’s a lot of psychology research on happiness that could be really useful, but people don’t seem to be aware of it or at least aren’t applying it. So we decided to start collecting together the research that seems most useful to job satisfaction, and explaining how it applies to your career decisions. --- - Published: 2012-12-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/how-to-judge-your-chances-of-success/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making You want to make a difference. This means being as successful as possible in whatever high-impact path you pursue. In recent posts, I raised a worry that we might overestimate our chances of success. But at the same time we don't want to underestimate them: something we do have reason to think we're better than average at something. --- - Published: 2012-12-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/3-ways-to-advance-science/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Philosophy, Research, Skills There are three ways to contribute to scientific progress. The direct way is to conduct a good scientific study and publish the results. The indirect way is to help others make a direct contribution. Journal editors, university administrators and philanthropists who fund research contribute to scientific progress in this second way. A third approach is to marry the first two and make a scientific advance that itself expedites scientific advances. The full significance of this third way is commonly overlooked. --- - Published: 2012-12-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/christmas-gifts-goats-and-cash-transfer-charities/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Effective altruism It’s getting closer to Christmas, and we’re running out of time to get presents for friends and family. It can be hard to work out what presents people will actually enjoy. An increasingly popular option is to (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/oxford/cards.php) What's the best way to do that? Does it involve goats? You might be interested in (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/oxford/cards.php) . --- - Published: 2012-12-02 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/want-to-be-successful-know-your-odds/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Risk, Skills If you want to make a difference in your career, you need to think not just about which jobs have the most impact, but which jobs you’ve got the best chances of success in. This latter point can be easily neglected. It’s all very well working for an incredibly high impact cause, but if you do a rubbish job you won’t make much difference. Judging your chances of success is hard. Knowing the odds: the average person's chances of success, is a good place to start. --- - Published: 2012-12-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/12/how-to-choose-a-research-topic-an-interview-with-anders-sandberg/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, PhDs, Research, Skills Ben and I spoke with Anders Sandberg, a James Martin research fellow at the (http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk), about his career and how to make a difference through research. Here are some of the highlights! --- - Published: 2012-11-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/do-you-think-you-re-better-than-average/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills Most people think they're better than the average person: that they're smarter, more likeable, more attractive. This tendency to think of ourselves as better than average is a well-established bias. But if we need to do this to feel better about ourselves, who cares? The problem is that we'll also overestimate our chances of being successful. And if you want to work out where to make the most difference, you need to have a realistic idea of where your chances of success are best. --- - Published: 2012-11-25 - Modified: 2025-10-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/is-microcredit-mostly-hype/ - Topics: Global health, Research in relevant areas Microcredit has become one of the most popular ideas in charity. 2005 was named the (http://www.yearofmicrocredit.org/).The microcredit charity (http://www.kiva.org) has over 800,000 lenders, the highest possible rating from Charity Navigator, and was (http://www.kiva.org/updates/kiva/2010/11/19/kiva-chosen-as-one-of-oprahs-favorite.html)... The (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/press.html) boldly claimed that microcredit “must play a major part” in ending global poverty. Recently, however, criticism of microfinance has (http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=5161). And that’s a good thing, because **it’s far from proven that microfinance, on average, has any positive effects at all.** --- - Published: 2012-11-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/triumphs-of-intuition/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Experience with an emerging power, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skill-building and career capital, Skills Paramedics appear to make good, fast decisions based on "gut feeling": knowing what to do without knowing how you know. Along a similar vein, chess grandmasters are able to identify and decide on the best moves incredibly rapidly, moves which mediocre players may not even spot at all. But this ability to make astoundingly accurate judgements in the blink of an eye isn't limited to experts. We all do it every day: when we judge what some else wants from their facial expressions, or catch a ball without doing any complex physics calculation. How are these triumphs of intuition possible? --- - Published: 2012-11-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/why-don-t-people-help-others-more-part-2/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Economics, Effective altruism, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Psychology, Reasoning and decision-making In part 1, I talked about some ways in which we might motivate people to be more altruistic. Providing a personal connection with the victim and appealing to a someone’s emotional responses seem to help. So too can instilling a sense of responsibility to help others, and an understanding that doing so is not futile. All these observations are incredibly valuable. But I think there’s more to understanding why people don’t help others more, despite the fact they may believe in doing so in principle. A huge factor here is *the behaviour of others*. Most people appear to have a strong tendency not to want to help more than the other people around them. --- - Published: 2012-11-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/why-don-t-people-help-others-more-part-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Communicating ideas, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Mental health, Moral philosophy, Psychology As Peter Singer writes in his book *The Life You Can Save*, "he world would be a much simpler place if one could bring about social change merely by making a logically consistent moral argument." Many people might agree that a social change movement is noble, yet don't want to do anything about it. Why not? Why don't people help others more? --- - Published: 2012-11-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/a-formula-for-the-perfect-job/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, How to get a job, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making Career choice is complex. Could a simple decision rule help us? This idea seems worth paying serious attention to, as there's a large body of research suggesting rules can improve decision making in other areas. --- - Published: 2012-11-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/80-000-hours-is-recruiting/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Fundraising, Job satisfaction, Research, Skills We're trying to build the world's best career advice organisation that helps you make a difference. That's a big project, and we're growing fast. If you'd like to help us out, now's your chance. --- - Published: 2012-11-10 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/interview-with-brian-tomasik/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career paths, Community & coordination, Personal fit, Philosophy, Skills, World problems (/members/brian-tomasik) is a member of 80,000 Hours who has spent many years thinking and writing essays about how to most effectively reduce suffering in the world. Research Director Robert Wiblin sat down with Brian (metaphorically) to learn about his intellectual journey and at times unusual conclusions. --- - Published: 2012-11-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/the-best-news-you-ll-hear-all-year/ - Topics: Career paths, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Global health, Philanthropic advising, Research in relevant areas The folks at (http://www.charitynavigator.org) get a lot of heat from people who care about charity evaluation. Their approach, up till now, has been mostly of the lamentable ( /2011/11/it-is-effectiveness-not-overhead-that-matters/) variety. Things are about to change. --- - Published: 2012-11-06 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/what-s-your-true-impact/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills We often confuse our true impact with what we do directly. Instead of focusing on what you do directly, ask yourself *what would have happened if I hadn’t been there?* The real *difference* we make is the difference between what happened because of us, and and what would have happened otherwise. Thinking about change like that opens up lots of new ways to make the world a better place. --- - Published: 2012-11-04 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/find-the-gate/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Philanthropic advising, Risk There’s an easy way to tell a smart dog from a stupid dog. There’s a fence in front of you, and behind it is a delicious juicy bone. You’re starting to salivate just thinking about how amazing it will feel between your teeth. Now you have a choice. If you’re a stupid dog, you’ll run at the fence, stand in front of the bone and start to bark. If you’re a smart dog, you’ll look along the fence, find the gate, run happily through it and devour your prize. Humans also have a hard time finding the gate. It’s easy to get preoccupied with the bone. It can look so inviting that you don’t take the time to look around, take things in, and choose the best path. Sometimes that path is indirect. It often means getting other people involved. But by spending the time, you can have far more impact... --- - Published: 2012-11-01 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/11/should-we-stop-interviewing-people/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Other pressing problems, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills, World problems Most employers rely heavily on interviews in recruiting. However, research suggests that the interview process is far from perfect. This is pretty worrying when we think about how much difference hiring the best candidate for an important job can make. It might sound crazy, but maybe we should stop interviewing people... --- - Published: 2012-10-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/sunk-costs-in-careers/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Foundations, Other pressing problems, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems In my last post (/2012/10/good-generals-let-their-soldiers-die-in-vain/). We saw that having paid for something distorts how you think about it later on. This is a very common experience in career decisions. You might be in a degree course you don’t want to be on, or climbing the ladder in a company you aren’t sure about, or find out that the dream job you’ve spent years working for isn’t as good as expected. It is only by forgetting these sunk costs that you can make the right career decisions and have as much impact as you can. But if you find yourself in this situation what can you do? --- - Published: 2012-10-28 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-to-be-a-high-impact-volunteer/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, Volunteering Lots of volunteering is definitely not actually about helping people. It usually doesn’t hurt, but neither does going for a walk. If what you really want is to volunteer your time to make the world a better place, what should you do? --- - Published: 2012-10-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/net-impact-survey-hopeful-news-for-ethical-careers/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Net Impact, a US charity, has released a report on attitudes towards ethical careers. The report contains hopeful news for the high-impact career market, but the findings must be treated with caution. The report suggests that current students are more inclined to go into ethical careers, and that they will be happier if they do. Having an impact with their job is very important to current students. 31% of students describe making an impact as essential, compared to only 15% of older generations. This is higher than the percentage of students who say wealth (13%) or prestige (19%) are essential. !(http://netimpact.org/netimpact-logo.png) --- - Published: 2012-10-23 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/good-generals-let-their-soldiers-die-in-vain/ - Topics: Career planning, Economics, Foundations, History, Reasoning and decision-making, Risk In November 1914 Winston Churchill proposed a campaign to turn the tide of war on the Eastern Front. The plan was to fight a land war up the Gallipoli peninsula, secure safe passage for warships up the Dardanelles, and give the Russians access to the Mediterranean. The land war was a total failure. After landing in April 1915 the Allied troops lost momentum quickly. By August Ottoman forces had tied them into static trench warfare. The Allies couldn’t make any more progress, they had achieved nothing and 220,000 soldiers had died. It was at this point that the allied troops were ordered to evacuate. Some soldiers said they hoped their dead comrades wouldn’t notice them leaving. The 220,00 soldiers died “in vain”. And yet it was a great decision by Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Monro to let them die in vain. *Better that than lose even more men pointlessly.* --- - Published: 2012-10-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/why-most-charity-fundraisers-cause-harm/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Community & coordination, Fundraising, Job satisfaction Most fundraisers don’t raise extra money for charity. Rather, they shift money from one charity to another. This means that many fundraisers could actually be making people worse off... --- - Published: 2012-10-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/introducing-think/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Personal fit, Research in relevant areas, Skill-building and career capital Not long ago, there were zero organizations focused on effective altruism. Over the last few years, we’ve seen an explosion of interest in the topic. More and more of us are finding each other to ask not only “How can I help?” but “How can I help better?” There’s a new organization asking these questions:. The High Impact NetworK, THINK’s goal is to introduce people to ideas and skills that will help them do good more effectively. --- - Published: 2012-10-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/open-source-technology-a-career-in-engineering/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Community & coordination, Engineering, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills We recently interviewed Joshua Pearce, a professor at Michigan Tech and member of 80,000 Hours, about open source appropriate technology as a promising high impact research area. Here's what we found... --- - Published: 2012-10-17 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-much-is-a-volunteer-worth/ - Topics: Doing good in your current job, Effective altruism, Other topics, Volunteering The problem with volunteer labour is that it’s free, so a charity has an incentive to recruit volunteers as long as they contribute _some_ value to the charity. In the case of Feed My Starving Children, volunteer labour isn’t just free; it’s a source of revenue. Feed My Starving Children don’t use volunteers in the US for their adept food-handling skills or their convenient location: they use them to attract donations, which volunteers are encouraged to make. --- - Published: 2012-10-14 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/the-most-important-unsolved-problems-in-ethics/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Foundations, Moral philosophy, Philosophy, World problems In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert published a list of 23 of the most important unsolved problems in mathematics. This list heavily influenced mathematical research over the 20th century: if you worked on one of Hilbert’s problems, then you were doing respectable mathematics. There is no such list within moral philosophy. That’s a shame. Not all problems that are discussed in ethics are equally important. And often early graduate students have no idea what to write their thesis on – and so just pick something they’ve written on for coursework previously, or pick something that’s ‘hot’ at the time. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine the same is true of many other academic disciplines. --- - Published: 2012-10-11 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-to-do-one-year-of-work-in-four-hours/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Global health, Philanthropic advising, Research in relevant areas The author, Tim Ferriss, promises to teach you how to cut your working week down to just four hours, using a careful combination of Indian virtual assistants, the 80/20 principle and automatic email responders. But Ferriss has nothing on us. If your goal is to help others, then you can cut your entire working year down to just four hours. --- - Published: 2012-10-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/why-don-t-charities-spend-more-on-fundraising/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Fundraising, Organisation-building People often think it’s bad for their charity of choice to spend money fundraising. This has always been a mystery to me. If a charity can use your money to go out and raise even more money, that’s great! They’ve just multiplied the impact of your donation. It turns out that charities are being pretty rational after all. --- - Published: 2012-10-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/when-should-i-quantify-quantification-part-4/ - Topics: Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Global health, Research, Risk, Skills Every 48 seconds someone dies of malaria. Every one of those deaths is a human being with passions and loves and feelings. When we talk about quantifying our impact on the world it is important not to forget what those numbers mean. They mean people. Every single year of happy life we can give, is a joyful thing to the person living it. This is ultimately why we what to have as much impact as possible. Because more people living happy joyful lives is better than fewer. --- - Published: 2012-10-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/how-to-do-important-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Graduate school, Research, Research in relevant areas, Skill-building and career capital Many academics want to do important research that makes the world a better place. Unfortunately, there’s virtually no guidance out there. We’re aiming to build a resource of strategies and ideas for finding high impact research questions, as well as practical information about how to get involved with them. In this post, we take a first step and **explore how to find research questions that need your talent.** --- - Published: 2012-10-03 - Modified: 2025-10-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/let-s-stop-building-schools/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Other topics, Prioritisation frameworks, Research in relevant areas, World problems I recently came accross Taylor Conroy, who’s using an innovative fundraising technique to let ordinary people to raise $8,500 to build a school with just (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC02SmuOxYI). The method has since been expanded to include (http://www.thechangeheroes.com/sign-up/##.UGSEz03A_Sg). The fundraising is amazing, but I can’t help slightly regretting the goal towards which Taylor has directed his considerable talents. Building a school is a motivating, tangible project, which seems to *obviously* be a good thing. They can send you pictures of it after it’s built. But is this really where we should be directing our efforts? --- - Published: 2012-10-02 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/10/quantification-as-a-lamppost-in-the-dark-quantification-part-3/ - Topics: Philosophy, Risk Late one evening a police officer comes across a man on the way home from a party. He is quite drunk and looking for something under a lamppost. “What are you looking for?” asks the policeman. “My keys,” the man replies, pointing down the road a little way, “I dropped them over there.” The policeman is baffled, “Then why are you looking for them here?”. “Because there’s no light over there.” The joke is old but it gets to the heart of the debate over quantification. Is it best to look for keys under lampposts? --- - Published: 2012-09-27 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher-part-ii/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Personal fit, Philosophy, Research, Skills There’s a second method for high impact philosophy. Let’s call it the bottom-up method. Begin by asking ‘which are the biggest decisions that one typically makes in life?’ --- - Published: 2012-09-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/quantum-quest-pruning-procrastination/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Skills In a series of posts, I will offer a perspective on the “quantum quest” - the evolving attempt to make tomorrow better than today. Changing the world is certainly a quest. And while the evolution may appear to be smooth and continuous, it happens in discrete steps – hence the “quantum”. --- - Published: 2012-09-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/quantification-part-2-the-dangers/ - Topics: Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Research, Risk Somalia is in crisis. For decades it has been racked by civil war, famine, and political violence. Members of 80,000 Hours who want to help the people of Somalia will most likely explore various ways they can help and assess them quantitatively. Is it obvious that quantitative methods provide the correct tools to deal with a crisis like this? Or instead can quantification limit the kinds of possible interventions we think about, blinding us to significant long term solutions? --- - Published: 2012-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/does-money-make-you-happy/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Research, Skills If we’re to believe the Internet, (http://quotationsbook.com/quote/27092/) (http://snigdhakrishna.com/money-happiness) (http://quotationsbook.com/quote/27092/) (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/106119) (http://www.girlnextdoorfashion.net/2010/08/whoever-said-that-money-doesnt-buy.html) whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop. Indeed, the happiness of others can be bought at bargain-basement prices with a donation to an effective charity. If you’re thinking of donating a substantial portion of your income, though, it's natural to wonder how your well-being will be affected. What can research tell us about this..? --- - Published: 2012-09-12 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/quantification-part-1-an-introduction/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making, Skills Who was the most important person in the 20th century? JFK? Einstein? Bill Gates? On the one hand it’s a silly question. On the other our different approaches to answering it tell us a lot about how we think about issues of great importance... --- - Published: 2012-09-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/do-you-really-know-what-job-will-make-you-happy/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit Why are so many people dissatisfied with their jobs? A big part of the problem is that we’re pretty bad at predicting how happy things will make us, or how long that happiness will last. This has some serious ramifications for career choice... --- - Published: 2012-09-05 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/is-there-such-thing-as-a-bad-charity/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Other topics, Research in relevant areas When we talk about giving to charities there’s a dirty secret we try really hard not to mention. Some charities are “bad”. --- - Published: 2012-09-01 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/09/how-good-are-the-best/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Foundations, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Reasoning and decision-making Imagine you’re offered the top job at (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/schisto) – one of the ( http://givewell.org/charities/top-charities) – should you take it? --- - Published: 2012-08-29 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-we-sacrifice-doing-what-we-love-to-make-a-difference-part-2/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit, Skills Making a difference can lead to a satisfying career, so you might think we should just focus on making a difference, and happiness will follow. But, a I will show, we’re also more likely to succeed, and therefore to make more difference, in careers we enjoy. So we still need to think about which careers we’ll enjoy. --- - Published: 2012-08-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/how-much-malaria-is-biodiversity-worth/ - Topics: Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Future generations & longtermism, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Prioritisation frameworks, Research in relevant areas Every day, almost everything we do is about prioritisation. Given how important prioritisation is, and how much people seem to care about doing it right, it’s startling that relatively little research is done into how best to prioritise the most important issues facing society. What do you think the most important challenges facing humanity are...? --- - Published: 2012-08-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-we-sacrifice-doing-what-we-love-to-make-a-difference-part-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit We all want to find a career which makes us happy: but for many there seems to be a conflict between doing what one loves, and making a difference. My initial interest in 80,000 Hours was sparked by a desire to resolve a conflict between wanting to make a difference in my career, and wanting to pursue philosophy research (which I considered fairly low impact.)(1) I recognised that I could potentially make more difference by applying my numerical skills to a high-earning career and donating to greater causes - but the thing is, I just don’t want to do this. And shouldn’t this count for something, even for the aspiring effective altruist? Should we have to give up doing what we love in order to make a difference? --- - Published: 2012-08-17 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/project-launch-effective-animal-activism/ - Topics: Career paths, Effective altruism, Factory farming, Volunteering, World problems Among the goals of 80,000 hours is to provide resources to our community on the issues that matter most to us. As a result, we took the initiative to launch a new web-page dedicated to Effective Animal Activism: (http://effectiveanimalactivism.org/), as a part of 80,000 hours, for our members to research, share, and act upon the most effective forms of giving our time or money to help animals. --- - Published: 2012-08-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/how-to-find-a-job-you-ll-love/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, How to get a job, Job satisfaction, Mental health, Personal fit If you want to be satisfied at work, what characteristics should you look for? Prestige, money, something you’re (/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1/), a corner office? ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Career-Ahead-Complete-Handbook/dp/0956111807) on careers guidance often start by asking you to consider your values and desired lifestyle, and then to find a job that matches them. But why expect this approach to work? Research has shown that the only consistently present characteristic of satisfying jobs is that the work itself is mentally challenging (1)(2). This suggests that finding challenging work should be the starting point for a satisfying career. --- - Published: 2012-08-15 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/social-interventions-gone-wrong/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Economics, Effective altruism, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making Lots of social interventions end up doing more harm than good. Many more make no difference at, and they're just a waste of resources. At times, we’ve probably argued with friends about which interventions we’d like to see, and which we wouldn’t. But are we any good at judging what’s likely to work? Try and guess which of these eight programs made a difference, which had no effect, and which made things worse... --- - Published: 2012-08-12 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/what-is-going-on-at-80-000-hours/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised This is an exciting time for 80,000 Hours. One month ago we took on our first full-time staff members. Over this summer there will be six of us working full-time on 80,000 Hours... --- - Published: 2012-08-10 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-you-go-into-research-part-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Expertise relevant to a top problem, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Research, Skills Should you go into a research career? Here’s one striking fact about academic research that bears on this question: in most fields, the best few researchers get almost all the attention... --- - Published: 2012-08-04 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-2/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit In the (/discussion/do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1), I showed that we can’t blindly follow the widely-quoted careers guidance “do what you’re passionate about.” A more reasonable idea is that “do what you’re passionate about” is a heuristic for career choice – but even this doesn't seem like good advice... --- - Published: 2012-08-03 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/08/don-t-do-what-you-re-passionate-about-part-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Risk, Skills Common advice in choosing a career is “do what you’re passionate about.” An article on ( http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/how-to-find-your-passion.html) begins: “If you could do one thing to transform your life, I would highly recommend it be to find something you’re passionate about, and do it for a living.” The first paragraph of the major careers advice book *Career Ahead* ends “You owe it to yourself to do work that you love. This book will show you how.” But what happens if your passion is for beautifully executed contract killings? --- - Published: 2012-07-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/universalisability-immoral-industries-part-3/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Moral philosophy, Personal fit When I tell people that they might want to consider professional philanthropy as a career choice, they react in a lot of different ways. Some people raise an eyebrow. “Seb,” they say as if explaining something very obvious, “if everybody quit their jobs and took a high earning career to give money to charities, then there wouldn’t be anybody to give the money to!” --- - Published: 2012-07-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/collective-action-working-in-unethical-industries-part-2/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Risk In my ( /2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/) I looked at how it sometimes the best option is to take a high-earning job, even in an industry one thinks is harmful, in order to donate more to charity. There were a lot of caveats. The job has to earn more than you could have made otherwise to make up for the marginal harm you do by taking it. But, for a competitive job market in a mainstream job, that marginal harm is often much smaller than the total harm caused by the job. --- - Published: 2012-07-24 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/the-myers-briggs-type-indicator-a-popular-but-flawed-way-of-understanding-your-personality/ - Topics: Ability, Career advice & strategy, Job satisfaction, Personal fit It’s difficult to work out which jobs will suit you. To help with this problem, a variety of personality tests have been developed. It’s hoped these tests provide understanding of your personality in a way that can be used to predict what sorts of job might suit. One of the most widely used tests is the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI). According to Malcolm Gladwell, 2.5 million Americans every year take the test and 89 out of the fortune 100 companies use it. But it turns out there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical about its use in choosing careers... --- - Published: 2012-07-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/the-wider-consequences-of-giving-away-money/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Earning to give, Economics, Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Other topics Like most of the people here, I'm asking myself what I could do that would have a positive impact on others – about what would have the most positive impact on others. One important part of this is making decisions about what to do with money. This matters for anyone with more money than they feel they need for themselves and those close to them; and it matters especially for people who plan to do good by earning a lot and giving a lot away. I think it's fair to say that, so far, this site has generally answered this question by focusing on the good that can be done by giving to well-functioning charities. There is a lot to be said for this. The questions, though, seem wider to me. I'll try to explain here why I think so... --- - Published: 2012-07-21 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/why-do-people-love-charity-workers-pt-2/ - Topics: Career paths, Career planning, Effective altruism, Moral philosophy In the last post, I argued that self-sacrifice is not, on its own, relevant to the moral value of an act. But if that’s the case, then why (again) do people love charity workers just because their work involves greater self-sacrifice? --- - Published: 2012-07-19 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/what-questions-do-you-have-about-making-a-difference/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Effective altruism, Philanthropic advising, Research, Volunteering How can you best use your time to make a difference? 80,000 Hours now has several people working full time on research, and they would like your questions! --- - Published: 2012-07-16 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/why-do-people-love-charity-workers-pt-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Job satisfaction, Moral philosophy, Personal fit, Skills Many (http://www.ethicaljobs.com.au/files/How_to_Find_an_Ethical_Job.pdf) (https://web.archive.org/web/20110218023158/http://www.idealist.org/info/Careers/SectorKnowledge/Nonprofit) (http://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/inside-careers/why-work-for-a-charity) (http://www.princeton.edu/career/about_us/online-resources/by-industry/non-profit/) suggest that ethically minded folks go into the nonprofit sector. And some use the phrase (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Ethical_Careers_Guide.html?id=Ugy0AAAACAAJ) as a near-synonym for (http://www.graduationpledge.org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/GPA_career_greater_good_proof_brochure.pdf). Of course, some charity workers do a lot of good. But there seem to be many (http://player.vimeo.com/video/32787159) (/high-impact-careers) that do at least as much good as charity workers. Why, then, do people (http://www.whydev.org/52-reasons-why-you-should-date-an-aid-worker/)..? --- - Published: 2012-07-11 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/biases-in-career-choice-don-t-be-misled-by-the-category-high-impact-career-when-deciding-between-careers/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills I've noticed a bias in my thinking about career options that I'd like to help you avoid: I often group several careers together into a ‘high impact’ category even when the careers are very different in their potential to make an impact... --- - Published: 2012-07-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/07/the-high-impact-pa-how-anyone-can-bring-about-ground-breaking-research/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, High impact executive assistance, Research management Suppose you could identify a really important research topic - one that could yield huge benefits to millions of people something like ending ageing, developing a cheap, clean supply of energy, or discovering a cheap vaccine for HIV/AIDs. Suppose you think that carrying out this research is one of the most important things for humanity to do. At this point, it’s easy to think ‘how can I get involved with this field..?’ --- - Published: 2012-06-29 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/06/following-in-schindler-s-footsteps/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Doing good in your current job, Moral philosophy, Personal fit, Risk Can it be ethical to take a job working for an immoral corporation if one does so with the aim of making the world a better place? Suppose, for example, that you could work for an arms company, supplying munitions to soldiers fighting an unjust war, in order that you could earn enough money to save thousands of lives? You know that, if you don’t take that job, someone else more ruthless than you will take it, hurting more people than you would. Is that sufficient? Intuitively, it seems that it just can’t be ethical to do this. But a historical case suggests otherwise... --- - Published: 2012-06-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/06/on-triage/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Moral philosophy, Prioritisation frameworks, Risk Effective altruism focuses on efficiency. Any action that fails to effect the maximum possible reduction in suffering is considered suboptimal. But isn't this standard for use of one's time and money too harsh? As long as one is making some sort of positive impact on the world, isn't that enough? Can't one live ethically without devoting all of one's energy and attention to helping others? I believe that the answers ought to be ‘no’... --- - Published: 2012-05-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/05/fundraising-for-charity-a-career-for-effective-altruists/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Entrepreneurship, Fundraising Fundraising sometimes has a bad reputation, but there are a lot of reasons to think that being a fundraiser, or perhaps more likely, managing fundraisers may be a very effective career... --- - Published: 2012-05-13 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/05/the-flat-margin-effect/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Job satisfaction, Moral philosophy, Risk, Skills Here’s a claim to supplement the (/2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/): _The flat margin effect_: If you take a job that seems to have a strong (positive or negative) impact on the economy, the actual difference it makes to social welfare will be minimal. So who is this relevant to? And why should you believe it? --- - Published: 2012-05-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/05/how-to-be-a-high-impact-philosopher/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Effective altruism, Moral philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy academia, Research Philosophy is often impractical. That’s an understatement. It might therefore be surprising to think of a career as a philosopher as a potentially high impact ethical career - the sort of career that enables one to do a huge amount of good in the world. But I don’t think that philosophy’s impracticality is in the nature of the subject-matter. In fact, I think that research within certain areas of philosophy is among some of the most important and practical research that one can do. This shouldn’t be surprising when one considers that philosophy is the only subject that addresses directly the fundamental practical question: what ought I to do? --- - Published: 2012-05-02 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/05/donation-methods-credit-vs-cheque/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Personal fit, Psychology How much you give and the effectiveness of the organisations that you give to together determine the impact of your donations. The seemingly trivial decision of whether to pay by cheque or credit card may affect both these factors, so it’s worth considering which payment method will help you do the most good... --- - Published: 2012-04-16 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/04/the-haste-consideration/ - Topics: Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Effective altruism, Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making, World problems Here’s a crucial issue for altruists. _The Haste Consideration_: Resources for improving the world are vastly more valuable if you have those resources sooner. I’ll first explain one way to see that the haste consideration is true, and then I’ll talk about one important implication of this consideration. --- - Published: 2012-04-12 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/04/living-to-1000-an-interview-with-aubrey-de-grey/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Existential risk, Other pressing problems, World problems In his recent (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDJ_IjMwT20&context=C40174a6ADvjVQa1PpcFOEBMV6ytjvTudCo5CPyIuBqysnQTTFpls=), Aubrey de Grey argued that the (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SENS_Foundation)’s life extension research should be the most important project for any effective altruist. I collared him for an interview afterwards... --- - Published: 2012-04-07 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/04/where-are-the-women/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Personal fit, Skills Women (http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/10/24/charitable-giving-by-income-and-sex/) than men. They are more likely to give, and they give more money. So why is the smart giving/effective philanthropy/whatever-you-want-to-call-it movement so skewed male? ... --- - Published: 2012-03-29 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/03/heuristics-for-a-good-life/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Exploration I wondered what careers or the like help other people the most. Tyler reposted my question, (http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/06/what-career-helps-other-people-the-most.html): *(Let’s) rule out ‘become a billionaire and give away all your money’ and ‘cure cancer’ by postulating that said person ends up at the 90th percentile of achievement in the specified field but no higher.* Unfortunately calculating the net costs and benefits of all the things one could do with oneself is notoriously impossible. So how about some heuristics for discerning what types of jobs tend to be more socially beneficial? --- - Published: 2012-03-26 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/03/the-replaceability-effect-working-in-unethical-industries-part-1/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Earning to give, Personal fit, Replaceability High earning careers are often perceived as unethical careers. It’s not just that people think earning lots of money is bad, it’s also that a lot of the careers that make you really rich involve things that also seem immoral... This article will look at something called the replaceability effect. It’s the idea that, often, if you don’t take a job, someone else will take it. For some types of jobs, this is a very safe assumption, and it makes the harm you do by taking a job in an unethical industry much smaller than you might first guess. --- - Published: 2012-03-21 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/03/why-doesn-t-everyone-use-matching-donations/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Community & coordination, Philanthropic advising, Psychology, Risk For the last two years whenever I have felt charitable, rather than directly give away the money - to (http://villagereach.org/) incidentally - I have offered to match donations made by my Facebook friends 1:1. Initially I could only raise a few hundred dollars in matching donations, but most recently I attracted almost $2000 with little effort. I always kept the maximum amount I was willing to match above what I expected would be forthcoming, so that matchers were apparently inducing me to donate more. Is all this a good thing to do? --- - Published: 2012-03-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/03/review-of-dead-aid/ - Topics: Accidental harm, Career advice & strategy, Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Government & policy, Other topics Dambisa Moyo's best-selling 2009 book _Dead Aid_ caused a considerable stir upon its release; written by a young African woman, it stood out in a field dominated by ageing, white academics. It stands, along William Easterly's _The Elusive Quest for Growth_ and _The White Man's Burden_, as the central work of foreign aid scepticism... --- - Published: 2012-03-05 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/03/what-is-an-effective-altruist/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Earning to give, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills 80,000 Hours is built around the idea of effective altruism. What does _that_ mean? --- - Published: 2012-02-28 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/the-road-less-travelled-replaceability-and-neglected-causes/ - Topics: Effective altruism, Replaceability The (/2012/01/just-what-is-making-a-difference-counterfactuals-and-career-choice/) often means that pursuing conventional ethical careers isn’t the way to have the most impact. Instead, it’s better to focus activities in which you have a special edge, or on _neglected_ activities - those which wouldn’t get done if it wasn’t for you. --- - Published: 2012-02-27 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/lots-of-website-updates-on-80-000-hours/ - Topics: About 80,000 Hours, Other topics, Uncategorised The last month has been a big one for the 80,000 Hours website. Thanks to our comms and web team for working so hard on it! Here's a whirlwind tour of the recent changes... --- - Published: 2012-02-27 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/26th-of-september-petrov-day/ - Topics: Advocacy, Existential risk, Foundations, Global priorities research, Government & policy, History, Moral philosophy Here’s another candidate for Most Important Person Ever, albeit one whose footsteps will be harder - hopefully impossible - to retread. --- - Published: 2012-02-25 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/5-ways-to-be-misled-by-salary-rankings/ - Topics: Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Income, Other topics Suppose that you plan, like many members of (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/) or the (http://givingpledge.org/), to give a significant portion of your income to highly effective causes, and as one factor in your career decision you want want to assess how much you will be able to donate in various fields. National wage and employment surveys, such as the UK (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/ashe-results-2011/ashe-statistical-bulletin-2011.html) or the US Occupational Employment Statistics (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm) provide good places to start. However, typical salary is an imperfect measure of career earnings. This post discusses five ways in which the national surveys can mislead at first glance, particularly for the most financially rewarding areas, in hopes of providing some protection to the casual explorer and explaining how in-depth analysis can help. --- - Published: 2012-02-23 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/in-praise-of-viktor-zhdanov/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Effective altruism, Exploration, Global health, History, Moral philosophy, Research Until 2010, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Zhdanov), didn't even have a Wikipedia page. No big deal, you say, unless you realize Viktor Zhdanov was the single most important person of the last millennium. A bold claim, and one which I will attempt to substantiate. No angel, he was involved in the Soviet Union's biological warfare program, but the good he has done is incalculable. --- - Published: 2012-02-21 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/software-engineering-britain-vs-silicon-valley/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Doing good in your current job, Experience with an emerging power, Income, Job satisfaction, Other topics, Personal fit, Skills, Software engineering Several British members of 80,000 hours, both students and people considering switching careers, have asked about entering the field of software development. The field has a reputation as high-paying, and in Silicon Valley, the heart of the global software industry, average salaries are now (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2399247,00.asp) over $104,000 (£66,000) with generous bonuses. This image is bolstered by the spectacular success of tech startup founders like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, communicated by news media and movies like (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network). Moving from salaried to startup status and back is easier than in many industries, a fact which should be of special interest to (/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/) with (/2012/02/entrepreneurship-a-game-of-poker-not-roulette/), as discussed in the two linked 80,000 hours blog posts. The media report fierce competition for engineers between companies like Facebook and Google. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom there have been recent news stories with titles such as (http://thenextweb.com/uk/2010/07/02/the-least-employable-graduates-in-the-uk-computer-science-graduates/). What is the real story here? How attractive is the software industry for those who want to make money and use it to do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation)? In some ways, the British statistics are misleading, but they also reflect a real difference: software engineers in the US, and especially Silicon Valley, really are better compensated. This post will lay out the supporting data, and discuss ways people outside the United States can make their way to Silicon Valley. --- - Published: 2012-02-19 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/entrepreneurship-a-game-of-poker-not-roulette/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Entrepreneurship, Experience with an emerging power, Founding a tech startup, How to get a job, Risk, Skill-building and career capital Follow-up to: (/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/) In a previous (/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/), I discussed how high-risk, high-reward careers can be a better deal for those who want to do good: if you strike it rich, buying a tenth car will add very little to your personal quality of life, but vaccinating a tenth child will help that child about as much as the first one. This matters in practice: most venture-backed startups fail, but the average (mean) financial gain to founders is measured in millions. However, it would be a mistake to think of the returns to entrepreneurship as predictably stemming from just showing up and taking a spin at the wheel of startup roulette. Instead, entrepreneurship is more like poker: a game where even the best players cannot predictably win over a single night, but measurable differences predict that some will earn much more than others on average. By paying attention to predictors of entrepreneurial success (whether good news or bad), you can better tell whether you have a winning hand or should walk away for a different game. And even if the known predictors don’t bear on your own situation, knowing about these predictors can dispel the “lottery illusion”, and can let you know that success is not magic, and that it is worth investing in skill, hard work, strategy, and an understanding of the game. Let’s take a look at some of those predictors... --- > How to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom? We analyse what kinds of people make it, and what your chances of making it might be. - Published: 2012-02-17 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/how-hard-is-it-to-become-prime-minister-of-the-united-kingdom/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Government & policy, Politics, Skills How much good should one expect to do in a political career aimed at Parliament or Prime Ministership in the United Kingdom? A number of members of 80,000 hours suspect that they have above-average suitability for politics, but want to compare the field against (/2011/11/high-impact-science/) or (/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/). To do that we need to think about the power of elected officials to sway policy in office, the value of different policies, and the probability that a political career will reach various levels of success. This post will take a stab at the last question, using data from Parliament and the educational system. With a strong academic background, interest in politics, and social skill those chances may be surprisingly good, as much as 1 in 3 for becoming an MP, and 1 in 300 for PM. Let's take a first pass at our (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem) and see how. --- - Published: 2012-02-13 - Modified: 2025-10-23 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/professional-philanthropy-vs-professional-influencing/ - Topics: Advice for undergraduates, Career paths, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Personal fit Some facts about charity are so useful that they just have to be shared. Here’s one from the website of Giving What We Can: > ‘It is not even a matter of some charities being 10 or 100 times as effective: even restricted to the field of health programs in developing countries, research shows that some are up to 10,000 times as effective as others.’ By reading this, most of us will have gained some motivation to give effectively, and this will deliver years of healthy life to those in need of charity. Just as we’re grateful to Giving What We Can for this help, it’s natural to wonder what we can do to nudge others towards cost-effective philanthropy. --- - Published: 2012-02-06 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/02/pledge-to-fight-neglected-tropical-diseases/ - Topics: Advocacy, Community & coordination, Earning to give, Effective altruism, Global health, Philanthropic advising, Research Treating NTDs is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/recommended-charities.php##sci) (http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities). So if news stories were ordered by its actual effect on human welfare, (http://oneinsevenpeople.co.uk/new-partnership-to-fight-ntds/) would have adorned the front of all major newspapers. Sadly not, but it can at least adorn this blog: pharmaceutical titans including GSK and Merck are teaming up with the World Bank and the WHO to try and eliminate some of the worst NTDs. See the full announcement for more info... (no further text) --- - Published: 2012-01-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/practical-ethics-given-moral-uncertainty/ - Topics: Foundations, Future generations & longtermism, Moral philosophy Practical ethics aims to offer advice to decision-makers embedded in the real world. In order to make the advice practical, it typically takes empirical uncertainty into account... But if practical ethics should take empirical uncertainty into account, surely it should take moral uncertainty into account as well. In many situations, we don’t know all the moral facts... --- - Published: 2012-01-30 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/just-what-is-making-a-difference-counterfactuals-and-career-choice/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Replaceability When we think about how to make a difference in our careers, it is natural to think about what we can do directly. We think about the children we could build schools for, the homeless person we could help, what campaigns we might take part in, and so on. But what we do directly is not the only thing that matters. We also need to think about what _would_ have happened if we hadn’t acted – which is called a counterfactual... --- - Published: 2012-01-24 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/high-impact-interview-1-existential-risk-research-at-siai/ - Topics: AI, Career paths, Career planning, Existential risk, Foundations, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Research, Skills The plan: to conduct a series of interviews with successful workers in various key candidates for high impact careers. The first person to agree to an interview is (http://lukeprog.com/) (aka lukeprog of (http://lesswrong.com/)), the executive director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, whose mission is to influence the development of greater-than-human intelligence to try and ensure that it’s a force for human flourishing rather than (http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/02/why_we_should_fear_the_paperclipper.html). --- - Published: 2012-01-22 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/new-donations-recommendations/ - Topics: Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Global health, Philanthropic advising, Research in relevant areas Givewell and Giving What We Can have both recently updated their (http://givewell.org/charities/top-charities) (http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/recommended-charities.php). As a response I've updated the '(/2011/11/the-best-causes-updated/)' post, with a few extra thoughts thrown into the mix. (end of post) --- - Published: 2012-01-22 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/is-banking-harmful/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Earning to give, Finance The basic argument for professional philanthropy is that, because giving your money away is so powerful, it's well worth the slight harm to the economy of some high earning jobs. But the NYT recently put up an opinion piece by Nicholas D. Kristof arguing that (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/opinion/kristof-is-banking-bad.html?_r=3&ref=global-home) at all... --- - Published: 2012-01-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/policy-careers/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Government & policy The 80,000 Hours 'Banker vs. Aid Worker' media campaign has certainly succeeded in causing a stir, but many have been misled about the central message of the organization. We are not based around the single idea that one should pursue a higher-earning career in order to donate the proceeds to charity - much less that bankers are inherently the most ethical career path. Rather, we wish to reflect seriously and in clear-headed fashion upon the impact our careers can have, and adjust our life plans accordingly. This means looking into the tremendous power our earnings have, but our impact is by no means limited to them... --- - Published: 2012-01-16 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/wikicharities-for-those-who-haven-t-seen-it/ - Topics: Advocacy, Community & coordination, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Research, User stories, Volunteering Just a quick note: In case you missed it in Sam's post on (/2012/01/health-vs-education/), some members of Giving What We Can have put together a (http://wikicharities.org/index.php?title=Main_Page). It goes into a bit more detail than the main GWWC website on various charities and the issues associated with them. It's still in its infancy, but like any Wiki is both a resource and an opportunity for interested researchers to help out. (no further text) --- - Published: 2012-01-08 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/salary-or-startup-how-do-gooders-can-gain-more-from-risky-careers/ - Topics: Being ambitious, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Effective altruism, Foundations, Founding a tech startup, Risk, Software engineering Consider Sam, a software engineer at Google. His employer ranks highly in both quality-of-life and salary rankings. Sam is a great coder, and passionate about his work. But Sam is not satisfied: he is sorely tempted to take his savings and launch his own company. There are costs in taking the plunge: entrepreneurship would mean working harder, and investing time and money into a venture that might easily fail with nothing to show for it. On the other hand, success would mean bringing his vision to life, and potentially a financial payoff far beyond what he could hope for as a salaried employee. Considering just these factors, Sam isn’t sure which way to go, like many other talented technologists. But if one of Sam’s goals is making a big impact on the lives of others, that can tip the balance towards entrepreneurship. Here’s how... --- - Published: 2012-01-04 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2012/01/health-vs-education/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Global health, Medicine, Other pressing problems, Prioritisation frameworks, World problems If you want to make a difference with your philanthropic donations it is important to donate to a good charity, rather than buying books for a school that has no teachers and so on. But how do we decide? It is all very well to say that a charity that saves 100 lives is better than a charity that saves 10 lives for the same cost, but not all charities are so easily comparable. Here I will try to compare health and education interventions... --- - Published: 2011-12-08 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/12/delayed-gratification-choosing-when-to-donate/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Donating effectively, Global priorities research, Now vs later, Research in relevant areas Most charities spend money at about the rate at which they take it in, while most foundations pay out (https://web.archive.org/web/20130726110432/http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/PDF_XLS/workingpapers/workingpaper_9.pdf) of their assets each year, the legal minimum in the US. Which strategy does more good? The answer matters to you as well as to charitable organizations: you can give away your money soon after you earn it, or you can invest it in a (https://www.nptrust.org/what-is-a-donor-advised-fund/) and allow it to grow for an indefinite amount of time before giving it away. (Donor-advised funds offer tax savings and require that the money be contributed to charity.) The question of whether to give now or later is complicated, so I’ll mention just a few of the considerations involved... --- - Published: 2011-11-24 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/it-is-effectiveness-not-overhead-that-matters/ - Topics: Doing good in your current job, Donating effectively, Effective altruism, Foundations, Other topics, Reasoning and decision-making Would you rather help one person or 200 people, if it took the same effort? If you do what most people do, you’ll be lucky if you help even one. Let’s say you recognize that giving to charities can make a profound impact in others’ lives and perhaps you even believe it’s morally the right thing to do. Perhaps you once met someone who was blind and now you are drawn to helping the blind. You’ve made the choice of a cause, but there are hundreds of organizations that help the blind and thus seem deserving of your money. --- - Published: 2011-11-22 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/today-show/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Philanthropic advising 80,000 Hours founder Will Crouch appeared with Private Eye editor Ian Hislop on BBC Radio 4’s The Today Show. The interview opens with Will explaining the logic behind 80,000 Hours’ “Banker vs. Aid Worker” campaign: namely, that a professional philanthropist, or someone who enters a lucrative career with the intention of giving much of it away, can fund the work of several aid workers, and as such can do several times as much good. --- - Published: 2011-11-22 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/william-macaskill-of-80-000-hours-featured-on-the-today-programme/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career planning, Community & coordination, Job satisfaction, Personal fit, Skills Want to make a difference? Want to make the most different that you can? Become a banker. An ethical banker. Not what you expected? Research on professional philanthropy by an Oxford University ethicist today reveals a new way of looking at ethical careers. Believe it or not, it is possible to be an ethical banker. William Crouch today discusses his research at the Uehiro Centre in Oxford University's Philosophy Faculty with Ian Hislop on the Today Programme at 8:45am. --- - Published: 2011-11-20 - Modified: 2025-10-03 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/the-best-causes-updated/ - Topics: Global priorities research, Moral philosophy, Research in relevant areas If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’re convinced by the philosophy of 80,000 Hours - so you won’t find an argument for that philosophy here. This post is just to help you decide where to best give your money right now, based on the combined recommendations of the above organisations allowing for a couple of factors they don’t address. So... plenty of organisations want your money, but a select few really stand out. What’s the best option? --- - Published: 2011-11-15 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/high-impact-science/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Research, Research in relevant areas Paul Ehrlich began his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, with this statement: > The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to > death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a > substantial increase in the world death rate. Ehrlich predicted the deaths as a consequence of the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing world population, pointing to recent devastating famines in South Asia. But even as those words were written, the fields were being planted with new, higher-yielding semi-dwarf strains of wheat and rice. --- - Published: 2011-11-14 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/our-worst-subjects/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Community & coordination, Doing good in your current job, Global health, Other pressing problems, Prioritisation frameworks “I prefer to give to local organizations.” I've heard this a lot. Imagine a high school student who sits down to study for exams. Her chemistry book is lying closest to her on the desk, so she decides to study chemistry. Her father points out that since she has an A in chemistry and a D in geometry, studying geometry might help her grades more. “But that book is all the way over there in my backpack,” the student points out; “I prefer to study locally.” --- - Published: 2011-11-09 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/2011/11/estimation-is-the-best-we-have/ - Topics: Foundations, Reasoning and decision-making, Risk This argument seems common to many debates: ‘Proposal P arrogantly assumes that it is possible to measure X, when really X is hard to measure and perhaps even changes depending on other factors. Therefore we shouldn’t do P’. This could make sense if X wasn’t especially integral to the goal. For instance if the proposal were to measure short distances by triangulation with nearby objects, a reasonable criticism would be that the angles are hard to measure, relative to measuring the distance directly. But this argument is commonly used in situations where optimizing X is the whole point of the activity, or a large part of it. --- --- ## Skills > Learn how to get started in an engineering career, and how you can use engineering skills to solve pressing global problems. - Published: 2023-12-15 - Modified: 2025-10-26 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/engineering/ - Topics: AI, Career advice & strategy, Career paths, Career planning, Climate change, Engineering, Global health, Skills --- > Become an expert on an emerging power to improve international coordination on global issues including AI, pandemics, and climate change. - Published: 2023-10-31 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/emerging-power/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, China-Western coordination, Government & policy, Skills, Specialist in emerging global powers --- > Through communicating important ideas, you could end up inspiring many people to do far more good than you could ever have done by yourself. - Published: 2023-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/communication/ - Topics: Advocacy, Being a public intellectual, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Communication, Doing good in your current job, Journalism, Marketing, Other topics, Skills --- > Which areas of specialist knowledge are most applicable to solving the world's most pressing problems? - Published: 2023-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/specialist-knowledge/ - Topics: AI hardware expertise, Biorisk strategy & policy, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Economics, Research in relevant areas, Skills --- > Working in policy can be a rewarding and high-impact way of changing the world for the better. Learn how to get started. - Published: 2023-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/political-bureaucratic/ - Topics: Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Government & policy, Policy and political skills, Skills --- > Find out how to help build and boost great organisations through skills like management, operations, legal and financial oversight, entrepreneurship and fundraising. - Published: 2023-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/organisation-building/ - Topics: AI companies, Building effective altruism, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Consulting, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Founding a tech startup, Law, Operations, Organisation-building, Skills, World problems --- > Learn to code, then apply your skills to something that really matters. Here's how to get started and how to use your coding skills for good. - Published: 2023-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/software-tech/ - Topics: AI safety technical research, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Computer science, Data science, Machine learning, Skills, Software and tech skills, Software engineering --- > Learn how to do research, and how you can use research skills to do good. - Published: 2023-09-18 - Modified: 2025-10-13 - URL: https://80000hours.org/skills/research/ - Topics: Biomedical research, Career advice & strategy, Career capital, Career paths, Global priorities research, Research, Research in relevant areas, Skills --- --- ## Podcast --- ## Podcast (80k After Hours) ---