New releases

Update: Don’t follow your passion

Blog post by · Published September 22nd, 2014

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.

Continue reading →

What does good research look like?

Blog post by · Published September 18th, 2014

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 here. I’ve copied the text below.

What principles do you think we’ve missed? Which parts don’t you agree with?

Continue reading →

Update: How to choose a career

Blog post by · Published September 15th, 2014

One of our key new pages is ‘how to choose’ – a step-by-step process for making your next career decision. 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…

Continue reading →

Lots of new content released to the site

Blog post by · Published September 14th, 2014

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 getting started page.

The three most important pages are:

  1. Top careers: Lists the most promising careers from among the careers we’ve investigated so far.
  2. How to choose: A step-by-step process to make your next career decision.
  3. Our 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:

  • Top 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).
  • Cause selection: A framework for comparing causes, and our list of top causes.
  • Personal fit: A step-by-step process for finding a career that fits, and our views on ‘do what you’re passionate about’.
  • 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.

Continue reading →

Cause overview: cause prioritisation

Blog post by · Published September 5th, 2014

Katjagrace_25_july_14

Introduction

I recently conducted a ‘shallow investigation’ (see GiveWell) into cause prioritization, with the help of Nick Beckstead. 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 here and the collection of related interview notes and such is here. 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.

Continue reading →

Conversation with Paul Penley of Excellence in Giving

Blog post by · Published September 3rd, 2014

Paul_penley

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.

Continue reading →

Conversation with Paul Christiano on Cause Prioritization Research

Blog post by · Published August 20th, 2014

Christiano

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.

Continue reading →

Conversation with Owen Cotton-Barratt of the Global Priorities Project

Blog post by · Published August 12th, 2014

Owen-cotton-barret1-370x370

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 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.

Continue reading →

Foundation influence interview with Kerry Vaughan

Blog post by · Published July 31st, 2014

Kerry_vaughan_pic

Introduction

Kerry Vaughan was a member of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) – 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.

Continue reading →

How to influence policy? An interview with Owen Barder of the Center for Global Development

Blog post by · Published July 28th, 2014

Owenbarder_0

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.

Continue reading →

Careers in journalism – an interview with Larissa MacFarquhar

Blog post by · Published July 25th, 2014

Larrisa5

At the recent Good Done Right conference, 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 Strangers Drowning, 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.

Continue reading →

Good Done Right: audio recordings now online

Blog post by · Published July 20th, 2014

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 diverse range of speakers 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 audio recordings from most of the talks are now available on the conference website, 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.

Continue reading →

What does economics tell us about replaceability?

Blog post by · Published July 17th, 2014

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. Ben Todd and Seb Farquhar 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!); Paul Christiano and Ben Kuhn (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 Will MacAskill 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.

Continue reading →

Interview with Caroline Fiennes about opportunities in effective philanthropy

Blog post by · Published July 15th, 2014

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 Charity Navigator 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 recently raised funding to explore how to create a system for sharing evidence in the UK criminal justice sector.

Continue reading →

The payoff and probability of obtaining venture capital

Blog post by · Published June 25th, 2014

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.

Continue reading →

Which university has better entrepreneurs?

Blog post by · Published June 24th, 2014

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 work on the wealth of Harvard alumni.

Continue reading →

How to quantify research quality?

Blog post by · Published June 23rd, 2014

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.

Image_0

Continue reading →

What is the average net worth of Stanford entrepreneurs?

Blog post by · Published June 18th, 2014

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 research project to into 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.

Continue reading →

Increasing your earnings as a doctor

Blog post by · Published June 17th, 2014

Making a difference to patient’s lives is a gratifying part of medical work. However, an investigation 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.

Continue reading →

Advisory board report June 2014

Blog post by · Published June 15th, 2014

As part of our annual review, 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 here.

Continue reading →