All our research
We’ve spent over five years doing research into how to choose careers with social impact. Our most important findings are summed up in our career guide, so that’s where to start if you’re new. After you’ve read the guide, come back here to see all our other most important content. Read what’s here, and you’ll be at the cutting edge of our understanding of social impact careers.
Supplementary articles to the career guide
- Advice for undergraduates
- Further reading – a list of books and articles we like.
- What’s the meaning of making a difference?
- How to do high-impact research?
- Does money make you happy?
- 4 biases to avoid in career decisions
- Can you guess which social interventions work?
- What’s the best charity to donate to?
- How to review your career
- Which skills make you most employable?
If you’re interested in a specific area, or already have expertise in an area, check out the problem profiles and career reviews below, and advice by area of expertise.
Career reviews
Problem profiles
A series of profiles designed to help you find the most pressing problems you can contribute to, and thereby have a larger social impact. Learn more about how we compare different problems, see how we try to score them numerically, and check the list of all problems we’ve considered so far.
Doing Good Better
In his book, 80,000 Hours co-founder and president William MacAskill introduces the principles underlying effective altruism and presents a practical guide to increasing your impact.
“Beautifully written and extremely smart. Doing Good Better should be required reading for anyone interested in making the world better.”
Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics
The advanced career guide
If you’ve already read our career guide and now want to take your understanding to the next level, we’re making a further reading list here.
- How to compare two jobs in terms of impact
- How to compare two problems in terms of how high-impact they are
- Should you wait to make a difference?
- Is it ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good?
- How much risk to take? (coming soon, along with much more)
If you want to work with the effective altruism community, then also check out:
- How to coordinate as a community (or see this older article).
- Talent gaps
- Also see Moral Trade, an academic paper by our trustee Dr. Toby Ord, and Considering Considerateness, an article by our sister organisation.
Other articles
Other research articles that didn’t make it into the above.
Still have a question?
Search our blog by topic to see if we’ve written anything that helps. If not, post a question on our LinkedIn group.
Or if you’d like more reading, see our further reading list.