All our research
We’ve spent over five years doing research into how to choose careers with social impact. Here’s how we approach research and why we think our findings are credible.
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.
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.
- Should you wait to make a difference?
- The meaning of making a difference
- A checklist for making rational career decisions
- How much risk to take? (coming soon)
- How to prevent burnout (coming soon)
- How to maximise your impact within a job (coming soon)
If you want to work with the effective altruism community, then also check out:
Then read the career reviews and problem profiles that are most relevant to you.
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
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.
Other key articles
Other research articles that didn’t make it into the above.
- How to compare two jobs in terms of impact
- How to make a difference in any career
- The difference between true and tangible impact
- Does money make you happy?
- 4 biases to avoid in career decisions
- Can you guess which social interventions work?
- Don’t follow your passion
- Don’t go with your gut instinct
- A series of posts on how to choose a degree (read an updated summary)
- What’s the financial return from earning a degree?
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 email us directly: rob@80000hours.org. We reply to everyone!
















