The career questions thread

Good question. I'll try to come back to this with a longer answer, but for the time being, which causes did you have in mind? The answer depends quite a bit on the area.

1) For the causes you're interested in, do web research to find all the most relevant organisations in the cause. Open Phil's cause overviews are a great starting point: http://www.givewell.org/labs/causes

Try to identify the best run and most effective projects in the cause, then go and speak to people at those organisations, then try and get jobs whereever you've got the best fit.

2) If you want to start a new project, it's harder. The main thing is to get to know people working in the causes you're working on who are succeeding and doing innovative things. That's how you'll discover new projects, and find people who want to work with you, and trust you enough to go ahead.

How to meet people depends on the cause. Maybe there's a good conference, a meet-up, or a certain organisation that's the centre of everything.

Try to discover what the big problems are in the cause, then try to figure out how they can be solved. Try to hack together a basic version of your idea to show that you can solve it, then use that to raise money.

More generally, learn about all the writing on tech startups, since this seems to the be state of the art on how to start new projects (though it doesn't apply to everything you'd do in the nonprofit sector).

http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

I realise this is only a very partial answer, so let me know what other questions you have.

Like I say in the comments, I broadly agree. I'm not so excited about more people optimising around earnings at the margin, unless they especially want to go into a high-earning career or have an especially strong advantage for earning money. If I had to guess the optimal medium-term proportion of EAs earning to give, I might go for 10%. Note the balance depends quite a bit on your views of which causes are most important.

My personal take is that being a research manager at CSER is good. Researcher at MIRI or CSER would be good if one was quantitatively inclined or expert in policy or risky tech. Tech policy would be good in general if one was expert at that.

Broadly, I think that most promising careers currently accumulate and leverage some resource that is not money, but that relates to humanity's future potential, in a way that folks like Musk or Moskovitz can't easily purchase. Things like political clout, influence of researchers and influence of nvestors. If one can't run a program to get any such resources, then earning to give could be decent if - like Matt Wage and Jaan Tallinn, you see opportunities that others miss.

On the first question:

One you get to the level of choosing between EA orgs, I think the most key consideration is personal fit (i.e. your chances of being really really good at the job). Within EA orgs, good personal fit seems like the best proxy for both your impact and your career capital. (the next most important would be how generally promising the org is).

Given that, it's hard to talk about the best generally good opportunities. It's also hard because the situation changes very rapidly.

And that means, I think it's more about talking to lots of different organisations and seeing if there's a good role for you that's available or could be created.

Which considerations to use?

A starting point would be, roughly in order of importance:

1. Personal fit in high earning careers vs. personal fit in best direct work opportunities. You can start to approximate this by asking various organisations whether they'd prefer to hire you or receive $x per year in donations. The more coordinated you are with other EAs, the closer this gets to something like comparative advantage. In general I think EAs are tilting too far towards etg.

2. Career capital potential of the two options. In particular, how likely are really impressive achievements in each option? to what extent do you expect EA to take off? how impressive will your peers be? how useful are the skills?

3. How uncertain you are about which causes will be best in the future (earning to give is the more flexible strategy, though if you gain transferable skills it's not so bad).

4. Your assessment of whether the top causes are going to be more funding constrained or more constrained by the type of skills you could offer in the future.

Here's a bunch more rough notes on the topic, just considering impact potential: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a5SDGv1bX09fRe7a6mp6BzAv69LJVkZ-o9r3WYFk_yM/edit

In terms of short-term decision making strategy, also consider:

1. How can I test each option?

2. Which best keeps my options open?

Looking at 80K's career profiles, you could try being a foundation program manager or founding effective non-profits. Software Engineering and Data Science are also quite collaborative.

Civil service

I agree that thinking about your advocacy efforts is important, but I'm not sure with this example there's an obvious way to call it one way or the other. It would depend on the extent to which you're actually influencing other people. Also, there's effects in the opposite direction e.g. doing more remarkable, drastic actions makes you stand out more, which gives you greater reach. (e.g. giving 5% of your income is good, but giving 50% means you get international press coverage). Doing what you sincerely believe is best can also be powerful.

Some more relevant reading:

http://www.jefftk.com/p/optimizing-looks-weird

https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/the-economy-of-weirdness/

Hi there,

One quick thing is that although our career profiles (currently) focus on those kinds of people, a lot of our advice is more general e.g. our framework, strategy advice, how to choose pages.

If you're trying to figure out your next step, then the first thing I'd recommend is working through the process on our how to choose page: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-choose/

After you've done that, let me know what your key uncertainties are.

Turning to expected earnings directly, there's doesn't really exist a general model for someone's expected earnings. You can get an idea of potential earnings of different jobs with these kinds of resources: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/how-to-find-out-earnings-for-different-jobs/

There's also some literature about whether doing a degree boosts your earnings: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/the-value-of-a-degree/ It generally finds that it does, on average, but whether it's worth it for you will depend on your situation. If lack of a degree isn't a blockage with respect to your current set of opportunities, then it might not be an issue. It also depends on what areas you want to enter. It will also depend on which program you could get into and your chances of finishing it.

There's also some literature about whether being self-employed boosts your earnings. It finds that on average self-employed people earn less, though those who own incorporated companies earn more.

Ben

If you're smart but you don't like school, maybe you have a comparative advantage in doing independent research and blogging about EA topics? Just a thought.

Well you could start by assuming you become a better than average programmer in your country? Bureau of Labor Statistics is very handy if you're in the US, but there are equivalents. If you decide to make a business, then you might want to look at 80k's research into startup earnings (I helped with this), although beware that the variance is very high and failure is near certain.

Other outside views: what are average earnings given your IQ? What did your parents earn?

I'm just going to state my views not fully back them up. I hope to cover this topic in more depth later.

I'll go through a couple of key considerations and how to settle them.

1) Expected earnings

We have a bunch of unpublished research on this. I think the earnings as a startup founder are considerably higher in expectation (say at least 5x) BUT only if you make it into a top 5 accelerator or similar. More broadly, top accelerators seem to have very strong selection power - almost no-one who's rejected by YC succeeds, but the odds are pretty good if you get in.

So I think reframe the question as "is it worth me spending a couple of months seeing if I can get into a top accelerator?".

That depends on your situation. Do you have a cofounder? Do you have a problem in mind? Other entrepreneurs in the EA community can probably advise you on this.

Also since the earnings of founding are delayed 5-10 years, they're worth about 50% less.

2) Career capital

You'll may improve your technical skills more as a SWE, but as a founder you'll learn more entrepreneurial skills and I think those are more valuable (in particular, within EA, there are loads of SWE, but a real shortage of entrepreneurs).

It's also better for networking, and you'll have to try out all types of work, making it good for exploration. The greater intensity also means you'll probably push yourself more.

If you fail as an entrepreneur in the US, I think you can go back to SWE with little or no penalty.

Overall I'd say the startup path is better for career capital, though there are counterpoints: http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2014/09/if-you-want-to-start-startup-go-work.html

3) Lifestyle

Being a startup founder is far harder work and far more stressful. Most founders say they went through really high highs and really low lows. Even the most successful startups are often close to failure several times. All startup founders work very long hours. If you can't hack this, then don't do it.

Startups also take over your life and become your sole focus. If you succeed, you'll be locked in for 5-10 years. If you're unwilling to commit to this one thing for so long, don't do it.

This means you'll also have little time for side projects.

4) Direct impact

Entrepreneurship probably generates more consumer surplus and positive externalities than being a SWE because it's more innovative. It'll depend on the companies though.

How strong a consideration this is depends on what cost-benefit ratio you put on your donations. If it's around 10, then it's probably important. If it's more like 100-1000, the donations dominate.

5) Flexibility

The startup founder path involves more 'lock-in', so if you're highly unsure, lean against.

6) The right reasons

In the startup world, people don't recommend starting unless you're extremely driven by the problem you're trying to solve. Going into it because you expect to earn more probably isn't good enough.

http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/

Conclusion

Overall, of those 2 options, I'd lean towards encouraging you to experiment with the startup path - try to put something together that you could pitch to an accelerator.

If you don't have a good idea, try to join an early stage startup instead (especially one via your network that's got top backers). This is also much better for lifestyle, in particular, it's much easier to quit, so you can try several times before hitting on a success.

Finally, this is a bigger question, but I don't think you should optimise for earning to give. I think you should work towards working at an EA org or potentially exploring other areas neglected by EAs.

As a distant observer, your .impact EA work seems unlikely to get replaced, whereas there are plenty of people doing startups - are you worried that adding a startup to your earning to give might squeeze EA work out?

Take your time. Your efforts are much appreciated.

Hi there,

We haven't yet put much thought into whether to do phds later on in your career.

One point is that because you'll have less time to utilise the qualification, the overall returns will be lower. e.g. if you graduate from a phd age 25, then you have 40 years to use the career capital. If you graduate from one age 35, then you only have 30 years, so the return will be about 75% as large. Whether or not this means it's not worth it, I'm not sure.

My other guess is that the more qualifications you have, the more diminishing the returns are. However, there is a boost from having a phd vs. a masters.

Two other thoughts:

1) Are you finding yourself constrained by the lack of an economics phd? What positions would you most like to take? Do these require phds? If not, consider just going into them directly.

2) Just a thought, you may be putting too much weight on 'career capital as qualifications'. You can also get career capital by just working on important projects, notching up achievements and through that building your network.

Not drawing on the 80k framework or anything: do you think you could become an influential economist in government and be confident that you are really working along the right lines without doing a relevant PhD? There are lots of senior economic advisor roles in and outside government I've seen that look influential that are closed to people without one? So is the question whether you want to become an influential civil servant or whether you want to become an influential economist? And what type of economics PhD would you do - they all have different tracks?

We do try to rate careers based on their 'advocacy potential' (basically how promising is this career as a way to spread important ideas), listing some of the most promising of those we've considered here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/strategy/strategies/advocacy/

However, more broadly I think this is a very difficult question. You can narrow down to a plausible short-list, but after that it's all about personal fit (i.e. choosing the area where you have the highest chances of outsized success).

It's also worth bearing in mind that success in almost any field translates into some measure of influence, because success gives you some combination of credibility, money and connections. So again, personal fit could be the key thing to focus on in the medium-term.

The short-list would be things like:

• Academia with an emphasis on being a public intellectual
• Non-academic public intellectuals
• Journalists and bloggers
• The media generally
• Politicians
• Advocacy and campaigning groups

Maybe teaching too, though the scale seems somewhat less than those above.

What type of arts do you enjoy? For instance, I always really enjoyed English and drama, and am now in a data science job where I am going to be writing up publications and doing talks in addition to my coding/stats work. If you go for a small or start-up company, you can often have a broader job like this where you can take on tasks that interest you - my perception is that larger companies tend to have more regimented roles.

If you're more into visual arts, web design, marketing or some sort of community-building/social logistics could be good options. They'd also provide good skills in short supply to volunteer to the EA community.

I think communication skills are very important. Some careers that 80,000 hours has explored relevant to what you are saying:

• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/foundation-program-manager/
• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/work-in-marketing/
• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/policy-oriented-civil-service-uk/
• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/program-manager-in-international-organisations/

Hi Eli,

There are many career paths in the arts. You can have an impact in them through:

1. Advocacy - gain a platform and use it to spread important ideas e.g. journalist who sometimes covers neglected topics; TV producer who works an important social issue into a plot line.
2. Gain skills and use them directly to help effective projects e.g. many projects need design skills for websites, promotional materials etc.
3. Seek out higher earning positions and earn to give. I'm not sure exactly what these are though - it's probably the less artistic stuff!

One concrete option that stands out would be learning web design with some basic front end web development. That's widely in-demand skill set which you could apply to a non-profit, or you could freelance and do pro bono work, or you could use to earn to give.

Also I'd say that at high school, I don't think you need to worry too much about knowing exactly what you'll go into. Prioritise exploring different areas, personal growth, and building useful skills. https://80000hours.org/2014/12/stop-worrying-so-much-about-the-long-term/

It's also worth keeping your options open. Many subjects are boring at high school, but turn out to be more interesting at university, when you start studying them 'for real'. Or just lucking into a good teacher can make a difference. There might be other quantitative subjects like economics and computer science that few people study at high school but you turn out to enjoy.

If you want to keep your options open, bear in mind it's easier to transfer from more quant subjects into more artistic ones than vice versa. So, if you're uncertain, consider at least doing a minor in something more quantitative at university.

Finally, don't forget that personal fit is always very important. If you're going to excel in arts, but be average at science, it could easily be better to do arts. If you're good at what you do (and it's not totally random!), then there will likely be good opportunities to use your skills to have an impact in the future.

From that short info, it sounds like a sensible decision.

I'd also recommend doing a thorough review of how your career is going once a year. And try to meet people in the effective altruism community and ask them if there's something you've overlooked.

Hi Amon,

If you're just looking to maximise salary, then I reckon look for the following factors:

1. Average earnings of graduates
2. Flexibility of skills
3. Personal fit - test this by trying out the subject

Average earnings of graduates is a clue to the earning potential. http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/majors-that-pay-you-back/graduate-degrees http://fortune.com/2015/04/27/best-worst-graduate-degrees-jobs/

However, bear in mind the data is normally not corrected for selection effects (i.e. smarter ppl study maths, and that's why maths phds earn more etc.). So take it with quite a bit of salt.

Also, you need to take into account flexibility of the skills, because it's highly uncertain what professions will be highest paid in the future.

Petroleum engineer graduate degrees are currently among the highest paid, but that industry might go into structural decline due to cheap solar panels. More broadly, it's common for skilled professions to be highly cyclical.

So, I'd say it's better to go for more widely applicable subjects like statistics or computer science, rather than something narrower like finance or a particular type of engineering.

Finally, the rankings are only averages. It also really matters how good you'll be within the subject i.e. it's probably better to be great at economics than mediocre at engineering, even if engineers are higher paid on average. So that's why to factor in personal fit.

Finally, I'd say put especially high weight on flexbility, in case you decide to stop earning to give.

What would you say now ranks top based on this?

My guess for maximising salary would be something which is going to make you into a quant trader or financial engineer. There is a useful discussion on this site: https://www.quantstart.com/articles/Why-a-Masters-in-Finance-Wont-Make-You-a-Quant-Trader

Hard to say.

One quick thought is it depends a lot on what you want to do long-term. e.g. Studying economics would be a bit of a shift in direction, which could make sense if you wanted to go into policy or research, but not so much otherwise.

Another thought is to focus more on figuring out where you can really kick ass at what you do. All the options you list are good, so often then it comes more down to personal fit. Being really really good at something is often one of the best things you can do for your career capital.

A lot will also depend on the specific opportunities. Where can you work with great people? Where can you get a good mentor? If you want to build career capital, these are really important considerations too.

Final small thing, overall data science seems a little more in demand and a little higher paid than SWE, so could be good to move in that direction. I wouldn't put much weight on this though.

I'm currently doing a PhD in bioinformatics after doing a B.S. in biology. This probably isn't where I would have ended up if I could do it all over again, but it's a great way to get into a more quantitative field from a life sciences background. I took little math and no computer science in college, but I got into my PhD program on the strength of my biology experience. Now I'm using my PhD to make up for the skills I lack.

I did consider doing a masters, but I think a PhD offers much more career capital and prestige than a masters or certification. It also leaves more options open: for example, I've considered working for a funding agency like NSF. This would be impossible without a PhD. In my experience, biotech masters students were noticeably less sophisticated than the PhD students. They took fairly easy classes and did little research. Most PhDs in the U.S. are free and pay you a stipend. Compare that to masters degrees, which can cost $40K or more at a private university.

I'm doing bioinformatics at present. It seems to pay similarly to programming. Have you considered just doing programming / software development? That is usually more dependent on technical skill than credentialisation. Data science or data engineering could also be feasible if you like maths.

Could you do something more quantitative at Trinity? Generally more hard and quantitative keeps your options open better i.e. maths keeps your options open better than economics, and that keeps your options open better than finance.

I'd focus on options open more than prep for earning to give at this stage, however, if you were going for earning to give, then quantitative subjects like statistics, applied maths, engineering, and physics are also associated with the highest earnings. Though finance can be fine too.

I see that at Trinity you could also do pure economics, or you could do maths and economics or maths and philosophy. Maths and philosophy can be a great option if you're into it. From our recent profile:

In our view, philosophy is a good subject to study at undergraduate level if it’s taken in combination with a quantitative subject, like maths, computer science, or economics, because it teaches you how to write clearly, how to think clearly, and because certain issues in moral philosophy seem to us to be crucial in determining how to live your life. It’s a weaker all-purpose qualification than quantitative subjects, so we’d encourage undergraduates not to single-major in philosophy if they have the option of also majoring in a quantitative subject.

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/philosophy-phd/

i.e. you can get both writing skills and quantitative skills, learn about important topics in the humanities, and get an impressive general purpose qualification.

I think the fame of the university you go to is worth putting some weight on, though it's a tricky issue. So, in general I'd say Trinity.

Finally, don't forget personal fit. Don't take a course you think you'll be bad at or really won't enjoy!

Some more thoughts here: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/summary-of-our-thoughts-on-how-to-pick-a-degree/

Sounds hard to decide. Have you any idea what kind of advocacy or research you'd want to do? Do you think many people go into finance from the ppes degree? I think financial math would be pretty interesting and would give you some cool technical skill. Another Q: what do people who are familiar with the universities day about them?

There are more EA software engineers than data scientists.

Seems pretty person-dependent though. Do you like math? Would you prefer research or industry? If you've done an honours or masters already, that might give you an idea of whether you'd like a PhD. Which skills do you lack in order to be able to work at a CS/data science area like machine learning?

Software engineers most common by some margin I think. Then data science and compsci phd; not sure which is more common.

We're not aiming the profiles at just at EAs, so aren't including this info right now. I hope to have blog posts about EA skill shortages in the future though.

If you especially care about AI, then I reckon lean towards the compsci phd.

Hi Ryder,

Unfortunately we only have a very small team, so we've had to choose a narrow audience to focus on for the time being.

We do have this article: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-make-a-difference-in-any-career/

I think you're right that you can focus on using your free time to make a difference. Then the question is which cause to focus on? https://80000hours.org/articles/cause-selection/

You mention promoting the end of factory farming. Within that, check this out: http://www.animalcharityevaluators.org/resources/volunteering-advice/ One solid option seems to be vegan flyering. Also just eating vegan and convincing your friends to do the same.

You could also hold a fundraiser e.g. a birthday fundraiser: http://www.charityscience.com/birthday-fundraisers.html

Otherwise you could aim to get into a higher earning job. What are some common jobs that people doing what you do right now transition into? Could you learn a trade? It all comes down to our general process: make a list of options, find out more about them, try to narrow them down etc. https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-choose/

Hope that's a little help,

Ben

Hi there,

In the most harmful jobs post we do say:

Working in the coal industry Climate change and particulate pollution are very bad things. But the responsibility for it is spread over tens of millions of people working in the sector, and billions of people using the products. Furthermore, greater availability of energy through fossil fuels is also helping to lift billions out of poverty. This makes it unlikely to be one of the most harmful careers per employee.

The oil industry isn't as bad as coal. Overall, my guess is that marginal oil exploration is harmful, in that we're extracting more than would be socially optimal (if you were to factor in the costs of carbon dioxide), though it's not super harmful. So earning to give in the sector could be permissible, though if you could find an industry that also has positive effects that would be much better. Also this isn't a thoroughly considered view so could easily change.

Also, if you were just setting out to earn to give, I don't think focusing on petroleum engineering is an especially good strategy because it's very narrow. You might just turn out not to like it. More worrying, if a carbon tax was introduced (which sounds pretty likely in 10-20 years), then the amount of oil that gets extracted will fall significantly, which will especially harm new entrants to the field. Further, if solar prices keep coming down as fast as they have, then solar electricity will soon be cheaper than fossil fuel produced electricity, and that's going to be another massive hit to the industry. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/10755598/Global-solar-dominance-in-sight-as-science-trumps-fossil-fuels.html

More generally, you're building career capital that isn't very robust to the future. It's better to focus on more generally transferable skills rather than betting on one industry.

In terms of comparing your other options, work through our tool: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-choose/

Ben

Generally you'll start as a data engineer (read 'person who uses code to organise data') or data analyst (spreadsheets and business') rather than a data scientist (read commercial statistician). If you're starting from zero, it's worth learning to code regardless, and if you love math then it's plausible that data engineer could be a better entry point than web development. Pay is similar.

If you decide to go back to school, sociology may not offer a good return on investment, according to this article that Ben linked earlier: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-economic-guide-to-picking-a-college-major/

Some of your credits would probably transfer to public policy, which offers better pay.

Hi KJSD,

Start by working through our how to choose process: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-choose/ All you can do is try to take the best option available at the time, no matter what life throws at you.

In terms of specifics:

I think in general it's worth finishing college. (unless there's a good chance you'll drop out if you return). https://80000hours.org/2014/02/should-you-do-a-degree/

In terms of subject, generally those with more applied quantitative skills will give you more options and make you more employable than the others. If you also want to do something related to social science, then economics is the natural choice. (Though don't do it if you'll dislike or it perform badly).

Another option might be to start learning web development (e.g. via the Odin Project) / web design / copyediting / sales part-time, with the aim of later using them at an organisation that works in a cause you want to focus on later. I recommend these skills because you can often get this type of work without formal credentials. They can also be pursued part-time.

That's a mistake (which we're aware of!). We're about to redesign the top careers page, so will be fixed soon.

No, this isn't something we've focused on. The best piece I'm aware of in this area though is this: http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/elusive-craft-evaluating-advocacy

You could also look at "process tracing" as a methodology: http://betterevaluation.org/evaluation-options/processtracing That's what Oxfam tried using to evaluate their advocacy efforts.