80,000 Hours is a nonprofit organization that helps individuals select high-impact careers. It conducts research on pressing social problems and provides one-on-one advice on the basis of this research.
80,000 Hours was founded in July 2011 by Ben Todd and William MacAskill. The organization was called High Impact Careers for a year or so before adopting its current name.[1][2] In its early years, 80,000 Hours placed great emphasis on earning to give; since around 2015, the organization has de-emphasized this career path in favor of direct work, especially work in research, advocacy, and policy.[3]
At the core of 80,000 Hours' rankings and recommendations are two main "frameworks": a problem framework, which ranks problems in terms of importance, tractability and neglectedness, and a career framework, which recommends careers based primarily on career capital, role impact, and supportive conditions, with personal fit as a common fourth factor in both frameworks.
As of March 2022, 80,000 Hours has received over $9.8 million in funding from Open Philanthropy.[4]
80,000 Hours (2014) About us, 80,000 Hours, August (updated July 2021).
Todd, Benjamin (2015), '80,000 Hours', in Ryan Carey (ed.), The Effective Altruism Handbook, 1st ed., Oxford: The Centre for Effective Altruism, pp. 120-124
Todd, Benjamin (2016) 80,000 Hours: Find a Fulfilling Career That Does Good, Oxford: Centre for Effective Altruism.
80,000 Hours. Official website.
80,000 Hours. Effective Altruism Forum account.
80,000 Hours Podcast | career advising | career choice | career framework | problem framework
MacAskill, William (2014) The history of the term “effective altruism”, Effective Altruism Forum, March 10.
Kaufman, Jeff (2015) Giving vs doing, Jeff Kaufman’s Blog, November 29.
MacAskill, William (2015) 80,000 Hours thinks that only a small proportion of people should earn to give long term, 80,000 Hours, July 6.
Open Philanthropy (2022) Grants database, Open Philanthropy.