80,000 Hours

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.

History

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]

Approach

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.

Evaluation

As of March 2022, 80,000 Hours has received over $9.8 million in funding from Open Philanthropy.^[4]

Further reading

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.

External links

80,000 Hours. Official website.

80,000 Hours. Effective Altruism Forum account.

Donate to 80,000 Hours.

Related entries

80,000 Hours Podcast | career advising | career choice |  career framework |  problem framework 

1. ^{^}

   MacAskill, William (2014) The history of the term “effective altruism”, Effective Altruism Forum, March 10.

2. ^{^}

   Kaufman, Jeff (2015) Giving vs doing, Jeff Kaufman’s Blog, November 29.

3. ^{^}

   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.

4. ^{^}

   Open Philanthropy (2022) Grants database, Open Philanthropy.