All of Bella's Comments + Replies

Here's the message that displays on their page if you have it turned on: 'The Dietary Profile service is currently unavailable while we build a new and improved service which will launch later this year. In the meantime please check individual product pages for further allergen information'

I'm not sure if it always said 'which will launch later this year' but I'm confident it's been broken since 2022 or so.

Sainsbury's used to offer this (called 'dietary profiles', maybe used to be offered in 2021 or so?) but it got broken at some point and they've never fixed it. They're already tagging new products as vegan or not, since they have a 'new + vegan' section, implying they wouldn't need to do any extra categorisation work — so I'm not sure why their dietary profiles are broken.

Hey! This post feels very relevant for me (I'm Director of Growth at 80k, and manage a digital marketing team, haha!). We've spent $mns and years of staff time on growth + digital :)

Three major reasons we don't invest more: 
1. Low capacity to plan + execute campaigns (I failed to hire despite hundreds of hrs of effort in 2024);

2. Slow feedback loops on end-of-funnel outcomes we care most about (people changing their careers can take years)

3. Evidence suggesting that digital marketing is perhaps less likely than other growth channels to find the folks ... (read more)

I think investing in [shortform] mediums would just be good money chasing after bad.

Interesting!! Curious for any more detail on why you think this, if it's not too annoying to write out :)

if you have in mind content like the highest-quality video essays on YouTube

Yep, that's one of the things I'd be super excited about!!

To that end, earlier this year I helped get started AI in Context, which has been heavily inspired by the awesome creators you mentioned above :)

It sure is time and resource-heavy to get the videos out (we've only managed two so far... (read more)

Concrete operationalization: There's a long tail of search terms that orgs like CEA could do ad spend on that would be terms generated by highly thoughtful people. I would bet they are underspending on these terms. Also focusing on what these terms translate to in other languages, and doing more deep talent search in other countries and trying to integrate those people into our network. Is anyone buying ads on Baidu for the Chinese equivalent of the word "utilitarianism"? There could be a lot of low-hanging fruit like this that hasn't been considered.

I wou... (read more)

EAs are trying to win the "attention arms race" by not playing. I think this could be a mistake.

• The founding ideas and culture of EA was created and “grew up” in the early 2010s, when online content consumption looked very different.
  • We’ve overall underreacted to shifts in the landscape of where people get ideas and how they engage with them.
  • As a result, we’ve fallen behind, and should consider making a push to bring our messaging and content delivery mechanisms in line with 2020s consumption.
• Also, EA culture is dispositionally calm, rational, and dry.
  • Th

What's "SMA" in this context?

This was a really great post — articulated lots of things I've thought but never found the time to properly write up :) Thanks for your work and for helping make it more transparent!

So far, the video's actually on a stronger trajectory than the previous one — our last video got 7k views in its first 11.5 hours, whereas this video has 9.8k views in its first 11.5hrs :)

I do think it's possible it gets its reach throttled because of the content, though. We tried to do everything we could to make it less likely without materially harming the message we wanted to get across (such as censoring hurtful words, and not telling the story in an exaggerated or sensationalised way).

When I was dealing with a significant + upsetting personal situation last year, I was surprised by how much everyone who I told about it was like "Ah, yeah, something kinda like that happened to me as well. It was really rough." Some had very applicable advice, others were just commiserating, but I mostly wanted to highlight my agreement with Julia's post!!

You're not alone; people will understand; it's normal & human to have this kind of thing happen.

Thanks for doing this really important work :) I think it's great that you prioritised hard around getting signups at club fairs & around outreach near the start of the year! Sprints like this are super tough but I think are probably the right call for most organisers <3

I guess I think the main thing your analysis could be missing out is the quality / delivery of the message in 2024 versus 2025. I don't know how you decided on what to say, but e.g. I remember getting very different responses at my club fair based on whether I asked "What's the world... (read more)

I'm sorry this happened to you — I hate stepping on snails. Whenever I walk on paths and it's raining, I take extra care to look where I'm going.

I also move snails off paths if I have the time, though beware: if you pick an exposed snail up by its shell directly, you can cause them to detach from the shell internally, which can kill them. Instead, you should tap on the shell to make them retreat inside (they fear a predator), then safely move them.

Thanks, this is a good point!! I think my 'structural reasons' list still basically applies to a less ambitious vision, though (but they're all less of a big deal cos you're doing less).

They're both great episodes, though — relistened to #138 last week :)

FWIW the piece didn't strike me as having the hallmarks of LLM-written prose, just as a counter-anecdote :)

I now get an error for the link at the top of the post; here's another link I found which currently works: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065280622000170

if someone doesn’t believe themselves to be a good enough fit, perhaps they’re best-placed to know that about themselves

I disagree — I think some people are just naturally under-confident, in a way that doesn't correlate particularly well with their actual skill. For example, see these seven stories written up by my lovely colleague Luisa :)

I’d like to know if any of the paid jobs advertised on 80,000 Hours receive very low or zero applications.

Yeah, I don't have that data sadly since it's with all the different orgs running those rounds. I've run 5... (read more)

Two very quick thoughts:

1. I think maybe you and I differ on the number / variety of roles I'd be excited for readers of this Forum to apply to. It might be true that roles at e.g. CEA or 80k get many applicants (I think our record was somewhere around 500 applicants, for a recent advisor round, but I could be wrong), but I bet that there are tons of roles that get very low or zero applications from among readers of this Forum that could nevertheless be very impactful.

As an intuition pump: there are currently 715 jobs on our job board. How many of those a... (read more)

These guys absolutely worked their butts off to make this video, and I think the results show it :') Thanks Chana, Aric, Phoebe, Sam, and everyone for making something I'm so so so excited for the world to see!!

Thanks for this post!

Something it looks like you didn't consider, and I'd be interested in your views on, are the arguments raised by this post.

Basically, the view I've come to in recent years is we are almost totally in the dark about the overall sign of eating wild-caught fish.

I still stick with veganism for some of the reasons you raise in the 'moral progress' section, but I think given current tech / welfare science, it's very hard to feel confident in a conclusion either way.

Morality is Objective

I was unable to come up with a non-assertive, non-arbitrary-feeling grounding for moral realism when I tried very hard to do this in 2021-22. 

My vote isn't further towards anti-realism, because of:

• Some uncertainty about what people might think I mean by 'objective' (I think I have specific, unchanging, moral reasons to do particular things)
• I was a committed realist before 2021, so maybe I'll become convinced the other way! But I guess not.

IIUC, polls this far out from an election aren't generally trustworthy, so I don't currently think it's particularly likely they'll win.

I'd be pretty excited about 80k trying to do something useful here; unsure if it'd work, but I think we could be well-placed. Would you be up for talking with me about it? Seems like you have relevant context about these folks. Please email me if so at bella@80000hours.org :D

I strongly agree with this part:

[T]he specifics of factory farming feel particularly clarifying here. Even strong-identity vegans push the horrors of factory farming out of their heads most of the time for lack of ability to bear it. It strikes me as good epistemic practice for someone claiming that their project most helps the world to periodically stare these real-and-certain horrors in the face and explain why their project matters more – I suspect it cuts away a lot of the more speculative arguments and clarifies various fuzzy assumptions underlying

I think this is just Matt's style (I like it, but it might not be everyone's taste!). I think the SummaryBot comment does a pretty great job here, so maybe read that if you'd like to get the TL;DR of the post.

More anonymous questions!

How much weight is given to location? It seems that UK/US-based organisations within EA often claim to be open to remote candidates around the world but seldom actually make offers to these candidates (at least from what I’ve seen/heard over the years)

I think I'd give quite a bit of weight against a candidate if they never had the ability to visit the office. But I think if someone lived overseas but e.g. could spend a couple of weeks here every 3-6 months, it's not a big downside.

I'm not sure which organisations specifically y... (read more)

I agree with the substance but not the valence of this post.

I think it's true that EAs have made many mistakes, including me, some of which I've discussed with you :)

But I think that this post is an example of "counting down" when we should also remember the frame of "counting up."

That is — EAs are doing badly in the areas you mentioned because humans are very bad at the areas you mentioned. I don't know of any group where they have actually-correct incentives, reliably drive after truth, get big, complicated, messy questions like cross-cause prioritisatio... (read more)

Strongly agree with this well-articulated point.

Sometimes friends ask me why I work so hard, and I don't know how to get them to understand that it's because I believe that it matters — and the fact that they don't believe that about their work is maybe a sign they should do something else.

I got another anonymous question! :)

In the post about 80K’s pivot to AGI, you discuss active headhunting for specific roles relevant to AGI. To what extent do you expect a candidate in this role (and 80K’s outreach more broadly) to focus on your historic audience (ambitious, altruistic young people) vs active outreach to those with relevant skills for making AGI go well (e.g. ML professionals, lawyers)?

The kind-of-annoying but true answer is "some of both!"

I expect that a reasonably high proportion of our new outreach efforts will be focused on trying ... (read more)

I got the following anonymous question:

Heya Bella! When is the preferred start date for engagement specialist role? And, how late a start would you be willing to accept?

The preferred start date is basically as soon as possible after we conclude the evaluation process!

But, we understand folks will have notice periods, and other obligations that might mean they need to wait a while.

I think needing to wait e.g. several months is a (significant-ish) downside, but we'd be willing to do so for the right applicant!

Ah — thanks so much David for adding the more recent link!! I'll add that into the job ad on our site too :)

I loved your telling of de Sousa Mendes' story — thanks for sharing it. The moral courage he showed is really beautiful to me :)

Just speaking for myself — I'm not a college student, but I'm totally happy to get meeting requests where the only point is to hang out / meet the person! Sometimes these kinds of meetings are awesome :) But I'd prefer the person to send a connection request saying that rather than not have any message attached.

By the way, it looks like there might be some problem with the Forum UI here, as this post has some text suggesting that, since writing this comment, I changed my mind from "29% agree" to "14% agree." But I haven't intentionally changed my vote on the top banner, or changed my mind.

I agreed, but mostly because of my unfortunately-dim view of the tractability of work increasing the value of futures where we survive.

(I didn't read all the comments so someone else might have said this already)

I think this post is admirable for trying to persuasively correct a mistake you see people making — but I end up disagreeing because of equivocation between end factory farming and end factory farming within our lifetimes.

I think the goal is to end factory farming, & my sense is most of the harms you're worried about only accrue when people have an unrealistic sense of how likely that is overall (not guaranteed) & how soon that might happen (maybe not for a very long time,... (read more)

Thanks for writing this Zach! The broad strokes of the dynamics here are not news to me (I work at 80k which is a project of EV) but lots of the detail was novel and feels good to know.

By my count, animal welfare is 100x more neglected than global health (Edit: global development, not global health — my mistake). I'm unsure how much bigger it is in scale (given that making trades between humans and animals is hard) — but I'd guess it's very very much larger in scale.

I'm not on the podcast team but just quickly jumping in to say we do release highlights on the 80k After Hours feed! Not sure if they're planning one for this episode but it'd be a good candidate, I agree!

Edit: sorry, we actually release highlights episodes for every main feed episode — my bad for the misinfo!

Hey Emily, I'm sorry to hear you've had trouble figuring out how your broad skill set fits in.

For the roles I'm hiring for right now, specific experience is less relevant than evidence of the most important skills for the role. Copying directly from the job description for the Head of Marketing role, for example:

• A strong interest in effective altruism, longtermism, and/or having a big, positive impact in the world — ideally with experience in applying EA principles in real-world decisions
• Strong judgement; the ability to consider complex strategic questions

Hi Pranshul,

Thanks for your comment, and I'm really glad to hear you'd be excited about working at 80k!

I think being a new high school graduate is not a dealbreaker for us / doesn't directly rule you out, so you'd be very welcome to put in an application on our website!

However, for full transparency's sake, I do think I should say that I'd guess it will be a fairly significant downside compared to candidates with more experience, and I'd be somewhat surprised if ended up hiring someone with no prior work experience or tertiary education.

Hey Batur,

Thanks for your detailed & thoughtful questions!

I'll answer in order:

1. For the rounds I'm running, I'll reach out to candidates we're moving forward with either just before or shortly after applications close on the 18th and 25th August.

2. I haven't yet confirmed precisely what all the stages of the application will look like — it'll probably depend on the applications I get, and might vary a bit from person to person. But to give you a sense, for the last hiring round I ran, we had the initial application (3 substantive questions), then a p

Hey Vincent! Thanks for your question :)

I think that there are lots of diffuse and hard-to-directly-measure benefits of having employees work from our London office. The main one that I'm especially excited about is the person in this role absorbing — and contributing to — our team culture, which I think is really helpful for keeping us as an organisation aimed at producing the most impactful outcomes.

I'm somewhat unsure this is the right attitude overall, and we are open to remote applicants (& many of the applications we've gotten so far are from remote candidates).

Thanks so much for your questions! I'll answer them in order:

For me, the precise wording of your CV is not at all important. I mostly look at CVs to get a sense of the candidate’s prior experience, so if you wanted to highlight parts of your work experience which seemed relevant, that’d be cool, but it doesn’t seem necessary.

In general, titles at 80k are very much up for negotiation, with a couple of constraints:

1. We have some words that we use in titles which refer to specific groups, such as ‘director’ or ‘head of’ — and you can’t use them if you’re not a

Here's another anonymous question I got:

How do you like people to approach their CVs? (Particularly in terms of successful candidates, or even just what gets people through to the next round at least)
e.g. Using the same words as you did in the JD, or different ones? With the I did X by doing Y which led to Z impact formula? And does the latter have to be numbers
Also, is the Head of Video title negotiable?
Lastly, how does the salary scale work e.g. 1y of exp vs 10 years

I'll respond in a comment!

Thanks for your question and for giving some detail on your situation!

It's not a hard requirement that the Head of Video be able to spend time in London (though we do prefer it for the same reason we prefer all our staff to be in London — so that they can both absorb and contribute to team culture!).

There is an additional complication about videos, which is that if we're making videos, we'll likely need to film them and/or record audio in some particular location. So, it is a requirement that the Head of Video would be able to arrange that happening...some... (read more)

An anonymous user submitted the following question to me via my Admonymous:

Hey,

I see for the Head of Video role there is a need for significant time to be spent in London. I am disabled and a wheelchair user that is exceptionally interested in the position, but wondered how much time would be needed and what support would possible be available? I live in the Cotswolds currently, and I love the area and lifestyle that offers so would prefer not to move away from here if at all possible. My biggest issue is I do not currently have a wheelchair that makes me

Hey Helena — thanks for your question!

I'm happy for generalists to apply to the marketer position — I don't think prior marketing experience is required to excel in the role, so long as you're excited to learn the relevant skills!

You're certainly welcome to apply to both! We'll typically share application materials internally where it seems decision-relevant, but otherwise, the applications are progressed separately.

If I were you, I might spend some time thinking about if one of the roles seems better suited to you based on your skills & the type of wo... (read more)

Thanks for your question, and for reaching out to me even though you felt hesitant!

You're right that the job description mentions interest in effective altruism and longtermism, and that our staff often have backgrounds in EA or related areas.

However, I think that if 80k only ever hired people who had previously had roles which were legibly EA — or excluded people who'd ever had a harmful career — we'd likely turn people away who could have been excellent in the role, and we'd be making a mistake. So, I don't think you should think you're unqualified if yo... (read more)