(highlight:: Working Our Your Career Through Reflection is Not as Good As Through Action
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The usual way people try to work out their dream job is to imagine different jobs and think about how satisfying they seem. Or they think about times they've felt fulfilled in the past and self-reflect about what matters most to them. If this were a normal career guide, we'd start by getting you to write out a list of what you most want from a job, like working outdoors and working with ambitious people. The best-selling career advice book of all time, What Color is Your Parachute, recommends exactly this. The hope is that deep down, people know what they really want. However, research shows that although self-reflection is useful, it only goes so far. You can probably think of times in your own life when you were excited about a holiday or party, but when it actually happened, it was just okay. In the last few decades, researchers shown that this is common. We're not always great at predicting what will make us most happy, and we don't realize how bad we are.)
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(highlight:: Money Does Make You Happy, But Returns Diminish After a Certain Point
Transcript:
Speaker 1
A lot of the research on this question is remarkably low quality, but several major studies in economics offer more clarity. We reviewed the best studies available, and the truth turns out to lie in the middle. Money does make you happy, but only a little. For instance, here are the findings from a huge survey in the United States in 2010. This is a graph with household income on the x-axis and life satisfaction from 1 to 10 on the y-axis, and there's a line labeled life satisfaction that begins by increasing quite rapidly, So that for every given increase in household income, there's quite a lot of life satisfaction increase, but by the end of the graph, it's flattened out, so that life satisfaction isn't Increasing much as household income goes up.)
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(highlight:: Stress Isn't Always Bad: Seek Out Out Work That Is Supportive, Meaningful, and Challenging
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Many people tell us they want to find a job that's not too stressful, and it's true that in the past, doctors and psychologists believed that stress was always bad. However, we did a survey of the modern literature on stress, and today the picture is a bit more complicated. One puzzle is that studies of high-ranking government and military leaders found they had lower levels of stress hormones and less anxiety, despite sleeping fewer hours, managing More people, and having higher occupational demands. One widely supported explanation is that having a greater sense of control by setting their own schedules and determining how to tackle the challenges they face protects them against The demands of the position. There are other ways that a demanding job can be good or bad depending on context. Here's a table showing whether certain variables are good or neutral or bad. First, we have types of stress. The intensity of demands can be good when challenging but achievable and bad when mismatched with ability, either too high or too low. Another type of stress is duration, can be good or neutral in the short term, and bad when it's ongoing. There are some different contexts like control, which can be good or neutral with high control and autonomy, or bad with low control and autonomy. Power, it's good or neutral to have high power and bad to have low power, and social support. It's good or neutral to have good social support and bad to have social isolation. And two ways of coping. Mindset, it's good to reframe demands as opportunities and stress is useful, and it's bad to view demands as threats and stresses harmful to health. And finally, altruism. It's good or neutral to perform altruistic acts, and it's bad to focus on yourself. This means the picture looks more like the following graph. Having a very undemanding job is bad. That's boring. Having demands that exceed your abilities is bad too. They cause harmful stress. The sweet spot is where the demands placed on new match your abilities. That's a fulfilling challenge. And this is a graph that plots ability on the x-axis against demands on the y-axis. Chose anxiety increasing as demands increase, and boredom increasing as they decrease. But there's a line showing a zone where demands and ability are evenly matched, and it's labeled the stretch zone challenge. Instead of seeking to avoid stress, seek out a supportive context and meaningful work, and then challenge yourself.)
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(highlight:: 6 Key Ingredients of a Dream Job
Summary:
Research on positive psychology and job satisfaction has identified six key ingredients of a dream job.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
We've applied the research on positive psychology about what makes for a fulfilling life, and combined it with research on job satisfaction, to come up with six key ingredients of A dream job. These are the six ingredients.)
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- [note::See article for six ingredients]

(highlight:: 6 Key Ingredients of a Dream Job
Transcript:
Speaker 1
This is what to look for in a dream job. One, engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow, freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback. Two, work that helps others. Three, work your good at. Four, supportive colleagues. Five, no major negatives, like long hours or unfair pay. And six, a job that fits your personal life.)
- Time 0:24:21
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- [note::How does this compare to the CAMPS framework shared in The Leader Lab?]

(highlight:: The Content of Your Dream Job is Less Important Than the Context
Transcript:
Speaker 1
But in fact, you can become passionate about new areas. If your work helps others, you practice to get good at it, you work on engaging tasks, and you work with people you'd like, then you'll become passionate about it. The six ingredients are all about the context of the work, not the content.)
- Time 0:26:57
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(highlight:: Helping Others is a Cross-Cultural Moral Principle
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The idea that helping others as the key to being fulfilled is hardly a new one. It's a theme from most major moral and spiritual traditions. Set your heart on doing good, do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. Buddha. A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world. Muhammad. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Jesus Christ. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness, Martin Luther King Jr.)
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(highlight:: Exercises & Questions for Identifying Your Dream Work
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Apply this to your own career. These six ingredients, especially helping others in getting good at your job, can act as guiding lights. They're what to aim to find in a dream job long term. Here are some exercises to help you start applying them. One, practice using the six ingredients to make some comparisons. Pick two options you're interested in, then score them from one to five on each factor. Two, the six ingredients we list are only a starting point. There may be other factors that are especially important to you, so we also recommend doing the following exercises. They're not perfect, as we saw earlier, our memories of what we found fulfilling can be unreliable, but completely ignoring your past experience isn't wise either. These questions should give you hints about what you find most fulfilling. When have you been most fulfilled in the past? What did these times have in common? Imagine you just found out you're going to die in 10 years. What would you spend your time doing? And can you make any of our six factors more specific? For example, what kinds of people do you most like to work with? Three, now combine our list with your own thoughts to determine the four to eight factors that are most important to you in a dream job. Four, when you're comparing your options in the future, you can use this list of factors to work out which is best. Don't expect to find an option that's best on every dimension, rather focus on finding the option that's best on balance.)
- Time 0:31:21
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(highlight:: Key Factors for Finding Your Dream Job
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The bottom line, what makes for a dream job? To find a dream job, look for one, work you're good at, two, work that helps others, three, supportive conditions, engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow, supportive colleagues, Lack of major negatives like unfair pay, and work that fits your personal life.)
- Time 0:32:41
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(highlight:: What is Social Impact & 3 Ways of Increasing Yours
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What does it mean to make a difference? Everyone talks about making a difference or changing the world or doing good, but if you ever define what they mean. So here's a definition. Your social impact is given by the number of people whose lives you improve and how much you improve them over the long term. This means that you can increase your social impact in three ways, one by helping more people, two by helping the same number of people to a greater extent, and three doing something Which has benefits that last for a longer time. We think the last option is especially important because many of our actions affect future generations.)
- Time 0:42:13
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(highlight:: The Ineffectiveness of Charitable Skydiving
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Unfortunately, many attempts to do good in this way are ineffective, and some actually cause harm. Take sponsored skydiving. Every year, thousands of people collect donations for good causes and throw themselves out of planes to draw attention to whatever charity they've chosen to support. This sounds like a win-win. The fundraiser gets an exhilarating once-in-a-lifetime experience while raising money for a worthy cause. What could be the harm in that? Quite a bit, actually. According to a study of two popular parachuting centers over a five-year period, 1991 to 1995, approximately 1,500 people went skydiving for charity and collectively raised more Than 120,000 pounds. That sounds pretty impressive, until you consider a few caveats. First, the cost of the diving expeditions came out of the donations, so all of the 120,000 pounds raised, only 45,000 pounds went to charity. Second, because most of the skydivers were first-time jumpers, they suffered a combined total of 163 injuries, resulting in an average hospital stay of nine days. In order to treat these injuries, the UK's National Health Service spent around 610,000 pounds. This means that for every one pound raised for the charities, the Health Service spent roughly 13 pounds, so the net effect was to reduce resources for health services. Ironically, many of the charities supported focused on health-related matters.)
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(highlight:: Untrained Volunteers Can Cost More for Organizations Than the Value They Add
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What about volunteering? One problem is that volunteers need to be managed. If untrained volunteers use the time of trained managers, it's easy for them to cost the organization more than the value they add. In fact, the main reason many volunteering schemes persist is that if someone is a volunteer for an organization, they're more likely to donate.)
- Time 0:44:59
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(highlight:: Give Directly: "Not the Most Effective Way to Donate to Charity By Any Means"
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Since 2008, Give Directly is made it possible to give cash directly to the poorest people in East Africa via mobile phone. We don't think this is the most effective way to donate to charity by any means. Later, we'll discuss higher impact approaches, but it's simple and quantifiable, so it makes a good starting point.)
- Time 0:46:01
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(highlight:: Giving Local v.s. Abroad: Money in Kenya Goes 68 Times as Far Compared to America
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Poor people served by Give Directly in Kenya have an average individual consumption of about $800 per year. This figure is based on how much $800 could buy in the US, meaning it already takes into account the fact that money goes further in poor countries. The average US college graduate has an annual individual working income of about $77,000 in 2023, or $54,500 post-tax. This means that, assuming the above relationship holds, a dollar will do about 68 times more good if you give it to someone in Kenya rather than spending it on yourself. If someone earning that average level of income were to donate 10%, they could double the annual income of seven people living in extreme poverty each year. Over the course of their career, they could have a major positive impact on hundreds of people.)
- Time 0:47:24
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(highlight:: If Everyone Gave 10%, The Impact Would Be Transformative
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If everyone in the richest 10% of the world's population donated 10% of their income, that would be $5 trillion per year. That would be enough to double scientific research funding. Raise everyone in the world above the $2.15 per day poverty line, provide universal basic education, and still have plenty left over to fund a renaissance in the arts, go to Mars, and Then invest $1 trillion in mitigating climate change. None of this would be straightforward to achieve, but it at least illustrates the enormous potential of greater giving.)
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- [note::This also highlights the astonishing cureent level of global inequality]

(highlight:: The Case for Doing Advocacy from an Impact Perspective
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Rich countries have a disproportionate impact on issues like global trade, migration, climate change, and technology policy, and are generally at least partly democratic. So if you prefer to do something besides giving money, consider advocating for important issues. We were initially skeptical that one person could have real influence through political advocacy, but when we dug into the numbers, we changed our minds. Let's take perhaps the simplest example, voting in elections. Several studies have used statistical models to estimate the chances of a single vote, determining the US presidential election. Because the US electoral system is determined at the state level, if you live in a state that strongly favours one candidate, your chance of deciding the outcome is effectively zero. But if you live in a state that's contested, your chances rise to between 1 in 10 million and 1 in a million. That's quite a bit higher than your chances of winning the lottery. Remember, the US federal government is very, very big. Let's imagine one candidate wanted to spend 0.2% more of GDP on foreign aid. That would be about $187 billion in extra foreign aid over their four-year term. One millionth of that is $187,000. So if voting takes you an hour, it could be the most important hour, the highest unexpected value you'll spend that year. The figures are similar in other rich countries. Smaller countries have less at stake, but each vote counts for more. We've used the example of voting since it's quantifiable, but we expect the basic idea, the very small chance of changing a very big thing, applies to other forms of well-chosen advocacy, Such as petitioning your Congressperson, getting out the vote for the right candidate, or going to a town hall meeting. We think this is likely to be even more true if you're careful to focus on the right issues.)
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(highlight:: Ideas for Being an Impact Multiplier
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Being a multiplier to help others be more effective. Suppose you don't have any money or power, and you don't feel like you can contribute by working on an important problem. What then? One option is to try to change that. We cover how to invest in yourself no matter what job you have in appendix 2. That aside, you might know someone who does have some money, power or skills, so you can make a difference by helping them achieve more. For instance, if you could enable two other people to give 10% of their income to charity, that would have even more impact than doing it yourself. These are both examples of being a multiplier. By mobilizing others, it is often possible to do more than you could through just your own efforts. Suppose you've come across a high-impact job, but you're not sure it's a good fit for your skills. If you can tell someone else about the job and they take it, that does as much good as taking it yourself, and in fact more if they're a better fit for it than you. It's often possible to raise more for charity through fundraising than you might be able to donate yourself. Or if you work at a company with a donation matching scheme, you might be able to encourage other employees to use it. What matters is that more good gets done, not that you do it with your own hands.)
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(highlight:: What is Scope Neglect?
Transcript:
Speaker 1
For instance, one study found that people were willing to pay about the same amount to save 2,000 birds from oil spills, as they were to save 200,000 birds, even though the latter is objectively 100 times better. This is an example of a common error called scope neglect. To avoid scope neglect, we need to use numbers to make comparisons, even if they're very rough.)
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(highlight:: Effectiveness of Scared Straight Programs
Summary:
Scared Straight programs, despite appearing effective on the surface, might actually lead to an increase in criminal behavior among young individuals who go through the program.
Research suggests that young people who participate in these programs commit fewer crimes post-program; however, the decrease is smaller compared to similar individuals who did not participate. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimates that for every $1 spent on scared straight programs, over $200 worth of social harm is caused.
This discrepancy in outcomes could be because young people may realize that life in jail is not as terrible as they perceived, or they might even start admiring the criminals they encounter.
The overall effectiveness of social programs, including scared straight, is questioned, with around 75% or more of rigorously evaluated programs showing minimal to negative effects.
Hence, choosing to support a charity without considering the evidence may result in having no impact at all.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It was adapted for both an acclaimed documentary and a TV show on A&E, which broke ratings records for the network upon its premiere. There's just one problem with scared straight, it probably causes young people to commit more crimes. Or more precisely, the young people who went through the program did commit fewer crimes than they did before, so superficially it looked like it worked. But the decrease was smaller compared to similarly young people who never went through the program. This effect is so significant that the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated that each $1 spent on scared straight programs causes more than $200 worth of social Harm. This estimate seems a little too pessimistic to us, but even so, it looks like it was a huge mistake. No one is sure why this is, but it might be because the young people realized that life in jail wasn't as bad as they thought, or they came to admire the criminals. Some attempts to do good, like scared straight, make things worse. Many more failed to have an impact. David Anderson of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy estimates. Of social programs that have been rigorously evaluated, most, perhaps 75% or more, including those backed by expert opinion and less rigorous studies, turn out to produce small or No effects, in some cases negative effects. This suggests that if you choose a charity to get involved in without looking at the evidence, you will most likely have no impact at all.)
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(highlight:: Questions to Ask Before Working on a Problem
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Try our 10 question quiz at 80,000hours.org slash articles slash can you guess? And see if you can guess what's effective. The quiz asks you to guess which social interventions work and which don't. We've tested it on hundreds of people and they hardly do better than chance. So before you choose a social problem to work on, ask yourself, one, is there a way to make progress on this problem with rigorous evidence behind it? For instance, lots of studies have shown that malaria nets prevent malaria. Two, alternatively, is there a way to test promising but unproven programs that could help solve this problem and find out whether they work? And three, is this a problem where there's a small but realistic chance of making a massive impact?)
- Time 1:06:34
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(highlight:: Finding the Most Pressing Problems: Scale, Neglectedness, Tractability, Personal Fit
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How can you find the world's most pressing problems? The most pressing problems are likely to have a good combination of the following qualities. One, begin scale. What's the magnitude of this problem? How much does it affect people's lives today? More crucially, how much of an effect will solving it have in the long run, including the very, very long run, if there are any such effects? Two, neglected. How many people and resources are already dedicated to tackling this problem? How well allocated are the resources that are currently being dedicated to the problem? Are there good reasons why markets or governments aren't already making progress on this problem? And three, solvable. How easy would it be to make progress on this problem? Do interventions already exist to solve this problem effectively and how strong is the evidence behind them? To find the problem you should work on, also consider personal fit. Could you become motivated to work on this problem? If you're later in your career, do you have the relevant expertise?)
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(highlight:: Global Poverty Perspective
Summary:
The global income distribution highlights that someone at the US poverty line is richer than 85% of the world's poorest countries.
The poorest 700 million people in Central America, Africa, and South Asia live on under $800 per year. Resources can make a bigger impact in poorer regions as additional money significantly enhances welfare.
It is noted that resources for the 40 million people in relative poverty in the US far exceed the resources dedicated to the 650 million people in extreme global poverty.
Overseas development aid from developed countries totals $200 billion annually compared to the $1.7 trillion spent on welfare in the US alone.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Why do we say the most urgent problems aren't local? Well, remember the distribution of world income that we came across in chapter 2? Even someone living on the US poverty line of $14,580 per year, as of 2023, is richer than about 85% of the world's poorest countries. And about 20 times wealthier than the world's poorest 700 million who mostly live in Central America, Africa and South Asia on under $800 per year. These figures are already adjusted for the fact that money goes further in poor countries, purchasing power parity. As we also saw earlier, the poorer you are, the bigger difference extra money makes to your welfare. Based on this research, because poorer people in Africa are 20 times poorer, we'd expect resources to go about 20 times further in helping them. There are also only about 40 million people living in relative poverty in the US, about 6% as many as the 650 million in extreme global poverty. There are also far more resources dedicated to helping this smaller number of people. Overseas development aid from the world's developed countries is in total only about $200 billion per year, compared to $1.7 trillion spent on welfare in the US alone.)
- Time 1:14:14
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(highlight:: Problems in Rich Countries are More Costly and Complex Than Those in Poor Countries
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Why do we say the most urgent problems aren't local? Well, remember the distribution of world income that we came across in chapter 2? Even someone living on the US poverty line of $14,580 per year, as of 2023, is richer than about 85% of the world's poorest countries. And about 20 times wealthier than the world's poorest 700 million who mostly live in Central America, Africa and South Asia on under $800 per year. These figures are already adjusted for the fact that money goes further in poor countries, purchasing power parity. As we also saw earlier, the poorer you are, the bigger difference extra money makes to your welfare. Based on this research, because poorer people in Africa are 20 times poorer, we'd expect resources to go about 20 times further in helping them. There are also only about 40 million people living in relative poverty in the US, about 6% as many as the 650 million in extreme global poverty. There are also far more resources dedicated to helping this smaller number of people. Overseas development aid from the world's developed countries is in total only about $200 billion per year, compared to $1.7 trillion spent on welfare in the US alone. Finally, as we saw earlier, a significant fraction of US social interventions probably don't work. This is because problems facing the poor in rich countries are complex and hard to solve. Moreover, even the most evidence-based interventions are expensive and have modest effects. The same comparison holds for other rich countries, such as the UK, Australia, Canada and the EU. Though if you live in a low-income country, then it may well be best to focus on issues there. All this isn't to deny that the poor in rich countries have very tough lives, perhaps even worse in some respects than those in the developing world. Rather, the issue is that there are far fewer of them and they're harder to help.)
- Time 1:14:14
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(highlight:: The Relatice Impact Spending on Global Health in Poor v.s. Rich Countries
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The UK's National Health Service and many US government agencies are willing to spend over $30,000 to give someone an extra year of healthy life. This is a fantastic use of resources by ordinary standards. However, research by GiveWell has found that it's possible to give an infant a year of healthy life by donating around $100 to one of the most cost effective global health charities, Such as against Malaria Foundation. This is about 0.33% as much. This suggests that, at least in terms of improving health, one career working somewhere like AMF might achieve as much as 300 careers focused on one typical way of doing good in a rich Country. Though our best guess is that a more regressive and comprehensive comparison would find a somewhat smaller difference. It's hard for us to grasp such big differences in scale, but that would mean that one year of equally skilled effort towards the best treatments within global health could have as much Impact as what would have taken others 100 years working on typically. These discoveries caused many of us at 80,000 hours to start giving at least 10% of our incomes to effective global health charities. No matter which job we ended up in, these donations would enable us to make a significant difference. In fact, if the 100-fold figure is correct, 10% donation would be the equivalent of donating 1,000% of our income to charities focused on poverty in rich countries.)
- Time 1:20:28
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(highlight:: Reasons to Focus on Causes That Significantly Influence Future Generations
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If people didn't want to leave a legacy to future generations, it would be hard to understand why we invest so much in science, create art and preserve the wilderness. We would certainly choose the second option. And if you value future generations, then there are powerful arguments that helping them should be your focus. We were first exposed to these by researchers at University of Oxford's, modestly named, Future of Humanity Institute. So, what's the reasoning? First, future generations matter. But they can't vote, they can't buy things, and they can't stand up for their interests. This means our system neglects them. You can see this in the global failure to come to an international agreement to tackle climate change that actually works. Second, their plight is abstract, where reminded of issues like global poverty and factory farming far more often. But it can't so easily visualize suffering that will happen in the future. Future generations rely more on our goodwill, and even that is hard to muster. Third, there will probably be many more people alive in the future than there are today. The Earth will remain habitable for at least hundreds of millions of years. We may die out long before that point, but if there's a chance of making it, then many more people will live in the future than are alive today.)
- Time 1:22:59
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(highlight:: The Case for Focusing on Biorisk
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Bio risk, the threat from future disease. In 2006, the Guardian ordered segments of smallpox DNA via mail. If assembled into a complete strand and transmitted to 10 people, the study estimated it could infect up to 2.2 million people in 180 days, potentially killing 663. The question is the question that we have of over 1000, if authorities did not respond quickly with vaccinations and quarantines? We first wrote about the risks posed by catastrophic pandemics back in 2016. Seven years later and three years after the emergence of COVID-19, we're still concerned. COVID-19 disrupted the world and has so far killed over 10 million people, but it's easy to imagine scenarios far worse. In the future, we might face diseases even deadlier than COVID-19 or smallpox, whether through natural evolution or created through bioengineering, the technology for which is Becoming cheaper and more accessible every year. In our eyes, the chance of a pandemic that kills over 100 million people over the next century seems similar to and likely greater than the risk of nuclear war or runaway climate change. So it poses the threat that's at least similar in magnitude to both the present generation and future generations. But risks from pandemics are even now far more neglected than either of these. We estimate that over $600 billion is spent annually on efforts to fight climate change, compared to $1 to $10 billion towards biosecurity aimed at addressing the worst case pandemics. Moreover, there are some ways the risks from pandemics could be even greater. It's very difficult to see how nuclear war or climate change could kill literally everyone and permanently end civilization. But bio-weapons with this power seem very much within the realm of possibility, if given enough time.)
- Time 1:26:18
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(highlight:: Invest in Global Priorities Research and Broad Interventions
Summary:
Investing in global priorities research is essential to efficiently allocate resources to address pressing global issues.
Career opportunities in this field include working at various organizations like open philanthropy, Global Priorities Institute, and Think Tanks. Additionally, focusing on broad interventions, such as improving politics, can have a cascading effect on solving multiple other problems.
Political action, like voting and community engagement, can influence decision-makers at a larger scale, although some areas like US governance already receive substantial attention, making them challenging to impact.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Global priorities research. If you're uncertain which global problem is most pressing, here's one answer. Global research is needed. Only a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars spent each year trying to make the world a better place goes towards research to identify how to spend those resources most effectively, What we call global priorities research. As we've seen, some approaches are far more effective than others, so this research is hugely valuable. A career in this area could mean working at open philanthropy, the Global Priorities Institute, Rethink Priorities, Economics Academia, Think Tanks and elsewhere. Broad interventions such as improved politics. The second strategy is to work on problems that will help us solve lots of other problems. We call these broad interventions. For instance, if we had more enlightened governments, that would help us solve lots of other problems facing future generations. The US government in particular will play a pivotal role in issues like climate policy, AI policy, biosecurity, and new challenges we don't even know about yet. So US governance is highly important, if maybe not neglected or tractable. Political action in your local community might have an effect on decision makers in Washington. In the last chapter, we did an analysis of the simplest kind of political action, voting, and found that it could be really valuable. On the other hand, issues like US governance already receive a huge amount of attention, which makes them hard to improve.)
- Time 1:34:49
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(highlight:: Going Meta: The Case for Doing Global Priorities Research
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you're uncertain which global problem is most pressing, here's one answer. Global research is needed. Only a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars spent each year trying to make the world a better place goes towards research to identify how to spend those resources most effectively, What we call global priorities research. As we've seen, some approaches are far more effective than others, so this research is hugely valuable. A career in this area could mean working at open philanthropy, the Global Priorities Institute, Rethink Priorities, Economics Academia, Think Tanks and elsewhere.)
- Time 1:34:51
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(highlight:: Going Meta: The Case for Working on "Broad Interventions", Like Improved Politics
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Broad interventions such as improved politics. The second strategy is to work on problems that will help us solve lots of other problems. We call these broad interventions. For instance, if we had more enlightened governments, that would help us solve lots of other problems facing future generations. The US government in particular will play a pivotal role in issues like climate policy, AI policy, biosecurity, and new challenges we don't even know about yet. So US governance is highly important, if maybe not neglected or tractable. Political action in your local community might have an effect on decision makers in Washington. In the last chapter, we did an analysis of the simplest kind of political action, voting, and found that it could be really valuable. On the other hand, issues like US governance already receive a huge amount of attention, which makes them hard to improve. We generally favor more neglected issues with more targeted effects on future generations. For instance, fascinating research by Philip Tetlock shows that some teams and methods are far better at predicting geopolitical events than others. If the decision makers in society were informed by much more accurate predictions, it would help them navigate future crises, whatever those turn out to be. However, the category of broad interventions is one of the areas we're most uncertain about, so we're keen to see more research on it.)
- Time 1:35:24
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(highlight:: Going Meta: The Case for EA Community Building and Helping Others Have More Impacy
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you're uncertain which problems we'll be most pressing in the future, a third strategy is to simply save money or invest in your career capital, so you're in a better position to do Good when you have more information. However, rather than make personal investments, it can be even better to invest in a community of people working to do good. In an earlier chapter, we looked at giving what we can, a charity building a community of people who donate 10% of their income to whatever charities are most cost effective. Every $1 invested in growing giving what we can has led to over $9 already donated to its top recommended charities, and a total of over $3 billion pledged. By building a community, giving what we can has been able to raise much more money than their founders could have donated individually, they've achieved a multiplier on their impact. But what's more, the members donate to whatever charities are most effective at the time. If the situation changes, then at least to some extent the donations will change too. This flexibility makes the impact over time much higher. Giving what we can is one example of several projects in the effective altruism community, a community of people who aim to identify the best ways to help others and take action based On their findings. $80,000 itself is another example. Better career advice doesn't sound like one of the most pressing problems imaginable, but many of the world's most talented young people want to do good with their lives, and lack good Advice on how to do so. This means that every year thousands of them have far less impact than they could have. We could have gone to work on issues like AI ourselves, but instead by providing better advice, we can help thousands of other people find high impact careers. And so, if we do a good job, we might hope to have thousands of times as much impact ourselves. What's more, if we discover new, better career options than the ones we already know about, we can switch to promoting them. Just like giving what we can, this flexibility gives us greater impact over time.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Developing a Personal List of Top Problems to Work On
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You can see our list of the world's most pressing problems in Appendix 9. But that's just our list. What matters for your career is your personal list. The assessment of problems greatly depends on value judgments and debatable empirical questions, and you might not share our answers. There are a number of key ways in which we might be wrong. Personal fit is also vital, and so are the particular opportunities you can find. We don't think everyone should work on the number one problem. If you're a great fit for an area, you might have over 10 times as much impact working there as you would in one that doesn't motivate you, so this could easily change your personal ranking. Just remember, there are many ways to help solve each problem, so it's often easier than it first seems to find work you enjoy that helps with problems you might not have yet considered Working on. Moreover, it's easier to develop new passions than most people expect.)
- Time 1:38:56
- 1action, career focus, world problems,
- [note::I should go back to the list of potential careers I created in college and list off the direct or indirect problems I think are compelling to work on. Then, I'd like to brainstorm what career steps I might take to either work directly on those problems or gain career capital to make me well-placed to work on them.]

(highlight:: Exercise: Exploring Which Problems You Might Work On and Resolving Your Uncertainties
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So even if you're right at the start of your career, we'd suggest spending at least a couple of days thinking about this question. Here's an exercise. One, using the resources above, write down the three global problems that you think are most pressing for you to work on. Your personal list will depend on your values, empirical assumptions, and personal fit with the areas. And two, what are you most uncertain about with respect to your list? How much you learn more about those questions? For example, is there something you could read? Someone you could talk to?)
- Time 1:41:24
- 1action,

(highlight:: Only a Small Portion of People Should Earn to Give
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Overall, for people we speak to one-on-one, we only think about 10% should earn to give. In fact, in 2022, Jeff left his high-paying job at Google. He's now a researcher at the New Clay Asset Observatory. Building a wastewater monitoring system that he hopes will help detect pandemics before they start. Jeff and Julia are still going to donate over 30% of their income, but given Jeff's lower salary, they expect most of their positive impact to come directly from their work.)
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(highlight:: Communication & Community Building as an Impactful Career Path
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Jdanov single-handedly lobbied the WHO to start the elimination campaign in the first place. Without his involvement, it would not have happened until much later, and possibly not at all. So, why has communicating important ideas sometimes been so effective? First, ideas can spread quickly, so communication is a way for a small group of people to have a large effect on a problem. The small team can launch a social movement, lobby a government, start a campaign that influences public opinion, or just persuade their friends to take up a cause. In each case, they can have a lasting impact on the problem that goes far beyond what they could achieve directly. Second, spreading important ideas in a careful, strategic way is neglected. This is because there's usually no commercial incentive to spread socially important ideas. Instead, advocacy is mainly pursued by people willing to dedicate their careers to making the world a better place. Moreover, the ideas that are most impactful to spread are those that aren't yet widely accepted. Standing up to the status quo is uncomfortable, and it can take decades for opinion to shift. This means there's also little personal incentive to stand up for them. Communication is also an area where the most successful efforts do far more than the typical efforts. The most successful advocates influence millions of people, while others might struggle to persuade more than a few friends. This means if you're an exceptionally good fit for communication, it's often the best thing you can do, and you're likely to achieve far more by doing it yourself than you could by funding Someone to engage in communication or advocacy on your behalf. Communication careers can be pursued as a full-time job, such as many jobs in the media, as part of a wider role like an academic or science communication, or alongside almost any job, Like Rosa Parks. Communication careers are defined by their focus on spreading ideas on a big scale, but it's also possible to have a similar impact on a more person-to-person level as a community builder. For instance, the American Women's Rights activist Susan B. Anthony hated writing, so while her co-founder at the Women's Loyal National League, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, was a powerful communicator, writing long books and editing their Weekly newsletter, Anthony primarily focused on organizing and building a community. Anthony's work, running events, talking to activists and building the suffragist community in the United States, eventually led to the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing All adult women the right to vote, is often called the Anthony Amendment in her honor. Community building often works well as a part-time position. For instance, QAN was a student at Stanford when they came across 80,000 hours and realized the importance of reducing existential risks. However, they also saw there were no organizations on campus focusing on that idea. So they founded the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative, which runs courses and conferences about the topic to build a community of students aiming to work on these risks.)
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(highlight:: Considerations Around Working for/Starting a Non-Profit
Transcript:
Speaker 1
When most people think of careers that do good, the first thing they think of is working at a charity. But the thing is, lots of jobs at charities just aren't that impactful. Some charities focus on programs that don't work, like SCAD STRAIGHT which cause kids to commit more crimes. Others focus on ways of helping that don't have much leverage, like Superman fighting criminals one by one, or Dr. Landstein of focusing on performing surgeries rather than doing the work to discover blood groups. Another problem is that many want to work at organisations that are more constrained by funding than by the number of people enthusiastic to work there. This means if you don't take the job, it would be easy to find someone else who's almost as good. Think of a lawyer who volunteers at a soup kitchen. It may be motivating for them, but it's hardly the most effective thing they could do. Donating one or two hours of salary could pay for several other people to do the work instead, or they could do pro bono legal work and contribute in a way that makes use of their valuable Skills. However, there are plenty of other situations when working for a nonprofit is the most effective thing to do. Non-profits can tackle issues that other organisations can't. They can carry out research that doesn't earn academic prestige, or do political advocacy on behalf of disempowered groups such as animals or future generations, or provide services That would never be profitable within the market. And there are lots of nonprofits doing great work that really need more people to help build and scale them up. There are also lots of niches that aren't being filled, where we need new nonprofits set up to tackle them.)
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(highlight:: The Case for Building Impactful Organizations
Transcript:
Speaker 1
More broadly, helping to build an organisation can be a route to making a big contribution, because organisations allow large groups of people to coordinate and therefore achieve A bigger impact than they could individually. Moreover, if you help build or start an effective organisation, it can continue to have an impact even after you leave. And if you can help make an already existing and impactful organisation somewhat more effective, that can also be a route to a big impact. Claire joined Lead Exposure Elimination Project, or LEAP, as its third staff member. She thought that joining LEAP would help build her career capital, especially her skills and connections, and more importantly, that Lead Exposure in low and middle income countries Is an important, solvable and highly neglected problem. Since joining, Claire has developed LEAP's programs and managed the team implementing them, as well as led the hiring for crucial new staff. LEAP has since started working with governments in industry in 16 countries, and has successfully advocated for the government in Malawi to monitor levels of lead and paints. These organisations don't even need to be nonprofits. Some social impact projects are better structured as businesses, and could also include think tanks, research groups, advocacy groups, and so on. For instance, SendWave enables African migrant workers to transfer money to their families through a mobile app for fees of 3%, rather than 10% fees with Western Union. So for every $1 of revenue they make, they make some of the poorest people in the world several dollars richer. Within three years, they had already had an impact equivalent to donating millions of dollars, and they've grown even more since then. The total size of the market is hundreds of billions of dollars, several times larger than all foreign aid spending. If they can continue to slightly accelerate the rollout of cheaper ways to transfer money, it'll have a big impact. Organization building careers are a good fit for people who can develop skills in areas like operations, people management, fundraising, administration, software systems, and Finance. Pursuing this path usually means first focusing on building some of these skills, which can be done at any competent organisation, and then later on using them to contribute to the Organisations you think are most impactful.)
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Identifying Impactful Organizations and What They (And Their Cause Area Actually Needs
Transcript:
Speaker 1
To find impactful organisations, think about which problems you think are most pressing, and then try to identify the best organisations addressing those problems. In our problem profiles, we list recommended organisations to give you some ideas. Finally, try to identify those that have a pressing need for your skills, and a role that might be a great fit for you. What if you want to found an organisation? One mistake people make is trying to work out which organisations should be founded from their armchair, or by choosing an issue that they've happened to come across in their own lives. Instead, go and learn about big, neglected social problems. Take a job in the area, do further study, and speak to lots of people working on the problem to find out what the world really needs. You need to get near the edge of an area before you'll spot the ideas others haven't, and have the connections you'll need to execute.)
- Time 2:07:15
- impact, global problems, explore_vs_exploit,

(highlight:: Exercise: Developing Your Short List of High Impact Careers
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Before we move on, make an initial short list of high impact careers you could work towards in the long run. There's some ways to generate our ideas. One, go over each approach in this chapter. Try to generate two to three more specific paths within each that might be a good fit for you and meet your other personal criteria. Two, take your list of pressing problems from earlier. What do those problems most need? Can you think of any career paths you might be able to take that could help address those needs? Three, see our list of career reviews and no down any other ideas there. That's at adk.info.cerv. Four, are there any other paths that you're aware of that you might excel at? Or are unique opportunities open only to you? Add them to your list too. Five, imagine your ideal working day, hour by hour. What jobs might fit with that? What job would you do if money were no objects? Or if you only had ten years left to live? Does that give you any other ideas for fulfilling longer term career paths? The aim at this point is just to come up with more options. We'll explain how to further narrow down in chapter eight. In generating options, er, towards including more rather than less. In particular, we often talk to people who only ever really think about jobs that are closely related to their past experience. And that's often a mistake. For example, you don't need to have studied anything to do with politics in order to work in government and policy. It's often possible to get a job in a new area without specific experience. And even if it takes a couple of years to transition, that can easily be worth it in the context of the rest of your career.)
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(highlight:: Expanding Career Options
Summary:
Consider addressing needs, exploring various career paths, thinking beyond past experience, envisioning ideal working day, exploring unique opportunities, and thinking about fulfilling longer-term career paths to generate a list of diverse options.
Previous experience does not necessarily limit potential career choices, and it's beneficial to consider a broad range of possibilities beyond one's academic background. Generating multiple options is crucial at this stage in the career planning process.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What do those problems most need? Can you think of any career paths you might be able to take that could help address those needs? Three, see our list of career reviews and no down any other ideas there. That's at adk.info.cerv. Four, are there any other paths that you're aware of that you might excel at? Or are unique opportunities open only to you? Add them to your list too. Five, imagine your ideal working day, hour by hour. What jobs might fit with that? What job would you do if money were no objects? Or if you only had ten years left to live? Does that give you any other ideas for fulfilling longer term career paths? The aim at this point is just to come up with more options. We'll explain how to further narrow down in chapter eight. In generating options, er, towards including more rather than less. In particular, we often talk to people who only ever really think about jobs that are closely related to their past experience. And that's often a mistake. For example, you don't need to have studied anything to do with politics in order to work in government and policy. It's often possible to get a job in a new area without specific experience. And even if it takes a couple of years to transition, that can easily be worth it in the context of the rest of your career. This is especially true if you're an undergraduate. What you've studied so far has little bearing on what you might do in the future. Recap of our career guide so far. Back in chapter one, we saw that an enjoyable and fulfilling job, helps others,)
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Career Capital: Skills, Connections, Credentials, and Character (S Triple C
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You'll need to build your skills, connections, credentials and character, what we call career capital.)
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(highlight:: Your Peak Impact/Performance is Likely to Be Later in Your Career
Transcript:
Speaker 1
There are all sorts of awards for young leaders, like the four plus 30 under 30. But these stories are interesting precisely because they're the exception. Most people reach the peak of their impact in their middle age. Income usually peaks in the 40s, suggesting that it takes around 20 years for most people to reach their peak productivity. Similarly, experts only reach their peak abilities between age 30 to 60, and if anything, this age is increasing over time. Here's a table. It shows different fields and their age of peak output. For theoretical physics, lyric poetry and pure mathematics, the age of peak output is around 30, for psychology and chemistry, it's around 40, novel writing, history, philosophy And medicine, around 50, business, the average age of S and P 500 CEOs is 55, and politics, the average age of a first-term US president is 55. When researchers looked in more detail at these findings, they found that expert level performance in established fields usually requires 10 to 30 years of focused practice. K. Anders Eriksson, a leader in this field of research, said after 30 years of research, I have never found a convincing case for anyone developing extraordinary abilities without intense Extended practice.)
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(highlight:: Understanding Career Capital to Assess Future Opportunities
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Five components of career capital. By career capital, we mean anything that puts you in a better position to make a difference or secure a fulfilling career in the future. We normally break it down into the following components, which you can use to compare your options in terms of career capital. Skills and knowledge. What will you learn? How useful will it be? And how fast will you learn? A job will be best for learning when you're pushed to improve and get lots of feedback from mentors and colleagues. Ask yourself, where will I learn fastest? Connections. Who will you work with and meet? Will they include potential future collaborators on impactful projects, supportive friends and mentors, people who are influential, or people who will help you expand into new Circles? Credentials. We don't just mean formal credentials like having a law degree but also your achievements and reputation, or anything else that acts as a good signal to future collaborators or employers. If you're a writer, it could be the quality of your blog. If you're a coder, it might be your GitHub. If you're interested in doing good, how can you show you've cultivated that interest? Character. Will this option help you cultivate virtues like generosity, compassion, humility, integrity, honesty, good judgment and respective important norms? In particular, will you be able to work alongside people with good character since that is a huge influence? These traits are vital to being trusted, working with others and not doing harm. They also determine whether when faced with a high stakes decision, you'll be able to do what's best for the world. And runway. How much money will you save in this job? Your runway is how long you could comfortably live with no income. It depends on both your savings and how much you could reduce your expenses by. We recommend aiming for at least six months of runway to maintain your financial security, while 12 to 18 months of runway gives you the flexibility to make a major career change. It's usually worth paying down high interest debt before donating more than 1% per year or taking a big pay cut for greater impact.)
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- 1action,
- [note::I should add these to my career options spreadsheet (i.e. what can I do to enhance my credentials for a particular path?) - I've already done some of this work, but it's hardly organized.]

(highlight:: Career Capital in a Nutshell: Get Good at Something Useful
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If we were going to summarise all our advice on how to get career capital into one line, we'd say, get good at something useful. In other words, gain abilities that are valued in the job market, making it easy at a bargain for the ingredients of a fulfilling job, as well as those that are needed in tackling the world's Most pressing problems. Once you have valuable skills, you'll also need to learn how to sell those skills to others and make connections. This can involve deliberately gaining credentials, such as by getting degrees or creating public demo projects, or it can involve what's normally thought of as networking, such As going to conferences or building up a Twitter following. So it's true all these kinds of activities build your career capital too. But all of these activities become much easier once you have something useful to offer, which is why we put the emphasis on building skills first.)
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(highlight:: Maximize Useful Learning: Learn Valuable Skills, Practice, & Increase Opp Surface Area
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Getting good at something useful usually involves a combination of the following four ingredients. One, choose valuable skills to learn. We covered some broad skill types that we think are valuable for doing good in the previous chapter, organisation building, communication and community building, research, earning To give, and government and policy. Two, find skills that are a good fit for you. Those that match your talents and that you can learn fastest, which we'll cover in the next chapter. Three, practice. Getting good at most jobs takes years, if not decades. You shouldn't expect to excel right away. This also makes it vital to find good mentorship, to do something you can stick with for a long time. And four, increase your chances of being in the right place at the right time. For example, it's much easier to get to the top of a brand new field that's growing rapidly than an established area like law, since there are far fewer people to compete with. Likewise, being part of the right scene can be a huge factor. So if you've stumbled across a community, person or organisation with momentum, sticking with that may pay off. In short, try to maximise your rate of useful learning.)
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(highlight:: Skills AI is Unlikely to Automate
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The types of tasks that seem hardest to automate likely involve, decision making and problem solving, for example, choosing from a variety of AI-generated images, especially decisions Where it's important for human, perhaps for legal reasons, to stay in the loop. Social intelligence and relationship building. Difficult motor skills. Robots are lagging behind generative AI systems, so jobs from plumbing to surgery are likely to be least affected, at least for now. And high level expertise. AI systems are still not as accurate as top human experts within their area of expertise, though it's not clear how long this will last. It's very hard to predict how this will affect the labor market over the next 10 years.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Leveraging AI to Augment Your Productivity
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you want your skills to stay relevant in the future, focus more on learning the hardest to automate skills, perhaps such as the ones above, and also focus heavily on learning how to Use AI to augment your productivity. The workers who do best in the future will probably be those most able to make use of AI and automation to solve important problems.)
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(highlight:: Early Career Advice: Work with any high-performing, high-integrity team
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So often one of the most useful things you can do after college is to go and work with any high-performing high-integrity team, where you can be mentored in the highly useful skill of Generally getting stuff done at work. If the organization also has a good reputation, then you'll also get the credential of saying you've worked there. And you'll probably be able to meet lots of other ambitious people, building your connections. If it's rapidly growing, you'll have more opportunities for promotions, more role will be better, and your future achievements will be more impressive. It's hard to meet all of these criteria in one job, but they're all worth looking out for.)
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(highlight:: Considerations for Working in Private v.s. Non-Profit Sectors
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Should you work in the private sector or at a non-profit? The private sector might actually be a better place to learn productivity because the clear feedback mechanism of profit weeds out ineffective work faster. Our impression is that many conventional non-profits are pretty dysfunctional, which is one reason why non-profit leaders often recommend training up elsewhere. Another big factor is there are far more jobs in the private sector, and the higher pay can help you build up your runway. That said, there are lots of great organizations and teams across all sectors, including non-profits, government and academia. Even putting impact aside, working in an organization with a social mission can offer major advantages, such as getting to learn about a pressing global problem, meeting and being Around other people who want to do good, and more motivation and meaning.)
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(highlight:: Considerations around Working for Small v.s. Large Organizations
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Should you work for a small or large organization? In smaller organizations you can usually learn a wider variety of skills and potentially get more responsibility faster. Larger organizations are usually more well-known, so offer good credentials for your CV and have roles with lower variance, and often have more capacity for training and mentorship. More speculatively, smaller organizations may have better feedback loops between performance and success, while succeeding in large organizations becomes more about navigating Politics and bureaucracy, though these can be valuable skills too. If you want to work in the non-profit sector longer term, many of the organizations are small, so working in a smaller organization may give you more relevant skills. However, if you want to work in government and policy, large organizations could be better preparation.)
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(highlight:: Choosing Graduate Subjects and Career Paths
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Options. Besides economics and machine learning, some other useful subjects to highlight given our list of pressing problems include other applied quantitative subjects like computer Science, physics and statistics, security studies, international relations, public policy or law school, particularly for entering government and policy careers, subfields Of biology relevant to pandemic prevention, like synthetic biology, mathematical biology, virology, immunology, pharmacology or vaccinology, and studying China or another Emerging global power like India or Russia. Of course, many people should study options that aren't on this list. For instance, we've written about how we'd like to see more of our readers study history, and many of the team in 80,000 hours have a background in philosophy. However, these subjects are more competitive and have worse backup options, so require a higher degree of personal fit. And other options can make sense depending on your situation, for example doing an MBA if you're in the corporate sector. Which subjects are best also depends on your longer term career goals. We aim to discuss which kinds of graduate study are most useful to a particular longer term paths within our career reviews and problem profiles. Sea Appendices 8 and 9 for summaries. How can you compare graduate subjects? Way up your options in terms of personal fit? Will you be good at the subject? If you're good at the area, it's more likely you'll be able to pursue work in that area later on. You'll enjoy it more, and you'll do the work more quickly. Flexibility. Does it open up lots of options both inside and outside academia? If you're uncertain about academia, watch out for programs that mainly help you with academic careers, for example philosophy PhD or literature PhD. And if you do a maths PhD, you can transfer into economics, physics, biology, computer science and so on, but the reverse is not true.)
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(highlight:: Considerations for Pursuing Graduate School Programs
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How can you compare graduate subjects? Way up your options in terms of personal fit? Will you be good at the subject? If you're good at the area, it's more likely you'll be able to pursue work in that area later on. You'll enjoy it more, and you'll do the work more quickly. Flexibility. Does it open up lots of options both inside and outside academia? If you're uncertain about academia, watch out for programs that mainly help you with academic careers, for example philosophy PhD or literature PhD. And if you do a maths PhD, you can transfer into economics, physics, biology, computer science and so on, but the reverse is not true. Also, some graduate programs give you better odds of landing academic positions, for example more than 90% of economists can get research positions, whereas only about 50% of biology PhDs do. Relevance to your long term plans. Does it take you towards the options you're most interested in? Lots of people are tempted to do graduate study even when it doesn't particularly help with their longer term plans. For instance, potential entrepreneurs are tempted to do MBAs when they're not particularly helpful to entrepreneurship. Lots of people are tempted to do a random master's degree when they're not sure what to do. Some people consider doing a law degree when they're not confident they want to be a lawyer. Which programs are best within a subject? There's a huge amount of variation between schools and specific programs within a subject. Pay attention to, will you get good mentorship? Making how to do good research is a craft that gets passed down mainly via hands-on training, so this is vital. Getting good mentorship helps hugely with motivation and your future opportunities in academia. It often comes down to the specific person you'll be working with and your fit with them. Will the particular university be an environment where you can flourish? For example, in terms of location and culture? What's the reputation of the professor and university? Your supervisor's reputation in the field will impact your future opportunities in academia, and learning at a well-known university is useful for opportunities outside of academia, For example as a communicator or in policy. And will you get funding? It could easily be better to do a subject you think offers few options in general if you find a particular opportunity that's strong in these criteria. Should you do graduate study? It's not a decision to be taken lightly. In particular, PhD programs are often demoralizing and people doing them often struggle with mental health or don't complete them. And master's degrees can cost a lot of money. Health takes substantial time. It's also not a question we can answer in the abstract. It depends on your other options.)
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(highlight:: Executive Branch Fellowships and Leadership Scheme Opportunities
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Executive branch fellowships and leadership schemes, like the President Management Fellowship in the US, or the Civil Service Faststream in the UK, among other possibilities. There are other options in the US depending on your background, the AAAS Fellowship for People with Science PhDs or Engineering Masters, or the Tech Congress Fellowship for Mid Korea Tech Professionals. If you're a STEM graduate, also consider the National Security Innovation Network's Technology and National Security Fellowship. These are especially good options if you want to work anywhere in the policy world or social sector.)
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(highlight:: Upskilling in Management
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Management, a skill that increasingly becomes required in a very wide range of positions as you move further along your career, whether it's managing people, long and complex projects, Or both. There are lots of ways to become better as a manager. Most importantly, find ways to start managing on a small scale. Ideally, work under a great manager or find a mentor or coach who is, and then regularly check in with them about what isn't isn't working. Make sure to collect feedback from the people you manage. There are also lots of concrete habits and processes that can make you better as a manager, which you can practice applying while doing the above. To learn more, we have a list of resources in Appendix 7.)
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(highlight:: Becoming a Better Manager and Exploring High-Impact Careers
Summary:
To become a better manager, start by managing on a small scale, seek guidance from a great manager or mentor, and collect feedback from your team.
Developing concrete habits and practices is essential. Additionally, exploring high-impact careers like Information Security, Data Science, and Applied Statistics can be highly rewarding and in-demand, offering great salary prospects.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
There are lots of ways to become better as a manager. Most importantly, find ways to start managing on a small scale. Ideally, work under a great manager or find a mentor or coach who is, and then regularly check in with them about what isn't isn't working. Make sure to collect feedback from the people you manage. There are also lots of concrete habits and processes that can make you better as a manager, which you can practice applying while doing the above. To learn more, we have a list of resources in Appendix 7. Information Security. Protecting organizations from cyber attacks that could compromise their mission, data, or assets. Some organizations need help protecting information that could be hugely dangerous if it was known more widely, such as harmful genetic sequences or powerful AI technology. Reaches in areas like these could have disastrous consequences, which makes information security a great option for people who want to have a high impact career, and because it's An in-demand skill with high salaries, it provides a great backup option. Data Science and Applied Statistics. Data Science is a cross between statistics and programming. The boot camps are a similar deal to programming, although they tend to mainly recruit science PhDs. If you've just done a science PhD and don't want to continue with academia, this is a good option to consider, but we'd probably recommend ruling out programming first. Similarly, you can learn data analysis, statistics, and modeling by taking the right graduate program as discussed above.)
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(highlight:: Upskilling in Marketing
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Learning to market toilet paper doesn't seem like the most socially motivated option, but almost all types of organizations need marketing and demand for the skill is growing. You can learn the skill set, then transfer into an organization with a social mission. Failing that, you'll have a lot of backup options, and you could earn to give instead. You can learn marketing skills by taking an entry-level position at a top firm or working under a good mentor in a business. We'd especially recommend focusing on the style of marketing that's more data and technology driven, rather than traditional creative advertising.)
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(highlight:: Upskilling in Sales
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Sales and Negotiation. Together to marketing and management, sales skills can be hugely useful, whatever your job, and whether or not it has sales in the title. If you want to hire people, promote an important cause, rent an office, get a job, or do almost anything you'll need to sell. Sales can feel adversarial, like you're trying to persuade people to do something against their interest. But the best kind of sales is collaborative. It's about finding ways to meet the needs of both parties. Much of good selling comes from genuinely trying to benefit and build good relationships with people.)
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(highlight:: Excellence in the Unconventional
Summary:
Strive to excel in unconventional paths that may not provide formal credentials or prestige.
Building career capital should focus not only on hard aspects like a prestigious employer, but also on soft aspects like skills, achievements, connections, and reputation. Impressive achievements are crucial for career capital.
By doing great work and pushing oneself to excel, one can build reputation, make connections, and learn more.
Pursuing unconventional paths like starting a new organization can lead to significant career capital through impressive achievements, learning experiences, and meeting interesting people.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
5. Do anything where you might excel, even if it's a bit random. It came across someone who had a significant chance of becoming a magician and maybe landing in national TV show in India, and was deciding between that and consulting. It seemed to us that the magician path was more exciting since the skills and connections within media would be more unusual and valuable for work on the world's most pressing problems Than those of another consultant. A common mistake is to think that building career capital always means doing something that gives you formal credentials like a law degree, or is prestigious like consulting. It's easy to focus on hard aspects of career capital like having a well-known employer because they're concrete, but the soft aspects of career capital, your skills, achievements, Connections, and reputation are equally important, if not more so. The very best career capital comes from impressive achievements. You can build these soft aspects of career capital in almost any job if you perform well. Doing great work builds your reputation, and that allows you to make connections with other higher achievers. If you push yourself to do great work, then you'll probably learn more too. This is why doing something less conventional like starting a new organization can sometimes be the best path for career capital. If you succeed, it'll be impressive, but even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot and meet interesting people.)
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(highlight:: 1min Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It came across someone who had a significant chance of becoming a magician and maybe landing in national TV show in India, and was deciding between that and consulting. It seemed to us that the magician path was more exciting since the skills and connections within media would be more unusual and valuable for work on the world's most pressing problems Than those of another consultant. A common mistake is to think that building career capital always means doing something that gives you formal credentials like a law degree, or is prestigious like consulting. It's easy to focus on hard aspects of career capital like having a well-known employer because they're concrete, but the soft aspects of career capital, your skills, achievements, Connections, and reputation are equally important, if not more so. The very best career capital comes from impressive achievements. You can build these soft aspects of career capital in almost any job if you perform well. Doing great work builds your reputation, and that allows you to make connections with other higher achievers. If you push yourself to do great work, then you'll probably learn more too. This is why doing something less conventional like starting a new organization can sometimes be the best path for career capital. If you succeed, it'll be impressive, but even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot and meet interesting people. Doing anything that will give you a concretely visible project that seems impressive can also be helpful, such as writing a successful blog or doing a project that appears in the media.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Building "Soft", Less Formal Forms of Career Capital
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It's easy to focus on hard aspects of career capital like having a well-known employer because they're concrete, but the soft aspects of career capital, your skills, achievements, Connections, and reputation are equally important, if not more so. The very best career capital comes from impressive achievements. You can build these soft aspects of career capital in almost any job if you perform well. Doing great work builds your reputation, and that allows you to make connections with other higher achievers. If you push yourself to do great work, then you'll probably learn more too. This is why doing something less conventional like starting a new organization can sometimes be the best path for career capital. If you succeed, it'll be impressive, but even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot and meet interesting people. Doing anything that will give you a concretely visible project that seems impressive can also be helpful, such as writing a successful blog or doing a project that appears in the media. For someone who wants to make a difference, it can even be worth doing something that seems a bit random, if you're going to be great at it.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Learning by Doing
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Speaker 1
Training by doing is often the most effective way to learn. Most people can't see a route to having a significant positive impact right at the start of their career, but if you do, just pursuing that might well be your best option for career capital. This could look like joining a startup social impact project you think could succeed over 5 to 10 years, or it could mean directly entering one of the career paths you think are most impactful. If you succeed, it'll be impressive benefiting your career capital, and if you're someone who cares about doing good, you'll probably find it more motivating to work on something Meaningful, making you more likely to succeed. In addition, if you want to tackle pressing global problems, then at some point you need to learn about those problems and meet others who want to work on them too. This is usually easier to do if you work in those areas than if you, for instance, work in a random corporate job.)
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(highlight:: Focus on Transferable Career Capital Early, and Specalized Career Capital Later
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Speaker 1
Most career capital prepares you for a narrow range of paths, like knowledge of malaria or information security. Which should you focus on? All else equal, when you're earlier in your career you should focus more on transferable career capital. At the start of your career you're more uncertain about what's best, so it's more useful to have flexibility. And more generally, the more uncertain you are about what roles you want in the longer term, the more you should focus on transferable career capital. Unfortunately however, all else is often not equal. While specialist career capital gives you fewer options, it's often necessary to enter the most impactful jobs, so it's still probably worth focusing on at some point.)
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(highlight:: 1min Snip
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Speaker 1
You may not be sure how to best contribute today, and you may suspect that you have few valuable skills, but that's fine. Although we like stories of people who achieved apparently instant fame and early success, like the Forbes 30 under 30, they're not the norm. Besides those who just got lucky, behind most great achievements and many years spent diligently building expertise. We've seen people transform their careers by doing things like learning to program, being mentored by the right boss, and going to the right graduate school. If you build valuable career capital, then you'll be able to have a more impactful, satisfying career too. We've now explored which options to aim for long-term and how to work towards them. In the next chapter, we'll explain how to narrow them down. Apply this to your own career. 1. Given the longer-term paths you'd most like to take, what steps might most accelerate you toward them? 2. Go over all the six paths to career capital and ways to gain career capital in any job, and note down the three next steps you could take to gain career capital. A few ideas to get you started. Can you think of any opportunities to work at a high-performance growing organization? Do any graduate study options make sense?)
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(highlight:: Reflection Questions for Building Career Capital
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Speaker 1
Apply this to your own career. 1. Given the longer-term paths you'd most like to take, what steps might most accelerate you toward them? 2. Go over all the six paths to career capital and ways to gain career capital in any job, and note down the three next steps you could take to gain career capital. A few ideas to get you started. Can you think of any opportunities to work at a high-performance growing organization? Do any graduate study options make sense? Are there any options in policy to consider? Can you do something where you can learn a useful, transferable skill? Is there an option where you might achieve something impressive? And could you make a contribution right away? 3. What's the most valuable career capital you already have? Identifying this can give you clues about what you'll be best at, and help you convince employers to hire you. Review each of the categories. Skills and knowledge, connections, credentials, character, and runway. If you're stuck, list out two to five achievements you're most proud of, and ask yourself what they have in common.)
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(highlight:: Be a Person Who 'Gets Shit Done': The Importance of Being a High Performer in Any Field
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Even if everyone were an equally good fit, there could still be big differences in outcomes just because some people happen to get lucky while others don't. However, some components are almost certainly due to skill. This means that you'll have much more impact if you choose an area where you enjoy the work and have good personal fit. Second, as we argued, being successful in your field gives you more career capital. This sounds obvious, but can be a big deal. Generally being known as a person who gets shit done and is great at what they do, can open all sorts of often surprising opportunities. For example, many organizations will hire someone without experience of their area if that person has done something impressive elsewhere. For example, many AI companies have hired people without a background in AI. Charity and company board members are often successful people recruited from other fields, or you might meet someone in another field who admires your work and wants to work together. Moreover, being successful in any field, even if it seems a bit random, gives you influence, money, and connections, which, as we've also covered, can be used to promote all sorts of Good causes, even those unrelated to your field.)
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(highlight:: Formula for Comparing Job Opportunities: Sum of All Career Capital * Personal Fit
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Speaker 1
If we put together everything we've covered so far in the guide, this would be our formula for a perfect job. Career capital, that's skills, connections, and credentials, plus impact, that's pressing problem in the right method, plus supportive conditions, that's engaging work, colleagues, Basic needs, and fit with the rest of your life, all added together, then multiplied by personal fit. You can use these factors to make side-by-side comparisons of different career options.)
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(highlight:: "Going With Your Gut" is Advisable in Specific Situations: In General, Don't Trust It
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Speaker 1
If you were to try to predict performance in advance, going with your gut isn't the best way to do it. Research in the science of decision making collected over several decades shows that intuitive decision making only works in certain circumstances. For instance, your gut instinct can tell you very rapidly if someone is angry with you. This is because our brain is biologically wired to rapidly warn us when in danger, and to fit in socially. Your gut can also be amazingly accurate when trained. Chessmasters have an astonishingly good intuition for the best moves. This is because they've trained their intuition by playing lots of similar games, and built up a sense of what works and what doesn't. However, gut decision making is poor when it comes to working out things like how fast a business will grow, who will win a football match, and what grades a student will receive. Earlier, we also saw that our intuition is poor at working out what will make us happy. This is all because our untrained gut instinct makes lots of mistakes, and in these situations it's hard to train it to do better.)
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(highlight:: Experimental Career Development: List Options, Identify Uncertainties, & Resolve Them
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Speaker 1
Here are some more tips on each stage. Make a big list of options. The cost of accidentally ruling out a great option too early is much greater than the cost of investigating it further, so it's important to start broad. And since it's so hard to predict where you'll excel, that also means it's hard to rule out lots of paths. This can also help you avoid one of the biggest decision-making biases, considering too few options. We've met lots of people who stumbled into paths like PhDs, medicine, or law school because those options felt like the default at the time. But if they'd considered more options, they could easily have found something that fit them better. We also meet a lot of people who think they need to stick narrowly to their recent experience. For example, they might think that because they studied biology, they should mainly look for jobs that involve biology. But what major you studied rarely matters that much. So start by making a long list of options, longer than your first inclination. We'll talk more about how to do this in chapter 9. Figure out your key uncertainties. You don't have time to try or investigate every job, so you need to narrow down the field. To start, just make some rough guesses. Roughly rank your options in terms of personal fit, impact, and supportive conditions for job satisfaction. Plus, career capital if you're comparing next steps rather than longer-term paths. Then, ask yourself, what are my most important uncertainties about this ranking? In other words, if you could get the answers to just a few questions, which questions would tell you the most about which options should be top? People often find the most important questions are pretty simple things, like, one, if I apply to this job, would I get in? Two, would I enjoy this aspect of the job? Three, would the pay be high enough given my student loans? And four, what's the day-to-day routine actually like? We have some more tips on how to predict your fit below. Do cheap tests first. Now that you have a list of uncertainties, try to resolve them. Start with the easiest and quickest ways to gain information first. We often find people who want to, say, try out economics, so they apply for a master's program. But that's a huge investment. Instead, think about how you can learn more with the least possible effort, cheap tests. In particular, consider how you might be able to eliminate your top option. Or, consider what you might need to find out to move a different option to the top slot. When investigating a specific option, you can think of creating a ladder of tests. After each step, reevaluate whether the option still seems promising, best, or if you can skip the remaining steps and move on to investigate another option. One such ladder might look like this. One, read our relevant career reviews, all our research on a given topic, and do some Google searches to learn the basics. One to two hours. Two, speak to someone in the area. Two hours. Three, speak to three more people who work in the area and read one or two books. Twenty hours. Four, consider using some of the additional approaches to predicting success below. Five, given your findings in the previous steps, look for a relevant project that might take one to four weeks of work, like applying to jobs, volunteering in a related role, or doing A side project in the area, to see what it's like and how you perform. And six, only then consider taking a two to twenty-four month commitment, like a work replacement, internship, or graduate study. Being offered a trial position with an organization for a couple of months can be ideal because both you and the organization want to quickly assess your fit. If you're choosing which restaurant to eat at, the stakes aren't high enough to warrant much research. But a career decision will influence decades of your life, so it could easily be worth weeks or months of work to make sure you get it right. Try something and iterate.)
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(highlight:: 2min Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Right. Try something and iterate. You'll never be certain about which option is best, and even worse, you may never feel confident in your best guess. So when should you stop your research and try something? Here's a simple answer. When your best guess stops changing. If you keep investigating but your answers aren't changing, then the chances are you've hit diminishing returns and you should just try something. Of course, some decisions are harder to reverse or higher stakes in others, for example going to medical school. Also all else equal, the bigger the decision, the more time you should spend investigating, and the more stable you want your answers to be. Once you take the plunge and start a job, it helps to remember that even this is just an experiment. In most cases, if you try something for a couple of years and it doesn't work out, you can try something else. With each step you take, you'll learn more about what fits you best. Advanced. What are the best ways to predict career fit according to the research? Our key advice on predicting fit is to define your key uncertainties and go investigate them in whatever way seems most helpful. But it's also true that based on the research in our experience, some approaches to predicting fit seem better than others. You can use these prompts to better target your efforts to gain information and to make better guesses before you start doing lots of investigation. One, what is the job actually like? We often meet people who speculate on their fit for, say, working in government but have little idea of what civil servants actually do. Before you go any further, try to get the basics down. Can you describe what a typical day might look like? What tasks create value in the job? What does it take to do them well? Two, what do experts say? If you can, ask people experienced in the field about how well you'd perform, especially people with experience recruiting for the job in question. But, be careful. Don't put too much weight on a single person's view. And try to find people who are likely to be honest with you.)
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If Unsure About A Job, Quit! (You're Likely to Be Happier
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Speaker 1
If unsure, quit. The sunk cost bias leads us to expect people to continue with their current path for too long, want to avoid the short-term costs of switching, and be averse to leaping into an unknown New option. This all suggests that if you're on the fence about quitting your job, you should quit. This is exactly what an influential randomized study found. Stephen Levitt recruited tens of thousands of participants who were deeply unsure about whether to make a big change in their life. After offering some advice on how to make hard choices, those who remained truly undecided were given the chance to flip a coin to settle the issue. 22,500 did so. Levitt followed up with these participants two and six months later to ask whether they had actually made the change and how happy they were on a scale of one to ten. It turned out that people who made a change on an important question gained 2.2 points of happiness out of ten.)
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(highlight:: The Pitfall of "Keeping Your Options Open" and A Framework for What to Do Instead
Transcript:
Speaker 1
But through advising thousands of people with their careers, we've seen that it can have some serious pitfalls. Deciding to just keep your options open can lead to you spending far too long working in a generally prestigious job like consulting that you know you don't want to do long-term and just Isn't that relevant to your longer-term goals. Stop your committing so you end up pursuing a middle-of-the-road job that gives you some flexibility rather than going for something that might be outstanding in career capital and So ultimately give you better options. Or turn into an excuse to not think hard about what's best. So what should you do instead? The three key stages to a career. Move through the following three stages. One, explore. Take low-cost ways to learn about and test out promising longer-term roles until you feel ready to bet on one for a few years. Most likely to be the top priority ages 18 to 24. Two, build career capital. Take a bet on a longer-term path that could go really well by building the career capital that will most accelerate you in your chosen path but with a backup plan. Age 25 to 35. And three, deploy. Change the career capital you've built to tackle pressing problems and bargain for a job you find personally satisfying. Age 36 and up. And then keep updating your plan every one to three years as you continue to learn more and the world changes.)
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(highlight:: Create Your Career Vision: Problems You'd Like to Work On + Roles You'd Like To Aim Toward
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Speaker 1
Your vision should be broad enough that it won't constantly change, but narrow enough to provide some direction. Your vision should include, 1. A list of two to five global problems you'd most like to work on longer-term, as covered in chapter five. And 2. A list of one to five roles or types of work you'd like to aim towards, as covered in chapter six.)
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(highlight:: Identifying Direct Routes to Your Career Goals
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Speaker 1
Think about where you'd like to end up, and then identify the most direct routes to get there. The best way to do this is to ask people in the field how someone with your background can advance most quickly. For example, ask, if I wanted to be in Role X in five years, what would I need to do? Also, look for examples of people who have advanced unusually quickly and figure out how they did it. Think about which types of career capital will be most important. For example, Bill Clinton knew that to succeed in politics, he'd need to know a lot of people, so even as an undergraduate, he kept a list of everyone he'd met on a paper notepad. We do some of this analysis in our career reviews, but there's no substitute for getting personal advice on the best next steps for you. If you're feeling uncertain about a longer-term option, another question to consider is, how might I eliminate that option? Is there something you could do that would decisively tell you whether pursuing that longer-term path made sense or not?)
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(highlight:: Make an A-B-Z Plan for Your Career
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Speaker 1
You face similarly large uncertainties in your career, so we might be able to borrow some of the best practices in entrepreneurship and apply them to career strategy. This is the premise of The Startup of You, a book by the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. One of his tips is making an A.B.Z. Plan, which we've also found useful while giving one-on-one advice to our readers. Giving an A.B.Z. Plan helps you think about specific alternatives and backup plans, putting you in a better position to adapt when the situation changes. 1. Plan A. Your ideal scenario. Your plan A is your best guess at the route you'd most like to pursue. This could be a particular vision you're going to bet on, and the next step that would imply. For example, try to become an academic economist who works on global priorities research or AI policy, vision, by studying these extra maths courses at undergrad, next step. If you're more unsure about your vision, you could also plan to try out several longer-term paths by taking a couple of carefully ordered next steps as we covered in the chapter on personal Fit. Or, your plan A could just be to build some valuable transferable career capital, for example, learn people management or get a degree in statistics, and then re-evaluate your plan Later. 2. Plan B. Nearby Alternatives. These are promising alternatives that you could switch to if your plan A doesn't work out. Writing them out ahead of time helps you stay ready for new opportunities. To figure out your plan B, ask yourself, what are the most likely ways your plan A wouldn't work out? If that happens, what will you do? And what other good options are there? List any promising nearby alternatives to plan A, which may be other promising longer-term paths or different entry routes to the same paths. Then come up with two or three alternatives. For instance, if you're already in a job and applying to master's programs, one possibility is that you don't get into the programs you want. In that case, your plan B might be to stay in your job another year and to assess later, or to apply for a master's in another discipline. Or if your plan A is to work in policy by getting a job in the executive branch, your plan B could be to try think-tank internships or working on a political campaign. Three, plan Z. If it all f***s up, this is your temporary fallback. Your plan Z is what you'll do if this all goes wrong. In other words, if your A and B plans don't work out, what will you do to pay the bills until you can get back on your feet? Having a plan Z can not only help you avoid unacceptable personal outcomes, but it can help you get more comfortable with taking risks, knowing you'll ultimately be okay makes it easier To be ambitious. Your plan Z can be very short if you're comfortable with the risk you're taking, or are in a secure position. If you're in a higher stakes situation, for example you have dependents, you might want to do more careful planning. Some common examples are sleeping on a friend's sofa while paying the bills through tutoring or working at a cafe, living off savings, going back to your old job, moving back in with Your family, or taking a job you find relatively undermending. It could even mean something more adventurous, like going to teach English in Asia, a surprisingly in-demand, uncompetitive job that lets you learn about a new culture. Then ask yourself, is this plan Z acceptable? If not, you might need to revise your plan A, or prioritize building your safety net for a while. Optional, further ways to reduce risk. Sometimes you need to take risks in order to have a big impact.)
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(highlight:: Managing Risk in Your Career Path
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Speaker 1
Optional, further ways to reduce risk. Sometimes you need to take risks in order to have a big impact. Thinking about them ahead of time can make this easier. First, clarify what a realistic worst-case scenario really is if you pursue your plan A. It's easy to have vague fears about failing, and research shows that when we think about bad events, we bring to mind their worst aspects, while ignoring all the things that will remain Unchanged. This led Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to say, Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it. Often, when you think through the worst realistic scenario, you realize it's not so bad, and there's something you could overcome in the long term. The risks to pay most attention to are those that could permanently reduce your happiness or career capital, such as burning out, getting depressed, or ruining your reputation. You might also have dependents who rely on you. Second, is there anything you could do to make sure that the serious risks don't happen? Many people think of entrepreneur college dropouts like Bill Gates as people who took bold risks to succeed. But Gates worked on tech sales for about a year part-time as a student at Harvard, and then negotiated a year of leave from study to start Microsoft. If it had failed, Gates could have gone back to study computer science at Harvard. In reality, he took hardly any risk at all. Usually, with a bit of thought, it's possible to avoid the worst risks of your plan. Third, make a plan for what you do if the worst-case scenario does happen. Think about what you'll do to cope and make it less bad, as well as having a fallback plan Z job as above. If it helps, remember you'll probably still have food, friends, a soft bed, and a room at the perfect temperature. Better conditions than most people have faced in all of history. Fourth, if at this point the risks are still unacceptable, then you may need to change your plan A. For instance, you might need to spend more time building your financial runway. Going through these exercises makes risk less scary, and makes you more likely to cope if the worst does happen.)
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(highlight:: 7 Steps for Creating Your Career Plan
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Bringing all this advice together, here are the seven steps to building your own career plan. 1. What's your career stage? Exploring, building career capital, or deploying your existing career capital? 2. What's your vision? If you haven't already, sketch out your best guess shortlist of longer-term paths to aim towards and global problems to work on. Your vision. 3. Now, clarify. What's the very next decision you need to make? And generate a big list of ideas for next steps. You should already have some ideas from the chapter on career capital. Lean towards including more rather than less, including some that seem like a stretch. Work backwards. What steps would most accelerate you towards your vision? Work forwards. What other interesting opportunities are you aware of? 4. Now, make an initial guess at which five to ten next steps are most promising. If you're struggling to narrow them down, you can also use our decision process to help. Look at the lists of questions for comparing options in terms of career capital and in terms of personal fit from earlier in the guide. 5. Then make an initial guess at your plan A, your top longer-term plan, plan B, nearby alternatives, and plan Z, four-back options. 6. What are your most pressing key uncertainties about all the above? We introduce the idea of a key uncertainty in chapter 8. But it can be applied to all aspects of your plan, vision, strategy, next steps, and ABZ options. What information would most change your rankings of options or your plan A? 7. How much you best resolve those key uncertainties? If you have time, go and do that. Ideally, keep investigating until your best guesses stop changing. This point, often what seems best is to simply pursue your list of next steps and then reevaluate your plan after you have concrete options on the table.)
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(highlight:: Job Searching: YOU NEED LOTS OF LEADS + LUCK
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Speaker 1
Leads. A lead is any opportunity that might turn into a job, like a position you could apply for, a friend who might know an opportunity, or a side project you might be able to get paid for. You need a lot of leads. We interviewed someone who's now a top NPR journalist, but when he started out, he applied to 70 positions and got only one serious offer. This illustrates the first thing to know about leads. You probably need a lot of them. Especially early in your career, it can easily take 20 to 100 leads to find one good job, and getting rejected 20 times is normal. In fact, the average length of a spell of unemployment in the US is six months, so be prepared for your job hunt to take that long. This is especially true if you're applying to jobs that are especially desirable and competitive, which are normally more selective and therefore require more leads. This includes most jobs directly working on the pressing problems we talk about, in part because we focus on neglected problems, so there just aren't that many jobs available. For instance, if you want to work on preventing catastrophic pandemics but can only find 10 leads, that's normally not enough to make it likely you'll find a job. You might need to apply to jobs in other areas or career paths until you've got at least 30 leads. To compound the problem, there's a huge amount of luck involved. Most employers are not only looking for general competence, they're also looking for someone who will fit that particular team and organization, and to the specific requirements Of the job. They also have to make decisions with very little information, which means they'll make a lot of mistakes. You can be very talented but simply not find a match through bad luck.)
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(highlight:: Why Referrals Trump Applications: The Dichotomy Between Employer & Job Seeker Strategies
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Speaker 1
Many recruiters consider referrals to be the best method of finding candidates. But job seekers usually get things backwards. They start with the methods that recruiters least like. Here's a diagram titled, Many if not most, Employers hunt for job seekers in the exact opposite way from how most job seekers hunt for them. The diagrams in inverted pyramid. The bottom at the pointy bit we have the way a typical job seeker prefers to fill a vacancy. And then in the reverse direction, starting from the broad end and heading towards the point we have the way a typical employer prefers to fill a vacancy. And then the pyramid is divided into steps, such that the final step for the employer is the first step for the job seeker and vice versa. So the first step for the employer, from within, promotion of a full-time employee, or promotion of a present part-time employee, or hiring a former consultant for in-house or contract Work, or hiring a former temp full-time. Employers' thoughts, I want to hire someone whose work I have already seen, a low-risk strategy for the employer. The implication for job seekers, see if you can get hired at an organization you have chosen as a temp, contract worker, or consultant, aiming at a full-time position only later, or Not at all. Now the second step for an employer and the second last step for the typical job seeker, using proof, hiring an unknown job seeker who brings proof of what he or she can do with regard to The skills needed. The implication for job seekers? If you're a programmer, bring a program you have done. With its code. If you're a photographer, bring photos. If you're a counselor, bring a case study with you, etc. Are the third step for the typical employer? Or the third last step for the typical job seeker? Using a best friend or business colleague? Hiring someone whose work a trusted friend of yours is seen, perhaps they worked for him or her. The implication for job seekers? Find someone who knows the person who has the power to hire at your target organization, who also knows your work and will introduce you to. The fourth step for typical employers, and the fourth last step for the typical job seeker? Using an agency they trust, this may be a recruiter or search firm the employer has hired or a private employment agency, both of which have checked you out on behalf of the employer. The fifth step for the typical employer and the second step for the typical job seeker? Using an ad they've placed, online or in newspapers, etc. And the last step for a typical employer and the first step for a typical job seeker? Using a resume, even if the resume was unsolicited, if the employer is desperate.)
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(highlight:: 10 Steps for Getting a Job: Sanitize Online Reputation, Ask For Info Interviews, & More
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Moreover, speaking to people in the industry is the best way to get information about how to present yourself and how to approach opportunities. It's also among the best ways to assess your fit, helping you to focus on the best opportunities. How to get referrals? You need to master the art of asking for introductions. We've put together a list of email scripts you can use. That's found at 80,000hours.org slash articles slash email-scripts. To get referrals, here's a step-by-step process. If you're not applying for a job right now, skip this section until you are. 1. First, update your LinkedIn profile or personal website, etc. This isn't because you'll get great job offers through LinkedIn, that's pretty rare, it's because people who are considering meeting you will check out your profile. Focus your profile on your most impressive accomplishments. Be as concrete as possible. For example, ranked third in the nation, increased annual donations 100%, cut the rest. It's better to have two impressive achievements than two impressive achievements and three weak ones. Add links to any portfolio projects relevant to the job. 2. Search yourself on Google and do anything you can to make the results look good. For example, delete embarrassing old blog posts. Take a look at the extra resources for this chapter in Appendix 7 for a guide. 3. If you already know someone in the industry who can hire people, then ask for a meeting to discuss opportunities in the industry. This is close to going directly to an interview skipping all the screening steps. Plus, you'll be able to ask them really useful information about how to best apply and learn more about which positions might be your best fit. Remember, there doesn't need to be an open position. Employers will often create positions for good people. Before you take the meeting, use the advice on how to prepare for interviews below. 4. If you know them less well, ask for a meeting to find out more about jobs in the industry and informational interview. If it goes well, ask them to introduce you to people who may be able to hire you, which is effectively getting a referral from this person. Do not ask them for a job if you promised it was an informational interview. 5. When asking for introductions, prepare a one-sentence specific description of the types of opportunities you'd like to find. A good example is something like an entry-level marketing position at a technology startup and education. Two bad examples are a job in software or a job that fits my skills. Being concrete makes it easier for people to come up with ideas, so lean towards too narrow rather than too broad. 6. Failing the above steps, turn to the connections of your connections. If you have a good friend who knows someone who's able to hire you, then you could directly ask that friend for a referral. The ideal is to ask someone you've worked for before, where you performed really well. 7. If your connection is not able to refer you, then ask them to introduce you to people in the industry who are able to hire. Then we're back to informational interviews, as in step 2. 8. To find out who your connections know, use LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social networks. Say you want to work at Airbnb. Go to LinkedIn and search Airbnb. It'll show you a list of all your contacts who work at Airbnb, followed by connections of connections who work at Airbnb. Pick the person with the most mutual connections and get in touch. 9. Remember, if you have 200 LinkedIn connections and each of them has 200 connections that don't overlap with the others, then you can reach at least 10,000 people using these methods. 10. There are lots of people in the 80,000 hours LinkedIn group at LinkedIn.com slash groups slash 505-7625 who are happy to give advice on applications and may be able to make introductions. 11. If you still haven't got anywhere, then it may be worth spending some time building your connections in the industry first. Read our advice on how to network in Appendix 2. Go back to our advice in the last chapter on how to network. Start with people with whom you have some connection, such as your university alumni, and friends of friends of friends, third-order connections. Your university can probably give you a list of alumni who are willing to help in each industry. There are probably some good groups you can join and conference us to attend. Otherwise, you can resort to cold emailing. Take a look at the extra resources for this chapter in Appendix 7 for guides to getting jobs with no connections and to finding anyone's email address.)
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(highlight:: Do the Work: Ideas for Demonstrating Your Skillset to Employers
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Just do the work. The most powerful way to prove you can do the work is to actually do some of it. And as we saw, doing the work is also a great way to figure out whether you're good at it, so it'll help you avoid wasting your own time too. Here are four ways to put that into practice. Do a portfolio project. For example, if you want to become a writer or a journalist, try to keep a blog or Twitter feed about a relevant topic. If you want to become a software engineer, put projects on your GitHub. Include these projects on your personal webpage and or LinkedIn profile. Mention them in your applications or during interviews. The Pre-Interview Project. The Pre-Interview Project is what the web engineer did with our career quiz. Do your own project? One, find out what you'd be doing in the role. This already puts you quite away ahead. Two, in particular, work out which problems you'll need to solve for the organization. To figure this out, you'll probably need to do some desk research, then speak to people in the industry. There's a link to a simple guide on how to research a company in the resources for this chapter in Appendix 7. Three, spend a weekend putting together a solution to these problems and send a one-page summary to a couple of people at the company with an invitation to talk more. Four, if you don't hear back after a week, follow up at least once. And five, alternatively write up your suggestions and present them at the interview. Ramen Seti calls this the briefcase technique. Speaking from personal experience, we've overseen four years' worth of competitive application processes at 80,000 hours and doing either of these projects would immediately Put you in the top 20% of applicants, if your suggestions make sense. It demonstrates a lot of enthusiasm and most people hardly know anything about the role they're applying for. Trial period. If the employer is on the fence, you can offer to do a two- to four-week trial period, perhaps it reduced pay or as an intern. Make it clear that if the employer isn't happy at the end, you'll leave gracefully. Only bring this out if the employer is on the fence, or it can seem like you're underselling yourself. Go for a nearby position. If you can't get the job you want right away, consider applying for another position in the organization, like a freelance position, or a position one step below the one you really want. Working in a nearby position gives you the opportunity to prove your motivation and cultural fit. When your boss has a position to fill, it's much easier to promote someone they already worked with than to start a lengthy application process. Just check that the position can actually lead to the one you want. For example, we often see people apply to operations positions at research organizations with the hope of later becoming a researcher. The paths require very different skill sets, so are treated as separate tracks, but lots of people would prefer to do research. This means that while it does sometimes work out, it's rare and can be frustrating for both sides.)
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(highlight:: Preparing for Interviews: Understand The Employers Problems and Make a Convincing Case
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Here's some of the best advice we've found on preparing for interviews. It's also useful for getting leads while networking. If you're not actively looking for a job right now, skip this section for now. 1. When you meet an employer, ask lots of questions to understand their challenges. Discuss how you might be able to contribute to solving these challenges. This is exactly what great salespeople do. A survey of research on sales concluded, there is a clear statistical association between the use of questions and the success of the interaction. Moreover, when salespeople were trained to ask more questions, it made them more effective. 2. Repair your three key selling points ahead of meetings. These are the messages you'll try to get in during the discussion. For instance, 1. I have done this work successfully before. 2. I am really excited about this company. And 3. I have suggestions for what I could work on. Writing these out ahead of time makes it more likely you'll mention what's most important, and 3 points is about the limit of what your audience will remember. That's why this is standard advice when pitching a business idea. If you're not sure what you have to offer, look back at the exercise at the end of chapter 7. 3. Focus on what's most impressive. That sounds better. I advise Obama on energy policy. Or, I advise Obama on energy policy, and have worked as a high school teacher the last three years. Many people fill up their CVs with everything they've done, but it's usually better to pick your one or two most impressive achievements and focus on those. It sounds better, it makes it more likely you'll cover it, and it makes it more likely the audience will remember it. 4. Prepare one to two concrete facts and stories to back up your three key messages. For instance, if you're applying to be a web engineer, rather than, I'm a hard worker. Try. I have a friend who runs an organization that was about to get some press coverage. He needed to build a website in 24 hours, so he pulled an all-nighter to build it. The next day we got a thousand sign-ups. Rather than say, I really want to work in this industry, tell this story of what led you to apply. Stories and concrete details are far more memorable than abstract claims. 5. Work out how to sum up what you have to offer in a sentence. Steve Jobs didn't sell millions of iPods by saying they're 30% better than MP3 players, but rather with a slogan, a thousand songs in your pocket. Having a short, vivid summary makes it easy for other people to promote you on your behalf. For instance, something like, here's the guy who advised Obama on climate policy and wants a research position, is ideal. 6. Prepare answers to the most likely questions. Write them out, then practice saying them out loud. The following three questions normally come up. 1. Tell me about yourself. This is an opportunity to tell the story of why you want this position and mention one or two achievements. 2. Why do you want this position? And 3. What are your questions for us? Then, usually the interview will add some behavioral questions about the traits they care most about. They usually start, tell me about a time you, and to finish with things like, exhibited leadership. Had to work as a team. Had to deal with a difficult situation, or person. Failed, or succeeded. 7. Practice the meeting from start to finish. Meet with a friend and have them ask you five interview questions, then practice responding quickly. If you don't have a friend to help, then say your answers out loud and mentally rehearse how you want it to go. Ask yourself what's most likely to go wrong, and what you'll do if that happens. And 8. Learn. After each interview, jot down what went well, what could have gone better, and what you'll do differently next time. Improve and adapt your process. Applying to jobs is a difficult skill that takes time to learn. After every interview or other important interaction with an employer, jot down what went well, what could have gone better, and what you'll do differently next time. If you've done five to ten interviews and didn't make it through to the next stage, then it's time to do a more thorough reassessment. You might be making a mistake in how you present yourself. Ask someone in the area, ideally someone with hiring experience, to check over your materials, and do a mock interview with them, or explain what happened in the interviews.)
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(highlight:: Negotiations: Be Deliberate About What You Want and Why Its In the Employers Best Interest
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How to negotiate? The basic idea is simple. Explain the value you'll give the employer, and why it's justified to give you the benefits you want. Then look for objective metrics and win-win solutions. Can you give up something the employer cares about in exchange for something you care about? For instance, other people with my level of experience in this industry are usually paid $50,000 and can work at home two days per week. But I'd prefer to work with you. Can you match the other companies? I'm really motivated to learn sales skills, so I'd like to work alongside Person X. This will make me much more effective in the role in six months. If your position is weaker, you could negotiate about a future promotion or salary increase. I'd like to work towards this insert position name. What would I need to do in the next six months to make that happen? Then ask them to commit to it if you hit their conditions.)
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(highlight:: Job Search Motivation Tips: Accountability Partner, Specific Goals, Reward Rejections
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Your first job search may be one of the hardest things you've ever done. You've probably never been rejected 30 times in a row before. It can involve months of work, and you may have to do most of it alone. It can make online dating look easy. This means that you'll need to throw every motivational technique you know at the job hunt. Here are some tips. One, perhaps the most useful single tip our readers have found is pairing up with someone else who's also job hunting. Check in on progress and share tips and leads. Alternatively, find someone who is recently successful at a similar hunt and is willing to meet up and give you tips. Two, set a really specific goal, like speaking to five people each week until you have an offer. Publicly commit to the goal and promise to make a forfeit if you miss it. Three, make it easier to face rejections. Maybe make yourself a loyalty card that you stamp every time you get a rejection and reward yourself with an ice cream once the card is filled up. Four, treat it like a job. You're most likely going to be doing the job for years at 40 hours per week, so it makes sense it might take 5% or more of that time to secure the position, and it's already one to two months Of full-time work. The more time you can put into it, the better the results are probably going to be. If you're not in a job right now, treating your job search as a job itself can help a lot with motivation. Turn up at 9am and work till 5pm. Five, apply other tips on how to motivate yourself. For example, check out the book The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter and the advice on productivity in Appendix 2.)
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(highlight:: Find or Create Your Own Communities
Transcript:
Speaker 1
As an exercise, make a list of several communities you might join, meet a variety of people and attend events within each one, and then get more involved in those, ideally more than one, That you think are most supportive for you at this time. By community, we mean something very broad. It could be anything from a casual group of friends who are interested in the same thing to larger movements, like animal welfare, with conferences and websites. So when thinking about the communities you'd like to join, don't only think about formal organizations. Rather, think about the types of people you'd most like to be around, and then think how you might achieve that. This could even involve setting up your own small community by getting together a group of friends, starting a reading group or Slack, and so on.)
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(highlight:: People Best Suited to Earning Money Should Earn to Give and Fund Everyone Else
Transcript:
Speaker 1
And because there are so many ways we can help each other, this makes it possible to achieve far more. Earning to give can actually be an example of that kind of collaboration. In the early days of 80,000 hours, I, Benjamin and my friend Matt, had to choose between running the organization and earning to give. We realized that Matt had higher earning potential, and I would be better at running the organization. In part, this is why I became the CEO, and Matt became our first major donor, as well as a seed funder for several other organizations. The alternative would have been for both of us to earn to give, in which case 80,000 hours wouldn't have existed. Or both of us could have worked at 80,000 hours, in which case it would have taken much longer to fundraise, plus the other organizations Matt donated to wouldn't have gotten those donations. Within the community as a whole, some people are relatively better suited to earning money, and others to running nonprofits. We can achieve more if the people best suited to earning money earn to give and fund everyone else. There are lots of other examples of how we can work together. For instance, some people can go and explore new areas and share the information with everyone else, allowing everyone to be more effective in the long term. Or people can specialize rather than needing to be generalists. For instance, Dr. Greg Lewis did the research into how many lives the doctor saves that we saw earlier. After realizing it was fewer than he thought, he decided not to focus on clinical medicine. Instead, he studied public health, with the aim of becoming an expert on the topic within the community, particularly on issues relevant to pandemics. He actually thinks risks from artificial intelligence might be more urgent overall, but as a doctor, he's relatively best placed to work on health-related issues.)
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- earning to give, collaboration, funding,

(highlight:: 1min Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Earning to give can actually be an example of that kind of collaboration. In the early days of 80,000 hours, I, Benjamin and my friend Matt, had to choose between running the organization and earning to give. We realized that Matt had higher earning potential, and I would be better at running the organization. In part, this is why I became the CEO, and Matt became our first major donor, as well as a seed funder for several other organizations. The alternative would have been for both of us to earn to give, in which case 80,000 hours wouldn't have existed. Or both of us could have worked at 80,000 hours, in which case it would have taken much longer to fundraise, plus the other organizations Matt donated to wouldn't have gotten those donations. Within the community as a whole, some people are relatively better suited to earning money, and others to running nonprofits. We can achieve more if the people best suited to earning money earn to give and fund everyone else. There are lots of other examples of how we can work together. For instance, some people can go and explore new areas and share the information with everyone else, allowing everyone to be more effective in the long term. Or people can specialize rather than needing to be generalists. For instance, Dr. Greg Lewis did the research into how many lives the doctor saves that we saw earlier. After realizing it was fewer than he thought, he decided not to focus on clinical medicine. Instead, he studied public health, with the aim of becoming an expert on the topic within the community, particularly on issues relevant to pandemics. He actually thinks risks from artificial intelligence might be more urgent overall, but as a doctor, he's relatively best placed to work on health-related issues.)
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(highlight:: What Kind of Life Would Your Near-Death Self Want You To Have?
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You're at the end of your 80,000-hour career. You're on your deathbed, looking back. What are some things you might regret? Perhaps you drifted into whatever seemed like the easiest option, or did what your parents did. Maybe you even made a lot of money doing something you were interested in, and had a nice house and car. But you still wonder, what was it all for? Now, imagine instead that you worked really hard throughout your life and ended up saving the lives of a hundred children. Can you really imagine regretting that? To have a truly fulfilling life, we need to turn outwards, rather than inwards. Rather than asking, what's my passion? Ask, how can I best contribute to the world? As we've seen, by using our fortunate positions and acting strategically, there's a huge amount we can all do to help others. We can do this at little cost to ourselves, and most likely while having a more successful and satisfying career too.)
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(highlight:: The 80,000 Hours Career Guide in 1 Minute
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The entire guide in one minute. To have a good career, do what contributes. Rather than expect to discover your passion in a flash of insight, your fulfillment will grow over time as you learn more about what fits, master valuable skills, and use them to help Others. To do what contributes, build useful skills and apply them to meaningful problems. Here's the three key stages to focus on over time. 1. Explore and investigate your key uncertainties, to find the best options, rather than going with your gut or narrowing down too early. Make this your key focus until you have enough confidence in some longer-term options to bet on one. 2. Build career capital to become as great as you can be. This means looking for jobs that let you generally improve your skills, reputation, connections, and character, and that most accelerate you towards your vision, as well as investing In your personal development. Do this until you've taken the best opportunities to invest in yourself. Then, use your career capital to 3. Deploy. Use your career capital to effectively help others. Do this by focusing on the most urgent social problems, rather than those you stumble into. Those that are big in scale, neglected, and solvable. To make the largest contribution to solving those problems, think broadly. Consider earning to give, research, communications, community building, organization building, and government and policy careers, as well as the direct helping careers that First come to mind, and focus on the paths that have the best personal fit. Although many efforts to help others fail, the best can be enormously effective, so be ambitious, and don't forget you can have a big impact in any job. While doing the above, keep adapting your plan, to find the best personal fit. Think like a scientist testing a hypothesis, make your best guess, clarify your key uncertainties, then investigate those uncertainties. Have some ideas about the best longer-term vision, but then put a lot of attention to finding the best next step, both working backwards and forwards. Eliminate any jobs that do significant direct harm, even if it seems like they might let you have a greater impact. If you keep learning more and improving your skills with each step, you can build a better and better career over time. Seek community to be more successful.)
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(highlight:: Working Our Your Career Through Reflection is Not as Good As Through Action
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The usual way people try to work out their dream job is to imagine different jobs and think about how satisfying they seem. Or they think about times they've felt fulfilled in the past and self-reflect about what matters most to them. If this were a normal career guide, we'd start by getting you to write out a list of what you most want from a job, like working outdoors and working with ambitious people. The best-selling career advice book of all time, What Color is Your Parachute, recommends exactly this. The hope is that deep down, people know what they really want. However, research shows that although self-reflection is useful, it only goes so far. You can probably think of times in your own life when you were excited about a holiday or party, but when it actually happened, it was just okay. In the last few decades, researchers shown that this is common. We're not always great at predicting what will make us most happy, and we don't realize how bad we are.)
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(highlight:: Money Does Make You Happy, But Returns Diminish After a Certain Point
Transcript:
Speaker 1
A lot of the research on this question is remarkably low quality, but several major studies in economics offer more clarity. We reviewed the best studies available, and the truth turns out to lie in the middle. Money does make you happy, but only a little. For instance, here are the findings from a huge survey in the United States in 2010. This is a graph with household income on the x-axis and life satisfaction from 1 to 10 on the y-axis, and there's a line labeled life satisfaction that begins by increasing quite rapidly, So that for every given increase in household income, there's quite a lot of life satisfaction increase, but by the end of the graph, it's flattened out, so that life satisfaction isn't Increasing much as household income goes up.)
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(highlight:: Stress Isn't Always Bad: Seek Out Out Work That Is Supportive, Meaningful, and Challenging
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Many people tell us they want to find a job that's not too stressful, and it's true that in the past, doctors and psychologists believed that stress was always bad. However, we did a survey of the modern literature on stress, and today the picture is a bit more complicated. One puzzle is that studies of high-ranking government and military leaders found they had lower levels of stress hormones and less anxiety, despite sleeping fewer hours, managing More people, and having higher occupational demands. One widely supported explanation is that having a greater sense of control by setting their own schedules and determining how to tackle the challenges they face protects them against The demands of the position. There are other ways that a demanding job can be good or bad depending on context. Here's a table showing whether certain variables are good or neutral or bad. First, we have types of stress. The intensity of demands can be good when challenging but achievable and bad when mismatched with ability, either too high or too low. Another type of stress is duration, can be good or neutral in the short term, and bad when it's ongoing. There are some different contexts like control, which can be good or neutral with high control and autonomy, or bad with low control and autonomy. Power, it's good or neutral to have high power and bad to have low power, and social support. It's good or neutral to have good social support and bad to have social isolation. And two ways of coping. Mindset, it's good to reframe demands as opportunities and stress is useful, and it's bad to view demands as threats and stresses harmful to health. And finally, altruism. It's good or neutral to perform altruistic acts, and it's bad to focus on yourself. This means the picture looks more like the following graph. Having a very undemanding job is bad. That's boring. Having demands that exceed your abilities is bad too. They cause harmful stress. The sweet spot is where the demands placed on new match your abilities. That's a fulfilling challenge. And this is a graph that plots ability on the x-axis against demands on the y-axis. Chose anxiety increasing as demands increase, and boredom increasing as they decrease. But there's a line showing a zone where demands and ability are evenly matched, and it's labeled the stretch zone challenge. Instead of seeking to avoid stress, seek out a supportive context and meaningful work, and then challenge yourself.)
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(highlight:: 6 Key Ingredients of a Dream Job
Summary:
Research on positive psychology and job satisfaction has identified six key ingredients of a dream job.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
We've applied the research on positive psychology about what makes for a fulfilling life, and combined it with research on job satisfaction, to come up with six key ingredients of A dream job. These are the six ingredients.)
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- [note::See article for six ingredients]

(highlight:: 6 Key Ingredients of a Dream Job
Transcript:
Speaker 1
This is what to look for in a dream job. One, engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow, freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback. Two, work that helps others. Three, work your good at. Four, supportive colleagues. Five, no major negatives, like long hours or unfair pay. And six, a job that fits your personal life.)
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- [note::How does this compare to the CAMPS framework shared in The Leader Lab?]

(highlight:: The Content of Your Dream Job is Less Important Than the Context
Transcript:
Speaker 1
But in fact, you can become passionate about new areas. If your work helps others, you practice to get good at it, you work on engaging tasks, and you work with people you'd like, then you'll become passionate about it. The six ingredients are all about the context of the work, not the content.)
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(highlight:: Helping Others is a Cross-Cultural Moral Principle
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The idea that helping others as the key to being fulfilled is hardly a new one. It's a theme from most major moral and spiritual traditions. Set your heart on doing good, do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. Buddha. A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world. Muhammad. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Jesus Christ. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness, Martin Luther King Jr.)
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(highlight:: Exercises & Questions for Identifying Your Dream Work
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Apply this to your own career. These six ingredients, especially helping others in getting good at your job, can act as guiding lights. They're what to aim to find in a dream job long term. Here are some exercises to help you start applying them. One, practice using the six ingredients to make some comparisons. Pick two options you're interested in, then score them from one to five on each factor. Two, the six ingredients we list are only a starting point. There may be other factors that are especially important to you, so we also recommend doing the following exercises. They're not perfect, as we saw earlier, our memories of what we found fulfilling can be unreliable, but completely ignoring your past experience isn't wise either. These questions should give you hints about what you find most fulfilling. When have you been most fulfilled in the past? What did these times have in common? Imagine you just found out you're going to die in 10 years. What would you spend your time doing? And can you make any of our six factors more specific? For example, what kinds of people do you most like to work with? Three, now combine our list with your own thoughts to determine the four to eight factors that are most important to you in a dream job. Four, when you're comparing your options in the future, you can use this list of factors to work out which is best. Don't expect to find an option that's best on every dimension, rather focus on finding the option that's best on balance.)
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(highlight:: Key Factors for Finding Your Dream Job
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The bottom line, what makes for a dream job? To find a dream job, look for one, work you're good at, two, work that helps others, three, supportive conditions, engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow, supportive colleagues, Lack of major negatives like unfair pay, and work that fits your personal life.)
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(highlight:: What is Social Impact & 3 Ways of Increasing Yours
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What does it mean to make a difference? Everyone talks about making a difference or changing the world or doing good, but if you ever define what they mean. So here's a definition. Your social impact is given by the number of people whose lives you improve and how much you improve them over the long term. This means that you can increase your social impact in three ways, one by helping more people, two by helping the same number of people to a greater extent, and three doing something Which has benefits that last for a longer time. We think the last option is especially important because many of our actions affect future generations.)
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(highlight:: The Ineffectiveness of Charitable Skydiving
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Unfortunately, many attempts to do good in this way are ineffective, and some actually cause harm. Take sponsored skydiving. Every year, thousands of people collect donations for good causes and throw themselves out of planes to draw attention to whatever charity they've chosen to support. This sounds like a win-win. The fundraiser gets an exhilarating once-in-a-lifetime experience while raising money for a worthy cause. What could be the harm in that? Quite a bit, actually. According to a study of two popular parachuting centers over a five-year period, 1991 to 1995, approximately 1,500 people went skydiving for charity and collectively raised more Than 120,000 pounds. That sounds pretty impressive, until you consider a few caveats. First, the cost of the diving expeditions came out of the donations, so all of the 120,000 pounds raised, only 45,000 pounds went to charity. Second, because most of the skydivers were first-time jumpers, they suffered a combined total of 163 injuries, resulting in an average hospital stay of nine days. In order to treat these injuries, the UK's National Health Service spent around 610,000 pounds. This means that for every one pound raised for the charities, the Health Service spent roughly 13 pounds, so the net effect was to reduce resources for health services. Ironically, many of the charities supported focused on health-related matters.)
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(highlight:: Untrained Volunteers Can Cost More for Organizations Than the Value They Add
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What about volunteering? One problem is that volunteers need to be managed. If untrained volunteers use the time of trained managers, it's easy for them to cost the organization more than the value they add. In fact, the main reason many volunteering schemes persist is that if someone is a volunteer for an organization, they're more likely to donate.)
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(highlight:: Give Directly: "Not the Most Effective Way to Donate to Charity By Any Means"
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Since 2008, Give Directly is made it possible to give cash directly to the poorest people in East Africa via mobile phone. We don't think this is the most effective way to donate to charity by any means. Later, we'll discuss higher impact approaches, but it's simple and quantifiable, so it makes a good starting point.)
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(highlight:: Giving Local v.s. Abroad: Money in Kenya Goes 68 Times as Far Compared to America
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Poor people served by Give Directly in Kenya have an average individual consumption of about $800 per year. This figure is based on how much $800 could buy in the US, meaning it already takes into account the fact that money goes further in poor countries. The average US college graduate has an annual individual working income of about $77,000 in 2023, or $54,500 post-tax. This means that, assuming the above relationship holds, a dollar will do about 68 times more good if you give it to someone in Kenya rather than spending it on yourself. If someone earning that average level of income were to donate 10%, they could double the annual income of seven people living in extreme poverty each year. Over the course of their career, they could have a major positive impact on hundreds of people.)
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(highlight:: If Everyone Gave 10%, The Impact Would Be Transformative
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If everyone in the richest 10% of the world's population donated 10% of their income, that would be $5 trillion per year. That would be enough to double scientific research funding. Raise everyone in the world above the $2.15 per day poverty line, provide universal basic education, and still have plenty left over to fund a renaissance in the arts, go to Mars, and Then invest $1 trillion in mitigating climate change. None of this would be straightforward to achieve, but it at least illustrates the enormous potential of greater giving.)
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- [note::This also highlights the astonishing cureent level of global inequality]

(highlight:: The Case for Doing Advocacy from an Impact Perspective
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Rich countries have a disproportionate impact on issues like global trade, migration, climate change, and technology policy, and are generally at least partly democratic. So if you prefer to do something besides giving money, consider advocating for important issues. We were initially skeptical that one person could have real influence through political advocacy, but when we dug into the numbers, we changed our minds. Let's take perhaps the simplest example, voting in elections. Several studies have used statistical models to estimate the chances of a single vote, determining the US presidential election. Because the US electoral system is determined at the state level, if you live in a state that strongly favours one candidate, your chance of deciding the outcome is effectively zero. But if you live in a state that's contested, your chances rise to between 1 in 10 million and 1 in a million. That's quite a bit higher than your chances of winning the lottery. Remember, the US federal government is very, very big. Let's imagine one candidate wanted to spend 0.2% more of GDP on foreign aid. That would be about $187 billion in extra foreign aid over their four-year term. One millionth of that is $187,000. So if voting takes you an hour, it could be the most important hour, the highest unexpected value you'll spend that year. The figures are similar in other rich countries. Smaller countries have less at stake, but each vote counts for more. We've used the example of voting since it's quantifiable, but we expect the basic idea, the very small chance of changing a very big thing, applies to other forms of well-chosen advocacy, Such as petitioning your Congressperson, getting out the vote for the right candidate, or going to a town hall meeting. We think this is likely to be even more true if you're careful to focus on the right issues.)
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(highlight:: Ideas for Being an Impact Multiplier
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Being a multiplier to help others be more effective. Suppose you don't have any money or power, and you don't feel like you can contribute by working on an important problem. What then? One option is to try to change that. We cover how to invest in yourself no matter what job you have in appendix 2. That aside, you might know someone who does have some money, power or skills, so you can make a difference by helping them achieve more. For instance, if you could enable two other people to give 10% of their income to charity, that would have even more impact than doing it yourself. These are both examples of being a multiplier. By mobilizing others, it is often possible to do more than you could through just your own efforts. Suppose you've come across a high-impact job, but you're not sure it's a good fit for your skills. If you can tell someone else about the job and they take it, that does as much good as taking it yourself, and in fact more if they're a better fit for it than you. It's often possible to raise more for charity through fundraising than you might be able to donate yourself. Or if you work at a company with a donation matching scheme, you might be able to encourage other employees to use it. What matters is that more good gets done, not that you do it with your own hands.)
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(highlight:: What is Scope Neglect?
Transcript:
Speaker 1
For instance, one study found that people were willing to pay about the same amount to save 2,000 birds from oil spills, as they were to save 200,000 birds, even though the latter is objectively 100 times better. This is an example of a common error called scope neglect. To avoid scope neglect, we need to use numbers to make comparisons, even if they're very rough.)
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(highlight:: Effectiveness of Scared Straight Programs
Summary:
Scared Straight programs, despite appearing effective on the surface, might actually lead to an increase in criminal behavior among young individuals who go through the program.
Research suggests that young people who participate in these programs commit fewer crimes post-program; however, the decrease is smaller compared to similar individuals who did not participate. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimates that for every $1 spent on scared straight programs, over $200 worth of social harm is caused.
This discrepancy in outcomes could be because young people may realize that life in jail is not as terrible as they perceived, or they might even start admiring the criminals they encounter.
The overall effectiveness of social programs, including scared straight, is questioned, with around 75% or more of rigorously evaluated programs showing minimal to negative effects.
Hence, choosing to support a charity without considering the evidence may result in having no impact at all.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It was adapted for both an acclaimed documentary and a TV show on A&E, which broke ratings records for the network upon its premiere. There's just one problem with scared straight, it probably causes young people to commit more crimes. Or more precisely, the young people who went through the program did commit fewer crimes than they did before, so superficially it looked like it worked. But the decrease was smaller compared to similarly young people who never went through the program. This effect is so significant that the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated that each $1 spent on scared straight programs causes more than $200 worth of social Harm. This estimate seems a little too pessimistic to us, but even so, it looks like it was a huge mistake. No one is sure why this is, but it might be because the young people realized that life in jail wasn't as bad as they thought, or they came to admire the criminals. Some attempts to do good, like scared straight, make things worse. Many more failed to have an impact. David Anderson of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy estimates. Of social programs that have been rigorously evaluated, most, perhaps 75% or more, including those backed by expert opinion and less rigorous studies, turn out to produce small or No effects, in some cases negative effects. This suggests that if you choose a charity to get involved in without looking at the evidence, you will most likely have no impact at all.)
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(highlight:: Questions to Ask Before Working on a Problem
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Try our 10 question quiz at 80,000hours.org slash articles slash can you guess? And see if you can guess what's effective. The quiz asks you to guess which social interventions work and which don't. We've tested it on hundreds of people and they hardly do better than chance. So before you choose a social problem to work on, ask yourself, one, is there a way to make progress on this problem with rigorous evidence behind it? For instance, lots of studies have shown that malaria nets prevent malaria. Two, alternatively, is there a way to test promising but unproven programs that could help solve this problem and find out whether they work? And three, is this a problem where there's a small but realistic chance of making a massive impact?)
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(highlight:: Finding the Most Pressing Problems: Scale, Neglectedness, Tractability, Personal Fit
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How can you find the world's most pressing problems? The most pressing problems are likely to have a good combination of the following qualities. One, begin scale. What's the magnitude of this problem? How much does it affect people's lives today? More crucially, how much of an effect will solving it have in the long run, including the very, very long run, if there are any such effects? Two, neglected. How many people and resources are already dedicated to tackling this problem? How well allocated are the resources that are currently being dedicated to the problem? Are there good reasons why markets or governments aren't already making progress on this problem? And three, solvable. How easy would it be to make progress on this problem? Do interventions already exist to solve this problem effectively and how strong is the evidence behind them? To find the problem you should work on, also consider personal fit. Could you become motivated to work on this problem? If you're later in your career, do you have the relevant expertise?)
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(highlight:: Global Poverty Perspective
Summary:
The global income distribution highlights that someone at the US poverty line is richer than 85% of the world's poorest countries.
The poorest 700 million people in Central America, Africa, and South Asia live on under $800 per year. Resources can make a bigger impact in poorer regions as additional money significantly enhances welfare.
It is noted that resources for the 40 million people in relative poverty in the US far exceed the resources dedicated to the 650 million people in extreme global poverty.
Overseas development aid from developed countries totals $200 billion annually compared to the $1.7 trillion spent on welfare in the US alone.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Why do we say the most urgent problems aren't local? Well, remember the distribution of world income that we came across in chapter 2? Even someone living on the US poverty line of $14,580 per year, as of 2023, is richer than about 85% of the world's poorest countries. And about 20 times wealthier than the world's poorest 700 million who mostly live in Central America, Africa and South Asia on under $800 per year. These figures are already adjusted for the fact that money goes further in poor countries, purchasing power parity. As we also saw earlier, the poorer you are, the bigger difference extra money makes to your welfare. Based on this research, because poorer people in Africa are 20 times poorer, we'd expect resources to go about 20 times further in helping them. There are also only about 40 million people living in relative poverty in the US, about 6% as many as the 650 million in extreme global poverty. There are also far more resources dedicated to helping this smaller number of people. Overseas development aid from the world's developed countries is in total only about $200 billion per year, compared to $1.7 trillion spent on welfare in the US alone.)
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(highlight:: Problems in Rich Countries are More Costly and Complex Than Those in Poor Countries
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Why do we say the most urgent problems aren't local? Well, remember the distribution of world income that we came across in chapter 2? Even someone living on the US poverty line of $14,580 per year, as of 2023, is richer than about 85% of the world's poorest countries. And about 20 times wealthier than the world's poorest 700 million who mostly live in Central America, Africa and South Asia on under $800 per year. These figures are already adjusted for the fact that money goes further in poor countries, purchasing power parity. As we also saw earlier, the poorer you are, the bigger difference extra money makes to your welfare. Based on this research, because poorer people in Africa are 20 times poorer, we'd expect resources to go about 20 times further in helping them. There are also only about 40 million people living in relative poverty in the US, about 6% as many as the 650 million in extreme global poverty. There are also far more resources dedicated to helping this smaller number of people. Overseas development aid from the world's developed countries is in total only about $200 billion per year, compared to $1.7 trillion spent on welfare in the US alone. Finally, as we saw earlier, a significant fraction of US social interventions probably don't work. This is because problems facing the poor in rich countries are complex and hard to solve. Moreover, even the most evidence-based interventions are expensive and have modest effects. The same comparison holds for other rich countries, such as the UK, Australia, Canada and the EU. Though if you live in a low-income country, then it may well be best to focus on issues there. All this isn't to deny that the poor in rich countries have very tough lives, perhaps even worse in some respects than those in the developing world. Rather, the issue is that there are far fewer of them and they're harder to help.)
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(highlight:: The Relatice Impact Spending on Global Health in Poor v.s. Rich Countries
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The UK's National Health Service and many US government agencies are willing to spend over $30,000 to give someone an extra year of healthy life. This is a fantastic use of resources by ordinary standards. However, research by GiveWell has found that it's possible to give an infant a year of healthy life by donating around $100 to one of the most cost effective global health charities, Such as against Malaria Foundation. This is about 0.33% as much. This suggests that, at least in terms of improving health, one career working somewhere like AMF might achieve as much as 300 careers focused on one typical way of doing good in a rich Country. Though our best guess is that a more regressive and comprehensive comparison would find a somewhat smaller difference. It's hard for us to grasp such big differences in scale, but that would mean that one year of equally skilled effort towards the best treatments within global health could have as much Impact as what would have taken others 100 years working on typically. These discoveries caused many of us at 80,000 hours to start giving at least 10% of our incomes to effective global health charities. No matter which job we ended up in, these donations would enable us to make a significant difference. In fact, if the 100-fold figure is correct, 10% donation would be the equivalent of donating 1,000% of our income to charities focused on poverty in rich countries.)
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(highlight:: Reasons to Focus on Causes That Significantly Influence Future Generations
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If people didn't want to leave a legacy to future generations, it would be hard to understand why we invest so much in science, create art and preserve the wilderness. We would certainly choose the second option. And if you value future generations, then there are powerful arguments that helping them should be your focus. We were first exposed to these by researchers at University of Oxford's, modestly named, Future of Humanity Institute. So, what's the reasoning? First, future generations matter. But they can't vote, they can't buy things, and they can't stand up for their interests. This means our system neglects them. You can see this in the global failure to come to an international agreement to tackle climate change that actually works. Second, their plight is abstract, where reminded of issues like global poverty and factory farming far more often. But it can't so easily visualize suffering that will happen in the future. Future generations rely more on our goodwill, and even that is hard to muster. Third, there will probably be many more people alive in the future than there are today. The Earth will remain habitable for at least hundreds of millions of years. We may die out long before that point, but if there's a chance of making it, then many more people will live in the future than are alive today.)
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(highlight:: The Case for Focusing on Biorisk
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Bio risk, the threat from future disease. In 2006, the Guardian ordered segments of smallpox DNA via mail. If assembled into a complete strand and transmitted to 10 people, the study estimated it could infect up to 2.2 million people in 180 days, potentially killing 663. The question is the question that we have of over 1000, if authorities did not respond quickly with vaccinations and quarantines? We first wrote about the risks posed by catastrophic pandemics back in 2016. Seven years later and three years after the emergence of COVID-19, we're still concerned. COVID-19 disrupted the world and has so far killed over 10 million people, but it's easy to imagine scenarios far worse. In the future, we might face diseases even deadlier than COVID-19 or smallpox, whether through natural evolution or created through bioengineering, the technology for which is Becoming cheaper and more accessible every year. In our eyes, the chance of a pandemic that kills over 100 million people over the next century seems similar to and likely greater than the risk of nuclear war or runaway climate change. So it poses the threat that's at least similar in magnitude to both the present generation and future generations. But risks from pandemics are even now far more neglected than either of these. We estimate that over $600 billion is spent annually on efforts to fight climate change, compared to $1 to $10 billion towards biosecurity aimed at addressing the worst case pandemics. Moreover, there are some ways the risks from pandemics could be even greater. It's very difficult to see how nuclear war or climate change could kill literally everyone and permanently end civilization. But bio-weapons with this power seem very much within the realm of possibility, if given enough time.)
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(highlight:: Invest in Global Priorities Research and Broad Interventions
Summary:
Investing in global priorities research is essential to efficiently allocate resources to address pressing global issues.
Career opportunities in this field include working at various organizations like open philanthropy, Global Priorities Institute, and Think Tanks. Additionally, focusing on broad interventions, such as improving politics, can have a cascading effect on solving multiple other problems.
Political action, like voting and community engagement, can influence decision-makers at a larger scale, although some areas like US governance already receive substantial attention, making them challenging to impact.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Global priorities research. If you're uncertain which global problem is most pressing, here's one answer. Global research is needed. Only a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars spent each year trying to make the world a better place goes towards research to identify how to spend those resources most effectively, What we call global priorities research. As we've seen, some approaches are far more effective than others, so this research is hugely valuable. A career in this area could mean working at open philanthropy, the Global Priorities Institute, Rethink Priorities, Economics Academia, Think Tanks and elsewhere. Broad interventions such as improved politics. The second strategy is to work on problems that will help us solve lots of other problems. We call these broad interventions. For instance, if we had more enlightened governments, that would help us solve lots of other problems facing future generations. The US government in particular will play a pivotal role in issues like climate policy, AI policy, biosecurity, and new challenges we don't even know about yet. So US governance is highly important, if maybe not neglected or tractable. Political action in your local community might have an effect on decision makers in Washington. In the last chapter, we did an analysis of the simplest kind of political action, voting, and found that it could be really valuable. On the other hand, issues like US governance already receive a huge amount of attention, which makes them hard to improve.)
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(highlight:: Going Meta: The Case for Doing Global Priorities Research
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you're uncertain which global problem is most pressing, here's one answer. Global research is needed. Only a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars spent each year trying to make the world a better place goes towards research to identify how to spend those resources most effectively, What we call global priorities research. As we've seen, some approaches are far more effective than others, so this research is hugely valuable. A career in this area could mean working at open philanthropy, the Global Priorities Institute, Rethink Priorities, Economics Academia, Think Tanks and elsewhere.)
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(highlight:: Going Meta: The Case for Working on "Broad Interventions", Like Improved Politics
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Broad interventions such as improved politics. The second strategy is to work on problems that will help us solve lots of other problems. We call these broad interventions. For instance, if we had more enlightened governments, that would help us solve lots of other problems facing future generations. The US government in particular will play a pivotal role in issues like climate policy, AI policy, biosecurity, and new challenges we don't even know about yet. So US governance is highly important, if maybe not neglected or tractable. Political action in your local community might have an effect on decision makers in Washington. In the last chapter, we did an analysis of the simplest kind of political action, voting, and found that it could be really valuable. On the other hand, issues like US governance already receive a huge amount of attention, which makes them hard to improve. We generally favor more neglected issues with more targeted effects on future generations. For instance, fascinating research by Philip Tetlock shows that some teams and methods are far better at predicting geopolitical events than others. If the decision makers in society were informed by much more accurate predictions, it would help them navigate future crises, whatever those turn out to be. However, the category of broad interventions is one of the areas we're most uncertain about, so we're keen to see more research on it.)
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(highlight:: Going Meta: The Case for EA Community Building and Helping Others Have More Impacy
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you're uncertain which problems we'll be most pressing in the future, a third strategy is to simply save money or invest in your career capital, so you're in a better position to do Good when you have more information. However, rather than make personal investments, it can be even better to invest in a community of people working to do good. In an earlier chapter, we looked at giving what we can, a charity building a community of people who donate 10% of their income to whatever charities are most cost effective. Every $1 invested in growing giving what we can has led to over $9 already donated to its top recommended charities, and a total of over $3 billion pledged. By building a community, giving what we can has been able to raise much more money than their founders could have donated individually, they've achieved a multiplier on their impact. But what's more, the members donate to whatever charities are most effective at the time. If the situation changes, then at least to some extent the donations will change too. This flexibility makes the impact over time much higher. Giving what we can is one example of several projects in the effective altruism community, a community of people who aim to identify the best ways to help others and take action based On their findings. $80,000 itself is another example. Better career advice doesn't sound like one of the most pressing problems imaginable, but many of the world's most talented young people want to do good with their lives, and lack good Advice on how to do so. This means that every year thousands of them have far less impact than they could have. We could have gone to work on issues like AI ourselves, but instead by providing better advice, we can help thousands of other people find high impact careers. And so, if we do a good job, we might hope to have thousands of times as much impact ourselves. What's more, if we discover new, better career options than the ones we already know about, we can switch to promoting them. Just like giving what we can, this flexibility gives us greater impact over time.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Developing a Personal List of Top Problems to Work On
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You can see our list of the world's most pressing problems in Appendix 9. But that's just our list. What matters for your career is your personal list. The assessment of problems greatly depends on value judgments and debatable empirical questions, and you might not share our answers. There are a number of key ways in which we might be wrong. Personal fit is also vital, and so are the particular opportunities you can find. We don't think everyone should work on the number one problem. If you're a great fit for an area, you might have over 10 times as much impact working there as you would in one that doesn't motivate you, so this could easily change your personal ranking. Just remember, there are many ways to help solve each problem, so it's often easier than it first seems to find work you enjoy that helps with problems you might not have yet considered Working on. Moreover, it's easier to develop new passions than most people expect.)
- Time 1:38:56
- 1action, career focus, world problems,
- [note::I should go back to the list of potential careers I created in college and list off the direct or indirect problems I think are compelling to work on. Then, I'd like to brainstorm what career steps I might take to either work directly on those problems or gain career capital to make me well-placed to work on them.]

(highlight:: Exercise: Exploring Which Problems You Might Work On and Resolving Your Uncertainties
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So even if you're right at the start of your career, we'd suggest spending at least a couple of days thinking about this question. Here's an exercise. One, using the resources above, write down the three global problems that you think are most pressing for you to work on. Your personal list will depend on your values, empirical assumptions, and personal fit with the areas. And two, what are you most uncertain about with respect to your list? How much you learn more about those questions? For example, is there something you could read? Someone you could talk to?)
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- 1action,

(highlight:: Only a Small Portion of People Should Earn to Give
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Overall, for people we speak to one-on-one, we only think about 10% should earn to give. In fact, in 2022, Jeff left his high-paying job at Google. He's now a researcher at the New Clay Asset Observatory. Building a wastewater monitoring system that he hopes will help detect pandemics before they start. Jeff and Julia are still going to donate over 30% of their income, but given Jeff's lower salary, they expect most of their positive impact to come directly from their work.)
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(highlight:: Communication & Community Building as an Impactful Career Path
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Jdanov single-handedly lobbied the WHO to start the elimination campaign in the first place. Without his involvement, it would not have happened until much later, and possibly not at all. So, why has communicating important ideas sometimes been so effective? First, ideas can spread quickly, so communication is a way for a small group of people to have a large effect on a problem. The small team can launch a social movement, lobby a government, start a campaign that influences public opinion, or just persuade their friends to take up a cause. In each case, they can have a lasting impact on the problem that goes far beyond what they could achieve directly. Second, spreading important ideas in a careful, strategic way is neglected. This is because there's usually no commercial incentive to spread socially important ideas. Instead, advocacy is mainly pursued by people willing to dedicate their careers to making the world a better place. Moreover, the ideas that are most impactful to spread are those that aren't yet widely accepted. Standing up to the status quo is uncomfortable, and it can take decades for opinion to shift. This means there's also little personal incentive to stand up for them. Communication is also an area where the most successful efforts do far more than the typical efforts. The most successful advocates influence millions of people, while others might struggle to persuade more than a few friends. This means if you're an exceptionally good fit for communication, it's often the best thing you can do, and you're likely to achieve far more by doing it yourself than you could by funding Someone to engage in communication or advocacy on your behalf. Communication careers can be pursued as a full-time job, such as many jobs in the media, as part of a wider role like an academic or science communication, or alongside almost any job, Like Rosa Parks. Communication careers are defined by their focus on spreading ideas on a big scale, but it's also possible to have a similar impact on a more person-to-person level as a community builder. For instance, the American Women's Rights activist Susan B. Anthony hated writing, so while her co-founder at the Women's Loyal National League, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, was a powerful communicator, writing long books and editing their Weekly newsletter, Anthony primarily focused on organizing and building a community. Anthony's work, running events, talking to activists and building the suffragist community in the United States, eventually led to the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing All adult women the right to vote, is often called the Anthony Amendment in her honor. Community building often works well as a part-time position. For instance, QAN was a student at Stanford when they came across 80,000 hours and realized the importance of reducing existential risks. However, they also saw there were no organizations on campus focusing on that idea. So they founded the Stanford Existential Risk Initiative, which runs courses and conferences about the topic to build a community of students aiming to work on these risks.)
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(highlight:: Considerations Around Working for/Starting a Non-Profit
Transcript:
Speaker 1
When most people think of careers that do good, the first thing they think of is working at a charity. But the thing is, lots of jobs at charities just aren't that impactful. Some charities focus on programs that don't work, like SCAD STRAIGHT which cause kids to commit more crimes. Others focus on ways of helping that don't have much leverage, like Superman fighting criminals one by one, or Dr. Landstein of focusing on performing surgeries rather than doing the work to discover blood groups. Another problem is that many want to work at organisations that are more constrained by funding than by the number of people enthusiastic to work there. This means if you don't take the job, it would be easy to find someone else who's almost as good. Think of a lawyer who volunteers at a soup kitchen. It may be motivating for them, but it's hardly the most effective thing they could do. Donating one or two hours of salary could pay for several other people to do the work instead, or they could do pro bono legal work and contribute in a way that makes use of their valuable Skills. However, there are plenty of other situations when working for a nonprofit is the most effective thing to do. Non-profits can tackle issues that other organisations can't. They can carry out research that doesn't earn academic prestige, or do political advocacy on behalf of disempowered groups such as animals or future generations, or provide services That would never be profitable within the market. And there are lots of nonprofits doing great work that really need more people to help build and scale them up. There are also lots of niches that aren't being filled, where we need new nonprofits set up to tackle them.)
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(highlight:: The Case for Building Impactful Organizations
Transcript:
Speaker 1
More broadly, helping to build an organisation can be a route to making a big contribution, because organisations allow large groups of people to coordinate and therefore achieve A bigger impact than they could individually. Moreover, if you help build or start an effective organisation, it can continue to have an impact even after you leave. And if you can help make an already existing and impactful organisation somewhat more effective, that can also be a route to a big impact. Claire joined Lead Exposure Elimination Project, or LEAP, as its third staff member. She thought that joining LEAP would help build her career capital, especially her skills and connections, and more importantly, that Lead Exposure in low and middle income countries Is an important, solvable and highly neglected problem. Since joining, Claire has developed LEAP's programs and managed the team implementing them, as well as led the hiring for crucial new staff. LEAP has since started working with governments in industry in 16 countries, and has successfully advocated for the government in Malawi to monitor levels of lead and paints. These organisations don't even need to be nonprofits. Some social impact projects are better structured as businesses, and could also include think tanks, research groups, advocacy groups, and so on. For instance, SendWave enables African migrant workers to transfer money to their families through a mobile app for fees of 3%, rather than 10% fees with Western Union. So for every $1 of revenue they make, they make some of the poorest people in the world several dollars richer. Within three years, they had already had an impact equivalent to donating millions of dollars, and they've grown even more since then. The total size of the market is hundreds of billions of dollars, several times larger than all foreign aid spending. If they can continue to slightly accelerate the rollout of cheaper ways to transfer money, it'll have a big impact. Organization building careers are a good fit for people who can develop skills in areas like operations, people management, fundraising, administration, software systems, and Finance. Pursuing this path usually means first focusing on building some of these skills, which can be done at any competent organisation, and then later on using them to contribute to the Organisations you think are most impactful.)
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Identifying Impactful Organizations and What They (And Their Cause Area Actually Needs
Transcript:
Speaker 1
To find impactful organisations, think about which problems you think are most pressing, and then try to identify the best organisations addressing those problems. In our problem profiles, we list recommended organisations to give you some ideas. Finally, try to identify those that have a pressing need for your skills, and a role that might be a great fit for you. What if you want to found an organisation? One mistake people make is trying to work out which organisations should be founded from their armchair, or by choosing an issue that they've happened to come across in their own lives. Instead, go and learn about big, neglected social problems. Take a job in the area, do further study, and speak to lots of people working on the problem to find out what the world really needs. You need to get near the edge of an area before you'll spot the ideas others haven't, and have the connections you'll need to execute.)
- Time 2:07:15
- impact, global problems, explore_vs_exploit,

(highlight:: Exercise: Developing Your Short List of High Impact Careers
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Before we move on, make an initial short list of high impact careers you could work towards in the long run. There's some ways to generate our ideas. One, go over each approach in this chapter. Try to generate two to three more specific paths within each that might be a good fit for you and meet your other personal criteria. Two, take your list of pressing problems from earlier. What do those problems most need? Can you think of any career paths you might be able to take that could help address those needs? Three, see our list of career reviews and no down any other ideas there. That's at adk.info.cerv. Four, are there any other paths that you're aware of that you might excel at? Or are unique opportunities open only to you? Add them to your list too. Five, imagine your ideal working day, hour by hour. What jobs might fit with that? What job would you do if money were no objects? Or if you only had ten years left to live? Does that give you any other ideas for fulfilling longer term career paths? The aim at this point is just to come up with more options. We'll explain how to further narrow down in chapter eight. In generating options, er, towards including more rather than less. In particular, we often talk to people who only ever really think about jobs that are closely related to their past experience. And that's often a mistake. For example, you don't need to have studied anything to do with politics in order to work in government and policy. It's often possible to get a job in a new area without specific experience. And even if it takes a couple of years to transition, that can easily be worth it in the context of the rest of your career.)
- Time 2:14:49
- 1action,

(highlight:: Expanding Career Options
Summary:
Consider addressing needs, exploring various career paths, thinking beyond past experience, envisioning ideal working day, exploring unique opportunities, and thinking about fulfilling longer-term career paths to generate a list of diverse options.
Previous experience does not necessarily limit potential career choices, and it's beneficial to consider a broad range of possibilities beyond one's academic background. Generating multiple options is crucial at this stage in the career planning process.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
What do those problems most need? Can you think of any career paths you might be able to take that could help address those needs? Three, see our list of career reviews and no down any other ideas there. That's at adk.info.cerv. Four, are there any other paths that you're aware of that you might excel at? Or are unique opportunities open only to you? Add them to your list too. Five, imagine your ideal working day, hour by hour. What jobs might fit with that? What job would you do if money were no objects? Or if you only had ten years left to live? Does that give you any other ideas for fulfilling longer term career paths? The aim at this point is just to come up with more options. We'll explain how to further narrow down in chapter eight. In generating options, er, towards including more rather than less. In particular, we often talk to people who only ever really think about jobs that are closely related to their past experience. And that's often a mistake. For example, you don't need to have studied anything to do with politics in order to work in government and policy. It's often possible to get a job in a new area without specific experience. And even if it takes a couple of years to transition, that can easily be worth it in the context of the rest of your career. This is especially true if you're an undergraduate. What you've studied so far has little bearing on what you might do in the future. Recap of our career guide so far. Back in chapter one, we saw that an enjoyable and fulfilling job, helps others,)
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Career Capital: Skills, Connections, Credentials, and Character (S Triple C
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You'll need to build your skills, connections, credentials and character, what we call career capital.)
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(highlight:: Your Peak Impact/Performance is Likely to Be Later in Your Career
Transcript:
Speaker 1
There are all sorts of awards for young leaders, like the four plus 30 under 30. But these stories are interesting precisely because they're the exception. Most people reach the peak of their impact in their middle age. Income usually peaks in the 40s, suggesting that it takes around 20 years for most people to reach their peak productivity. Similarly, experts only reach their peak abilities between age 30 to 60, and if anything, this age is increasing over time. Here's a table. It shows different fields and their age of peak output. For theoretical physics, lyric poetry and pure mathematics, the age of peak output is around 30, for psychology and chemistry, it's around 40, novel writing, history, philosophy And medicine, around 50, business, the average age of S and P 500 CEOs is 55, and politics, the average age of a first-term US president is 55. When researchers looked in more detail at these findings, they found that expert level performance in established fields usually requires 10 to 30 years of focused practice. K. Anders Eriksson, a leader in this field of research, said after 30 years of research, I have never found a convincing case for anyone developing extraordinary abilities without intense Extended practice.)
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(highlight:: Understanding Career Capital to Assess Future Opportunities
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Five components of career capital. By career capital, we mean anything that puts you in a better position to make a difference or secure a fulfilling career in the future. We normally break it down into the following components, which you can use to compare your options in terms of career capital. Skills and knowledge. What will you learn? How useful will it be? And how fast will you learn? A job will be best for learning when you're pushed to improve and get lots of feedback from mentors and colleagues. Ask yourself, where will I learn fastest? Connections. Who will you work with and meet? Will they include potential future collaborators on impactful projects, supportive friends and mentors, people who are influential, or people who will help you expand into new Circles? Credentials. We don't just mean formal credentials like having a law degree but also your achievements and reputation, or anything else that acts as a good signal to future collaborators or employers. If you're a writer, it could be the quality of your blog. If you're a coder, it might be your GitHub. If you're interested in doing good, how can you show you've cultivated that interest? Character. Will this option help you cultivate virtues like generosity, compassion, humility, integrity, honesty, good judgment and respective important norms? In particular, will you be able to work alongside people with good character since that is a huge influence? These traits are vital to being trusted, working with others and not doing harm. They also determine whether when faced with a high stakes decision, you'll be able to do what's best for the world. And runway. How much money will you save in this job? Your runway is how long you could comfortably live with no income. It depends on both your savings and how much you could reduce your expenses by. We recommend aiming for at least six months of runway to maintain your financial security, while 12 to 18 months of runway gives you the flexibility to make a major career change. It's usually worth paying down high interest debt before donating more than 1% per year or taking a big pay cut for greater impact.)
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- 1action,
- [note::I should add these to my career options spreadsheet (i.e. what can I do to enhance my credentials for a particular path?) - I've already done some of this work, but it's hardly organized.]

(highlight:: Career Capital in a Nutshell: Get Good at Something Useful
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If we were going to summarise all our advice on how to get career capital into one line, we'd say, get good at something useful. In other words, gain abilities that are valued in the job market, making it easy at a bargain for the ingredients of a fulfilling job, as well as those that are needed in tackling the world's Most pressing problems. Once you have valuable skills, you'll also need to learn how to sell those skills to others and make connections. This can involve deliberately gaining credentials, such as by getting degrees or creating public demo projects, or it can involve what's normally thought of as networking, such As going to conferences or building up a Twitter following. So it's true all these kinds of activities build your career capital too. But all of these activities become much easier once you have something useful to offer, which is why we put the emphasis on building skills first.)
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(highlight:: Maximize Useful Learning: Learn Valuable Skills, Practice, & Increase Opp Surface Area
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Getting good at something useful usually involves a combination of the following four ingredients. One, choose valuable skills to learn. We covered some broad skill types that we think are valuable for doing good in the previous chapter, organisation building, communication and community building, research, earning To give, and government and policy. Two, find skills that are a good fit for you. Those that match your talents and that you can learn fastest, which we'll cover in the next chapter. Three, practice. Getting good at most jobs takes years, if not decades. You shouldn't expect to excel right away. This also makes it vital to find good mentorship, to do something you can stick with for a long time. And four, increase your chances of being in the right place at the right time. For example, it's much easier to get to the top of a brand new field that's growing rapidly than an established area like law, since there are far fewer people to compete with. Likewise, being part of the right scene can be a huge factor. So if you've stumbled across a community, person or organisation with momentum, sticking with that may pay off. In short, try to maximise your rate of useful learning.)
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(highlight:: Skills AI is Unlikely to Automate
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The types of tasks that seem hardest to automate likely involve, decision making and problem solving, for example, choosing from a variety of AI-generated images, especially decisions Where it's important for human, perhaps for legal reasons, to stay in the loop. Social intelligence and relationship building. Difficult motor skills. Robots are lagging behind generative AI systems, so jobs from plumbing to surgery are likely to be least affected, at least for now. And high level expertise. AI systems are still not as accurate as top human experts within their area of expertise, though it's not clear how long this will last. It's very hard to predict how this will affect the labor market over the next 10 years.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Leveraging AI to Augment Your Productivity
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you want your skills to stay relevant in the future, focus more on learning the hardest to automate skills, perhaps such as the ones above, and also focus heavily on learning how to Use AI to augment your productivity. The workers who do best in the future will probably be those most able to make use of AI and automation to solve important problems.)
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(highlight:: Early Career Advice: Work with any high-performing, high-integrity team
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So often one of the most useful things you can do after college is to go and work with any high-performing high-integrity team, where you can be mentored in the highly useful skill of Generally getting stuff done at work. If the organization also has a good reputation, then you'll also get the credential of saying you've worked there. And you'll probably be able to meet lots of other ambitious people, building your connections. If it's rapidly growing, you'll have more opportunities for promotions, more role will be better, and your future achievements will be more impressive. It's hard to meet all of these criteria in one job, but they're all worth looking out for.)
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(highlight:: Considerations for Working in Private v.s. Non-Profit Sectors
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Should you work in the private sector or at a non-profit? The private sector might actually be a better place to learn productivity because the clear feedback mechanism of profit weeds out ineffective work faster. Our impression is that many conventional non-profits are pretty dysfunctional, which is one reason why non-profit leaders often recommend training up elsewhere. Another big factor is there are far more jobs in the private sector, and the higher pay can help you build up your runway. That said, there are lots of great organizations and teams across all sectors, including non-profits, government and academia. Even putting impact aside, working in an organization with a social mission can offer major advantages, such as getting to learn about a pressing global problem, meeting and being Around other people who want to do good, and more motivation and meaning.)
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(highlight:: Considerations around Working for Small v.s. Large Organizations
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Should you work for a small or large organization? In smaller organizations you can usually learn a wider variety of skills and potentially get more responsibility faster. Larger organizations are usually more well-known, so offer good credentials for your CV and have roles with lower variance, and often have more capacity for training and mentorship. More speculatively, smaller organizations may have better feedback loops between performance and success, while succeeding in large organizations becomes more about navigating Politics and bureaucracy, though these can be valuable skills too. If you want to work in the non-profit sector longer term, many of the organizations are small, so working in a smaller organization may give you more relevant skills. However, if you want to work in government and policy, large organizations could be better preparation.)
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(highlight:: Choosing Graduate Subjects and Career Paths
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Options. Besides economics and machine learning, some other useful subjects to highlight given our list of pressing problems include other applied quantitative subjects like computer Science, physics and statistics, security studies, international relations, public policy or law school, particularly for entering government and policy careers, subfields Of biology relevant to pandemic prevention, like synthetic biology, mathematical biology, virology, immunology, pharmacology or vaccinology, and studying China or another Emerging global power like India or Russia. Of course, many people should study options that aren't on this list. For instance, we've written about how we'd like to see more of our readers study history, and many of the team in 80,000 hours have a background in philosophy. However, these subjects are more competitive and have worse backup options, so require a higher degree of personal fit. And other options can make sense depending on your situation, for example doing an MBA if you're in the corporate sector. Which subjects are best also depends on your longer term career goals. We aim to discuss which kinds of graduate study are most useful to a particular longer term paths within our career reviews and problem profiles. Sea Appendices 8 and 9 for summaries. How can you compare graduate subjects? Way up your options in terms of personal fit? Will you be good at the subject? If you're good at the area, it's more likely you'll be able to pursue work in that area later on. You'll enjoy it more, and you'll do the work more quickly. Flexibility. Does it open up lots of options both inside and outside academia? If you're uncertain about academia, watch out for programs that mainly help you with academic careers, for example philosophy PhD or literature PhD. And if you do a maths PhD, you can transfer into economics, physics, biology, computer science and so on, but the reverse is not true.)
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(highlight:: Considerations for Pursuing Graduate School Programs
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How can you compare graduate subjects? Way up your options in terms of personal fit? Will you be good at the subject? If you're good at the area, it's more likely you'll be able to pursue work in that area later on. You'll enjoy it more, and you'll do the work more quickly. Flexibility. Does it open up lots of options both inside and outside academia? If you're uncertain about academia, watch out for programs that mainly help you with academic careers, for example philosophy PhD or literature PhD. And if you do a maths PhD, you can transfer into economics, physics, biology, computer science and so on, but the reverse is not true. Also, some graduate programs give you better odds of landing academic positions, for example more than 90% of economists can get research positions, whereas only about 50% of biology PhDs do. Relevance to your long term plans. Does it take you towards the options you're most interested in? Lots of people are tempted to do graduate study even when it doesn't particularly help with their longer term plans. For instance, potential entrepreneurs are tempted to do MBAs when they're not particularly helpful to entrepreneurship. Lots of people are tempted to do a random master's degree when they're not sure what to do. Some people consider doing a law degree when they're not confident they want to be a lawyer. Which programs are best within a subject? There's a huge amount of variation between schools and specific programs within a subject. Pay attention to, will you get good mentorship? Making how to do good research is a craft that gets passed down mainly via hands-on training, so this is vital. Getting good mentorship helps hugely with motivation and your future opportunities in academia. It often comes down to the specific person you'll be working with and your fit with them. Will the particular university be an environment where you can flourish? For example, in terms of location and culture? What's the reputation of the professor and university? Your supervisor's reputation in the field will impact your future opportunities in academia, and learning at a well-known university is useful for opportunities outside of academia, For example as a communicator or in policy. And will you get funding? It could easily be better to do a subject you think offers few options in general if you find a particular opportunity that's strong in these criteria. Should you do graduate study? It's not a decision to be taken lightly. In particular, PhD programs are often demoralizing and people doing them often struggle with mental health or don't complete them. And master's degrees can cost a lot of money. Health takes substantial time. It's also not a question we can answer in the abstract. It depends on your other options.)
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(highlight:: Executive Branch Fellowships and Leadership Scheme Opportunities
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Executive branch fellowships and leadership schemes, like the President Management Fellowship in the US, or the Civil Service Faststream in the UK, among other possibilities. There are other options in the US depending on your background, the AAAS Fellowship for People with Science PhDs or Engineering Masters, or the Tech Congress Fellowship for Mid Korea Tech Professionals. If you're a STEM graduate, also consider the National Security Innovation Network's Technology and National Security Fellowship. These are especially good options if you want to work anywhere in the policy world or social sector.)
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(highlight:: Upskilling in Management
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Management, a skill that increasingly becomes required in a very wide range of positions as you move further along your career, whether it's managing people, long and complex projects, Or both. There are lots of ways to become better as a manager. Most importantly, find ways to start managing on a small scale. Ideally, work under a great manager or find a mentor or coach who is, and then regularly check in with them about what isn't isn't working. Make sure to collect feedback from the people you manage. There are also lots of concrete habits and processes that can make you better as a manager, which you can practice applying while doing the above. To learn more, we have a list of resources in Appendix 7.)
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(highlight:: Becoming a Better Manager and Exploring High-Impact Careers
Summary:
To become a better manager, start by managing on a small scale, seek guidance from a great manager or mentor, and collect feedback from your team.
Developing concrete habits and practices is essential. Additionally, exploring high-impact careers like Information Security, Data Science, and Applied Statistics can be highly rewarding and in-demand, offering great salary prospects.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
There are lots of ways to become better as a manager. Most importantly, find ways to start managing on a small scale. Ideally, work under a great manager or find a mentor or coach who is, and then regularly check in with them about what isn't isn't working. Make sure to collect feedback from the people you manage. There are also lots of concrete habits and processes that can make you better as a manager, which you can practice applying while doing the above. To learn more, we have a list of resources in Appendix 7. Information Security. Protecting organizations from cyber attacks that could compromise their mission, data, or assets. Some organizations need help protecting information that could be hugely dangerous if it was known more widely, such as harmful genetic sequences or powerful AI technology. Reaches in areas like these could have disastrous consequences, which makes information security a great option for people who want to have a high impact career, and because it's An in-demand skill with high salaries, it provides a great backup option. Data Science and Applied Statistics. Data Science is a cross between statistics and programming. The boot camps are a similar deal to programming, although they tend to mainly recruit science PhDs. If you've just done a science PhD and don't want to continue with academia, this is a good option to consider, but we'd probably recommend ruling out programming first. Similarly, you can learn data analysis, statistics, and modeling by taking the right graduate program as discussed above.)
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(highlight:: Upskilling in Marketing
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Learning to market toilet paper doesn't seem like the most socially motivated option, but almost all types of organizations need marketing and demand for the skill is growing. You can learn the skill set, then transfer into an organization with a social mission. Failing that, you'll have a lot of backup options, and you could earn to give instead. You can learn marketing skills by taking an entry-level position at a top firm or working under a good mentor in a business. We'd especially recommend focusing on the style of marketing that's more data and technology driven, rather than traditional creative advertising.)
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(highlight:: Upskilling in Sales
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Sales and Negotiation. Together to marketing and management, sales skills can be hugely useful, whatever your job, and whether or not it has sales in the title. If you want to hire people, promote an important cause, rent an office, get a job, or do almost anything you'll need to sell. Sales can feel adversarial, like you're trying to persuade people to do something against their interest. But the best kind of sales is collaborative. It's about finding ways to meet the needs of both parties. Much of good selling comes from genuinely trying to benefit and build good relationships with people.)
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(highlight:: Excellence in the Unconventional
Summary:
Strive to excel in unconventional paths that may not provide formal credentials or prestige.
Building career capital should focus not only on hard aspects like a prestigious employer, but also on soft aspects like skills, achievements, connections, and reputation. Impressive achievements are crucial for career capital.
By doing great work and pushing oneself to excel, one can build reputation, make connections, and learn more.
Pursuing unconventional paths like starting a new organization can lead to significant career capital through impressive achievements, learning experiences, and meeting interesting people.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
5. Do anything where you might excel, even if it's a bit random. It came across someone who had a significant chance of becoming a magician and maybe landing in national TV show in India, and was deciding between that and consulting. It seemed to us that the magician path was more exciting since the skills and connections within media would be more unusual and valuable for work on the world's most pressing problems Than those of another consultant. A common mistake is to think that building career capital always means doing something that gives you formal credentials like a law degree, or is prestigious like consulting. It's easy to focus on hard aspects of career capital like having a well-known employer because they're concrete, but the soft aspects of career capital, your skills, achievements, Connections, and reputation are equally important, if not more so. The very best career capital comes from impressive achievements. You can build these soft aspects of career capital in almost any job if you perform well. Doing great work builds your reputation, and that allows you to make connections with other higher achievers. If you push yourself to do great work, then you'll probably learn more too. This is why doing something less conventional like starting a new organization can sometimes be the best path for career capital. If you succeed, it'll be impressive, but even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot and meet interesting people.)
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(highlight:: 1min Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It came across someone who had a significant chance of becoming a magician and maybe landing in national TV show in India, and was deciding between that and consulting. It seemed to us that the magician path was more exciting since the skills and connections within media would be more unusual and valuable for work on the world's most pressing problems Than those of another consultant. A common mistake is to think that building career capital always means doing something that gives you formal credentials like a law degree, or is prestigious like consulting. It's easy to focus on hard aspects of career capital like having a well-known employer because they're concrete, but the soft aspects of career capital, your skills, achievements, Connections, and reputation are equally important, if not more so. The very best career capital comes from impressive achievements. You can build these soft aspects of career capital in almost any job if you perform well. Doing great work builds your reputation, and that allows you to make connections with other higher achievers. If you push yourself to do great work, then you'll probably learn more too. This is why doing something less conventional like starting a new organization can sometimes be the best path for career capital. If you succeed, it'll be impressive, but even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot and meet interesting people. Doing anything that will give you a concretely visible project that seems impressive can also be helpful, such as writing a successful blog or doing a project that appears in the media.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Building "Soft", Less Formal Forms of Career Capital
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It's easy to focus on hard aspects of career capital like having a well-known employer because they're concrete, but the soft aspects of career capital, your skills, achievements, Connections, and reputation are equally important, if not more so. The very best career capital comes from impressive achievements. You can build these soft aspects of career capital in almost any job if you perform well. Doing great work builds your reputation, and that allows you to make connections with other higher achievers. If you push yourself to do great work, then you'll probably learn more too. This is why doing something less conventional like starting a new organization can sometimes be the best path for career capital. If you succeed, it'll be impressive, but even if you don't succeed, you'll learn a lot and meet interesting people. Doing anything that will give you a concretely visible project that seems impressive can also be helpful, such as writing a successful blog or doing a project that appears in the media. For someone who wants to make a difference, it can even be worth doing something that seems a bit random, if you're going to be great at it.)
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(highlight:: The Importance of Learning by Doing
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Training by doing is often the most effective way to learn. Most people can't see a route to having a significant positive impact right at the start of their career, but if you do, just pursuing that might well be your best option for career capital. This could look like joining a startup social impact project you think could succeed over 5 to 10 years, or it could mean directly entering one of the career paths you think are most impactful. If you succeed, it'll be impressive benefiting your career capital, and if you're someone who cares about doing good, you'll probably find it more motivating to work on something Meaningful, making you more likely to succeed. In addition, if you want to tackle pressing global problems, then at some point you need to learn about those problems and meet others who want to work on them too. This is usually easier to do if you work in those areas than if you, for instance, work in a random corporate job.)
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(highlight:: Focus on Transferable Career Capital Early, and Specalized Career Capital Later
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Most career capital prepares you for a narrow range of paths, like knowledge of malaria or information security. Which should you focus on? All else equal, when you're earlier in your career you should focus more on transferable career capital. At the start of your career you're more uncertain about what's best, so it's more useful to have flexibility. And more generally, the more uncertain you are about what roles you want in the longer term, the more you should focus on transferable career capital. Unfortunately however, all else is often not equal. While specialist career capital gives you fewer options, it's often necessary to enter the most impactful jobs, so it's still probably worth focusing on at some point.)
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(highlight:: 1min Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You may not be sure how to best contribute today, and you may suspect that you have few valuable skills, but that's fine. Although we like stories of people who achieved apparently instant fame and early success, like the Forbes 30 under 30, they're not the norm. Besides those who just got lucky, behind most great achievements and many years spent diligently building expertise. We've seen people transform their careers by doing things like learning to program, being mentored by the right boss, and going to the right graduate school. If you build valuable career capital, then you'll be able to have a more impactful, satisfying career too. We've now explored which options to aim for long-term and how to work towards them. In the next chapter, we'll explain how to narrow them down. Apply this to your own career. 1. Given the longer-term paths you'd most like to take, what steps might most accelerate you toward them? 2. Go over all the six paths to career capital and ways to gain career capital in any job, and note down the three next steps you could take to gain career capital. A few ideas to get you started. Can you think of any opportunities to work at a high-performance growing organization? Do any graduate study options make sense?)
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(highlight:: Reflection Questions for Building Career Capital
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Apply this to your own career. 1. Given the longer-term paths you'd most like to take, what steps might most accelerate you toward them? 2. Go over all the six paths to career capital and ways to gain career capital in any job, and note down the three next steps you could take to gain career capital. A few ideas to get you started. Can you think of any opportunities to work at a high-performance growing organization? Do any graduate study options make sense? Are there any options in policy to consider? Can you do something where you can learn a useful, transferable skill? Is there an option where you might achieve something impressive? And could you make a contribution right away? 3. What's the most valuable career capital you already have? Identifying this can give you clues about what you'll be best at, and help you convince employers to hire you. Review each of the categories. Skills and knowledge, connections, credentials, character, and runway. If you're stuck, list out two to five achievements you're most proud of, and ask yourself what they have in common.)
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(highlight:: Be a Person Who 'Gets Shit Done': The Importance of Being a High Performer in Any Field
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Even if everyone were an equally good fit, there could still be big differences in outcomes just because some people happen to get lucky while others don't. However, some components are almost certainly due to skill. This means that you'll have much more impact if you choose an area where you enjoy the work and have good personal fit. Second, as we argued, being successful in your field gives you more career capital. This sounds obvious, but can be a big deal. Generally being known as a person who gets shit done and is great at what they do, can open all sorts of often surprising opportunities. For example, many organizations will hire someone without experience of their area if that person has done something impressive elsewhere. For example, many AI companies have hired people without a background in AI. Charity and company board members are often successful people recruited from other fields, or you might meet someone in another field who admires your work and wants to work together. Moreover, being successful in any field, even if it seems a bit random, gives you influence, money, and connections, which, as we've also covered, can be used to promote all sorts of Good causes, even those unrelated to your field.)
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(highlight:: Formula for Comparing Job Opportunities: Sum of All Career Capital * Personal Fit
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If we put together everything we've covered so far in the guide, this would be our formula for a perfect job. Career capital, that's skills, connections, and credentials, plus impact, that's pressing problem in the right method, plus supportive conditions, that's engaging work, colleagues, Basic needs, and fit with the rest of your life, all added together, then multiplied by personal fit. You can use these factors to make side-by-side comparisons of different career options.)
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(highlight:: "Going With Your Gut" is Advisable in Specific Situations: In General, Don't Trust It
Transcript:
Speaker 1
If you were to try to predict performance in advance, going with your gut isn't the best way to do it. Research in the science of decision making collected over several decades shows that intuitive decision making only works in certain circumstances. For instance, your gut instinct can tell you very rapidly if someone is angry with you. This is because our brain is biologically wired to rapidly warn us when in danger, and to fit in socially. Your gut can also be amazingly accurate when trained. Chessmasters have an astonishingly good intuition for the best moves. This is because they've trained their intuition by playing lots of similar games, and built up a sense of what works and what doesn't. However, gut decision making is poor when it comes to working out things like how fast a business will grow, who will win a football match, and what grades a student will receive. Earlier, we also saw that our intuition is poor at working out what will make us happy. This is all because our untrained gut instinct makes lots of mistakes, and in these situations it's hard to train it to do better.)
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(highlight:: Experimental Career Development: List Options, Identify Uncertainties, & Resolve Them
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Here are some more tips on each stage. Make a big list of options. The cost of accidentally ruling out a great option too early is much greater than the cost of investigating it further, so it's important to start broad. And since it's so hard to predict where you'll excel, that also means it's hard to rule out lots of paths. This can also help you avoid one of the biggest decision-making biases, considering too few options. We've met lots of people who stumbled into paths like PhDs, medicine, or law school because those options felt like the default at the time. But if they'd considered more options, they could easily have found something that fit them better. We also meet a lot of people who think they need to stick narrowly to their recent experience. For example, they might think that because they studied biology, they should mainly look for jobs that involve biology. But what major you studied rarely matters that much. So start by making a long list of options, longer than your first inclination. We'll talk more about how to do this in chapter 9. Figure out your key uncertainties. You don't have time to try or investigate every job, so you need to narrow down the field. To start, just make some rough guesses. Roughly rank your options in terms of personal fit, impact, and supportive conditions for job satisfaction. Plus, career capital if you're comparing next steps rather than longer-term paths. Then, ask yourself, what are my most important uncertainties about this ranking? In other words, if you could get the answers to just a few questions, which questions would tell you the most about which options should be top? People often find the most important questions are pretty simple things, like, one, if I apply to this job, would I get in? Two, would I enjoy this aspect of the job? Three, would the pay be high enough given my student loans? And four, what's the day-to-day routine actually like? We have some more tips on how to predict your fit below. Do cheap tests first. Now that you have a list of uncertainties, try to resolve them. Start with the easiest and quickest ways to gain information first. We often find people who want to, say, try out economics, so they apply for a master's program. But that's a huge investment. Instead, think about how you can learn more with the least possible effort, cheap tests. In particular, consider how you might be able to eliminate your top option. Or, consider what you might need to find out to move a different option to the top slot. When investigating a specific option, you can think of creating a ladder of tests. After each step, reevaluate whether the option still seems promising, best, or if you can skip the remaining steps and move on to investigate another option. One such ladder might look like this. One, read our relevant career reviews, all our research on a given topic, and do some Google searches to learn the basics. One to two hours. Two, speak to someone in the area. Two hours. Three, speak to three more people who work in the area and read one or two books. Twenty hours. Four, consider using some of the additional approaches to predicting success below. Five, given your findings in the previous steps, look for a relevant project that might take one to four weeks of work, like applying to jobs, volunteering in a related role, or doing A side project in the area, to see what it's like and how you perform. And six, only then consider taking a two to twenty-four month commitment, like a work replacement, internship, or graduate study. Being offered a trial position with an organization for a couple of months can be ideal because both you and the organization want to quickly assess your fit. If you're choosing which restaurant to eat at, the stakes aren't high enough to warrant much research. But a career decision will influence decades of your life, so it could easily be worth weeks or months of work to make sure you get it right. Try something and iterate.)
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(highlight:: 2min Snip
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Speaker 1
Right. Try something and iterate. You'll never be certain about which option is best, and even worse, you may never feel confident in your best guess. So when should you stop your research and try something? Here's a simple answer. When your best guess stops changing. If you keep investigating but your answers aren't changing, then the chances are you've hit diminishing returns and you should just try something. Of course, some decisions are harder to reverse or higher stakes in others, for example going to medical school. Also all else equal, the bigger the decision, the more time you should spend investigating, and the more stable you want your answers to be. Once you take the plunge and start a job, it helps to remember that even this is just an experiment. In most cases, if you try something for a couple of years and it doesn't work out, you can try something else. With each step you take, you'll learn more about what fits you best. Advanced. What are the best ways to predict career fit according to the research? Our key advice on predicting fit is to define your key uncertainties and go investigate them in whatever way seems most helpful. But it's also true that based on the research in our experience, some approaches to predicting fit seem better than others. You can use these prompts to better target your efforts to gain information and to make better guesses before you start doing lots of investigation. One, what is the job actually like? We often meet people who speculate on their fit for, say, working in government but have little idea of what civil servants actually do. Before you go any further, try to get the basics down. Can you describe what a typical day might look like? What tasks create value in the job? What does it take to do them well? Two, what do experts say? If you can, ask people experienced in the field about how well you'd perform, especially people with experience recruiting for the job in question. But, be careful. Don't put too much weight on a single person's view. And try to find people who are likely to be honest with you.)
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If Unsure About A Job, Quit! (You're Likely to Be Happier
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Speaker 1
If unsure, quit. The sunk cost bias leads us to expect people to continue with their current path for too long, want to avoid the short-term costs of switching, and be averse to leaping into an unknown New option. This all suggests that if you're on the fence about quitting your job, you should quit. This is exactly what an influential randomized study found. Stephen Levitt recruited tens of thousands of participants who were deeply unsure about whether to make a big change in their life. After offering some advice on how to make hard choices, those who remained truly undecided were given the chance to flip a coin to settle the issue. 22,500 did so. Levitt followed up with these participants two and six months later to ask whether they had actually made the change and how happy they were on a scale of one to ten. It turned out that people who made a change on an important question gained 2.2 points of happiness out of ten.)
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(highlight:: The Pitfall of "Keeping Your Options Open" and A Framework for What to Do Instead
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Speaker 1
But through advising thousands of people with their careers, we've seen that it can have some serious pitfalls. Deciding to just keep your options open can lead to you spending far too long working in a generally prestigious job like consulting that you know you don't want to do long-term and just Isn't that relevant to your longer-term goals. Stop your committing so you end up pursuing a middle-of-the-road job that gives you some flexibility rather than going for something that might be outstanding in career capital and So ultimately give you better options. Or turn into an excuse to not think hard about what's best. So what should you do instead? The three key stages to a career. Move through the following three stages. One, explore. Take low-cost ways to learn about and test out promising longer-term roles until you feel ready to bet on one for a few years. Most likely to be the top priority ages 18 to 24. Two, build career capital. Take a bet on a longer-term path that could go really well by building the career capital that will most accelerate you in your chosen path but with a backup plan. Age 25 to 35. And three, deploy. Change the career capital you've built to tackle pressing problems and bargain for a job you find personally satisfying. Age 36 and up. And then keep updating your plan every one to three years as you continue to learn more and the world changes.)
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(highlight:: Create Your Career Vision: Problems You'd Like to Work On + Roles You'd Like To Aim Toward
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Speaker 1
Your vision should be broad enough that it won't constantly change, but narrow enough to provide some direction. Your vision should include, 1. A list of two to five global problems you'd most like to work on longer-term, as covered in chapter five. And 2. A list of one to five roles or types of work you'd like to aim towards, as covered in chapter six.)
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(highlight:: Identifying Direct Routes to Your Career Goals
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Speaker 1
Think about where you'd like to end up, and then identify the most direct routes to get there. The best way to do this is to ask people in the field how someone with your background can advance most quickly. For example, ask, if I wanted to be in Role X in five years, what would I need to do? Also, look for examples of people who have advanced unusually quickly and figure out how they did it. Think about which types of career capital will be most important. For example, Bill Clinton knew that to succeed in politics, he'd need to know a lot of people, so even as an undergraduate, he kept a list of everyone he'd met on a paper notepad. We do some of this analysis in our career reviews, but there's no substitute for getting personal advice on the best next steps for you. If you're feeling uncertain about a longer-term option, another question to consider is, how might I eliminate that option? Is there something you could do that would decisively tell you whether pursuing that longer-term path made sense or not?)
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(highlight:: Make an A-B-Z Plan for Your Career
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Speaker 1
You face similarly large uncertainties in your career, so we might be able to borrow some of the best practices in entrepreneurship and apply them to career strategy. This is the premise of The Startup of You, a book by the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. One of his tips is making an A.B.Z. Plan, which we've also found useful while giving one-on-one advice to our readers. Giving an A.B.Z. Plan helps you think about specific alternatives and backup plans, putting you in a better position to adapt when the situation changes. 1. Plan A. Your ideal scenario. Your plan A is your best guess at the route you'd most like to pursue. This could be a particular vision you're going to bet on, and the next step that would imply. For example, try to become an academic economist who works on global priorities research or AI policy, vision, by studying these extra maths courses at undergrad, next step. If you're more unsure about your vision, you could also plan to try out several longer-term paths by taking a couple of carefully ordered next steps as we covered in the chapter on personal Fit. Or, your plan A could just be to build some valuable transferable career capital, for example, learn people management or get a degree in statistics, and then re-evaluate your plan Later. 2. Plan B. Nearby Alternatives. These are promising alternatives that you could switch to if your plan A doesn't work out. Writing them out ahead of time helps you stay ready for new opportunities. To figure out your plan B, ask yourself, what are the most likely ways your plan A wouldn't work out? If that happens, what will you do? And what other good options are there? List any promising nearby alternatives to plan A, which may be other promising longer-term paths or different entry routes to the same paths. Then come up with two or three alternatives. For instance, if you're already in a job and applying to master's programs, one possibility is that you don't get into the programs you want. In that case, your plan B might be to stay in your job another year and to assess later, or to apply for a master's in another discipline. Or if your plan A is to work in policy by getting a job in the executive branch, your plan B could be to try think-tank internships or working on a political campaign. Three, plan Z. If it all f***s up, this is your temporary fallback. Your plan Z is what you'll do if this all goes wrong. In other words, if your A and B plans don't work out, what will you do to pay the bills until you can get back on your feet? Having a plan Z can not only help you avoid unacceptable personal outcomes, but it can help you get more comfortable with taking risks, knowing you'll ultimately be okay makes it easier To be ambitious. Your plan Z can be very short if you're comfortable with the risk you're taking, or are in a secure position. If you're in a higher stakes situation, for example you have dependents, you might want to do more careful planning. Some common examples are sleeping on a friend's sofa while paying the bills through tutoring or working at a cafe, living off savings, going back to your old job, moving back in with Your family, or taking a job you find relatively undermending. It could even mean something more adventurous, like going to teach English in Asia, a surprisingly in-demand, uncompetitive job that lets you learn about a new culture. Then ask yourself, is this plan Z acceptable? If not, you might need to revise your plan A, or prioritize building your safety net for a while. Optional, further ways to reduce risk. Sometimes you need to take risks in order to have a big impact.)
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(highlight:: Managing Risk in Your Career Path
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Speaker 1
Optional, further ways to reduce risk. Sometimes you need to take risks in order to have a big impact. Thinking about them ahead of time can make this easier. First, clarify what a realistic worst-case scenario really is if you pursue your plan A. It's easy to have vague fears about failing, and research shows that when we think about bad events, we bring to mind their worst aspects, while ignoring all the things that will remain Unchanged. This led Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to say, Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it. Often, when you think through the worst realistic scenario, you realize it's not so bad, and there's something you could overcome in the long term. The risks to pay most attention to are those that could permanently reduce your happiness or career capital, such as burning out, getting depressed, or ruining your reputation. You might also have dependents who rely on you. Second, is there anything you could do to make sure that the serious risks don't happen? Many people think of entrepreneur college dropouts like Bill Gates as people who took bold risks to succeed. But Gates worked on tech sales for about a year part-time as a student at Harvard, and then negotiated a year of leave from study to start Microsoft. If it had failed, Gates could have gone back to study computer science at Harvard. In reality, he took hardly any risk at all. Usually, with a bit of thought, it's possible to avoid the worst risks of your plan. Third, make a plan for what you do if the worst-case scenario does happen. Think about what you'll do to cope and make it less bad, as well as having a fallback plan Z job as above. If it helps, remember you'll probably still have food, friends, a soft bed, and a room at the perfect temperature. Better conditions than most people have faced in all of history. Fourth, if at this point the risks are still unacceptable, then you may need to change your plan A. For instance, you might need to spend more time building your financial runway. Going through these exercises makes risk less scary, and makes you more likely to cope if the worst does happen.)
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(highlight:: 7 Steps for Creating Your Career Plan
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Speaker 1
Bringing all this advice together, here are the seven steps to building your own career plan. 1. What's your career stage? Exploring, building career capital, or deploying your existing career capital? 2. What's your vision? If you haven't already, sketch out your best guess shortlist of longer-term paths to aim towards and global problems to work on. Your vision. 3. Now, clarify. What's the very next decision you need to make? And generate a big list of ideas for next steps. You should already have some ideas from the chapter on career capital. Lean towards including more rather than less, including some that seem like a stretch. Work backwards. What steps would most accelerate you towards your vision? Work forwards. What other interesting opportunities are you aware of? 4. Now, make an initial guess at which five to ten next steps are most promising. If you're struggling to narrow them down, you can also use our decision process to help. Look at the lists of questions for comparing options in terms of career capital and in terms of personal fit from earlier in the guide. 5. Then make an initial guess at your plan A, your top longer-term plan, plan B, nearby alternatives, and plan Z, four-back options. 6. What are your most pressing key uncertainties about all the above? We introduce the idea of a key uncertainty in chapter 8. But it can be applied to all aspects of your plan, vision, strategy, next steps, and ABZ options. What information would most change your rankings of options or your plan A? 7. How much you best resolve those key uncertainties? If you have time, go and do that. Ideally, keep investigating until your best guesses stop changing. This point, often what seems best is to simply pursue your list of next steps and then reevaluate your plan after you have concrete options on the table.)
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(highlight:: Job Searching: YOU NEED LOTS OF LEADS + LUCK
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Speaker 1
Leads. A lead is any opportunity that might turn into a job, like a position you could apply for, a friend who might know an opportunity, or a side project you might be able to get paid for. You need a lot of leads. We interviewed someone who's now a top NPR journalist, but when he started out, he applied to 70 positions and got only one serious offer. This illustrates the first thing to know about leads. You probably need a lot of them. Especially early in your career, it can easily take 20 to 100 leads to find one good job, and getting rejected 20 times is normal. In fact, the average length of a spell of unemployment in the US is six months, so be prepared for your job hunt to take that long. This is especially true if you're applying to jobs that are especially desirable and competitive, which are normally more selective and therefore require more leads. This includes most jobs directly working on the pressing problems we talk about, in part because we focus on neglected problems, so there just aren't that many jobs available. For instance, if you want to work on preventing catastrophic pandemics but can only find 10 leads, that's normally not enough to make it likely you'll find a job. You might need to apply to jobs in other areas or career paths until you've got at least 30 leads. To compound the problem, there's a huge amount of luck involved. Most employers are not only looking for general competence, they're also looking for someone who will fit that particular team and organization, and to the specific requirements Of the job. They also have to make decisions with very little information, which means they'll make a lot of mistakes. You can be very talented but simply not find a match through bad luck.)
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(highlight:: Why Referrals Trump Applications: The Dichotomy Between Employer & Job Seeker Strategies
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Speaker 1
Many recruiters consider referrals to be the best method of finding candidates. But job seekers usually get things backwards. They start with the methods that recruiters least like. Here's a diagram titled, Many if not most, Employers hunt for job seekers in the exact opposite way from how most job seekers hunt for them. The diagrams in inverted pyramid. The bottom at the pointy bit we have the way a typical job seeker prefers to fill a vacancy. And then in the reverse direction, starting from the broad end and heading towards the point we have the way a typical employer prefers to fill a vacancy. And then the pyramid is divided into steps, such that the final step for the employer is the first step for the job seeker and vice versa. So the first step for the employer, from within, promotion of a full-time employee, or promotion of a present part-time employee, or hiring a former consultant for in-house or contract Work, or hiring a former temp full-time. Employers' thoughts, I want to hire someone whose work I have already seen, a low-risk strategy for the employer. The implication for job seekers, see if you can get hired at an organization you have chosen as a temp, contract worker, or consultant, aiming at a full-time position only later, or Not at all. Now the second step for an employer and the second last step for the typical job seeker, using proof, hiring an unknown job seeker who brings proof of what he or she can do with regard to The skills needed. The implication for job seekers? If you're a programmer, bring a program you have done. With its code. If you're a photographer, bring photos. If you're a counselor, bring a case study with you, etc. Are the third step for the typical employer? Or the third last step for the typical job seeker? Using a best friend or business colleague? Hiring someone whose work a trusted friend of yours is seen, perhaps they worked for him or her. The implication for job seekers? Find someone who knows the person who has the power to hire at your target organization, who also knows your work and will introduce you to. The fourth step for typical employers, and the fourth last step for the typical job seeker? Using an agency they trust, this may be a recruiter or search firm the employer has hired or a private employment agency, both of which have checked you out on behalf of the employer. The fifth step for the typical employer and the second step for the typical job seeker? Using an ad they've placed, online or in newspapers, etc. And the last step for a typical employer and the first step for a typical job seeker? Using a resume, even if the resume was unsolicited, if the employer is desperate.)
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(highlight:: 10 Steps for Getting a Job: Sanitize Online Reputation, Ask For Info Interviews, & More
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Speaker 1
Moreover, speaking to people in the industry is the best way to get information about how to present yourself and how to approach opportunities. It's also among the best ways to assess your fit, helping you to focus on the best opportunities. How to get referrals? You need to master the art of asking for introductions. We've put together a list of email scripts you can use. That's found at 80,000hours.org slash articles slash email-scripts. To get referrals, here's a step-by-step process. If you're not applying for a job right now, skip this section until you are. 1. First, update your LinkedIn profile or personal website, etc. This isn't because you'll get great job offers through LinkedIn, that's pretty rare, it's because people who are considering meeting you will check out your profile. Focus your profile on your most impressive accomplishments. Be as concrete as possible. For example, ranked third in the nation, increased annual donations 100%, cut the rest. It's better to have two impressive achievements than two impressive achievements and three weak ones. Add links to any portfolio projects relevant to the job. 2. Search yourself on Google and do anything you can to make the results look good. For example, delete embarrassing old blog posts. Take a look at the extra resources for this chapter in Appendix 7 for a guide. 3. If you already know someone in the industry who can hire people, then ask for a meeting to discuss opportunities in the industry. This is close to going directly to an interview skipping all the screening steps. Plus, you'll be able to ask them really useful information about how to best apply and learn more about which positions might be your best fit. Remember, there doesn't need to be an open position. Employers will often create positions for good people. Before you take the meeting, use the advice on how to prepare for interviews below. 4. If you know them less well, ask for a meeting to find out more about jobs in the industry and informational interview. If it goes well, ask them to introduce you to people who may be able to hire you, which is effectively getting a referral from this person. Do not ask them for a job if you promised it was an informational interview. 5. When asking for introductions, prepare a one-sentence specific description of the types of opportunities you'd like to find. A good example is something like an entry-level marketing position at a technology startup and education. Two bad examples are a job in software or a job that fits my skills. Being concrete makes it easier for people to come up with ideas, so lean towards too narrow rather than too broad. 6. Failing the above steps, turn to the connections of your connections. If you have a good friend who knows someone who's able to hire you, then you could directly ask that friend for a referral. The ideal is to ask someone you've worked for before, where you performed really well. 7. If your connection is not able to refer you, then ask them to introduce you to people in the industry who are able to hire. Then we're back to informational interviews, as in step 2. 8. To find out who your connections know, use LinkedIn, Twitter, or other social networks. Say you want to work at Airbnb. Go to LinkedIn and search Airbnb. It'll show you a list of all your contacts who work at Airbnb, followed by connections of connections who work at Airbnb. Pick the person with the most mutual connections and get in touch. 9. Remember, if you have 200 LinkedIn connections and each of them has 200 connections that don't overlap with the others, then you can reach at least 10,000 people using these methods. 10. There are lots of people in the 80,000 hours LinkedIn group at LinkedIn.com slash groups slash 505-7625 who are happy to give advice on applications and may be able to make introductions. 11. If you still haven't got anywhere, then it may be worth spending some time building your connections in the industry first. Read our advice on how to network in Appendix 2. Go back to our advice in the last chapter on how to network. Start with people with whom you have some connection, such as your university alumni, and friends of friends of friends, third-order connections. Your university can probably give you a list of alumni who are willing to help in each industry. There are probably some good groups you can join and conference us to attend. Otherwise, you can resort to cold emailing. Take a look at the extra resources for this chapter in Appendix 7 for guides to getting jobs with no connections and to finding anyone's email address.)
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(highlight:: Do the Work: Ideas for Demonstrating Your Skillset to Employers
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Speaker 1
Just do the work. The most powerful way to prove you can do the work is to actually do some of it. And as we saw, doing the work is also a great way to figure out whether you're good at it, so it'll help you avoid wasting your own time too. Here are four ways to put that into practice. Do a portfolio project. For example, if you want to become a writer or a journalist, try to keep a blog or Twitter feed about a relevant topic. If you want to become a software engineer, put projects on your GitHub. Include these projects on your personal webpage and or LinkedIn profile. Mention them in your applications or during interviews. The Pre-Interview Project. The Pre-Interview Project is what the web engineer did with our career quiz. Do your own project? One, find out what you'd be doing in the role. This already puts you quite away ahead. Two, in particular, work out which problems you'll need to solve for the organization. To figure this out, you'll probably need to do some desk research, then speak to people in the industry. There's a link to a simple guide on how to research a company in the resources for this chapter in Appendix 7. Three, spend a weekend putting together a solution to these problems and send a one-page summary to a couple of people at the company with an invitation to talk more. Four, if you don't hear back after a week, follow up at least once. And five, alternatively write up your suggestions and present them at the interview. Ramen Seti calls this the briefcase technique. Speaking from personal experience, we've overseen four years' worth of competitive application processes at 80,000 hours and doing either of these projects would immediately Put you in the top 20% of applicants, if your suggestions make sense. It demonstrates a lot of enthusiasm and most people hardly know anything about the role they're applying for. Trial period. If the employer is on the fence, you can offer to do a two- to four-week trial period, perhaps it reduced pay or as an intern. Make it clear that if the employer isn't happy at the end, you'll leave gracefully. Only bring this out if the employer is on the fence, or it can seem like you're underselling yourself. Go for a nearby position. If you can't get the job you want right away, consider applying for another position in the organization, like a freelance position, or a position one step below the one you really want. Working in a nearby position gives you the opportunity to prove your motivation and cultural fit. When your boss has a position to fill, it's much easier to promote someone they already worked with than to start a lengthy application process. Just check that the position can actually lead to the one you want. For example, we often see people apply to operations positions at research organizations with the hope of later becoming a researcher. The paths require very different skill sets, so are treated as separate tracks, but lots of people would prefer to do research. This means that while it does sometimes work out, it's rare and can be frustrating for both sides.)
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(highlight:: Preparing for Interviews: Understand The Employers Problems and Make a Convincing Case
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Speaker 1
Here's some of the best advice we've found on preparing for interviews. It's also useful for getting leads while networking. If you're not actively looking for a job right now, skip this section for now. 1. When you meet an employer, ask lots of questions to understand their challenges. Discuss how you might be able to contribute to solving these challenges. This is exactly what great salespeople do. A survey of research on sales concluded, there is a clear statistical association between the use of questions and the success of the interaction. Moreover, when salespeople were trained to ask more questions, it made them more effective. 2. Repair your three key selling points ahead of meetings. These are the messages you'll try to get in during the discussion. For instance, 1. I have done this work successfully before. 2. I am really excited about this company. And 3. I have suggestions for what I could work on. Writing these out ahead of time makes it more likely you'll mention what's most important, and 3 points is about the limit of what your audience will remember. That's why this is standard advice when pitching a business idea. If you're not sure what you have to offer, look back at the exercise at the end of chapter 7. 3. Focus on what's most impressive. That sounds better. I advise Obama on energy policy. Or, I advise Obama on energy policy, and have worked as a high school teacher the last three years. Many people fill up their CVs with everything they've done, but it's usually better to pick your one or two most impressive achievements and focus on those. It sounds better, it makes it more likely you'll cover it, and it makes it more likely the audience will remember it. 4. Prepare one to two concrete facts and stories to back up your three key messages. For instance, if you're applying to be a web engineer, rather than, I'm a hard worker. Try. I have a friend who runs an organization that was about to get some press coverage. He needed to build a website in 24 hours, so he pulled an all-nighter to build it. The next day we got a thousand sign-ups. Rather than say, I really want to work in this industry, tell this story of what led you to apply. Stories and concrete details are far more memorable than abstract claims. 5. Work out how to sum up what you have to offer in a sentence. Steve Jobs didn't sell millions of iPods by saying they're 30% better than MP3 players, but rather with a slogan, a thousand songs in your pocket. Having a short, vivid summary makes it easy for other people to promote you on your behalf. For instance, something like, here's the guy who advised Obama on climate policy and wants a research position, is ideal. 6. Prepare answers to the most likely questions. Write them out, then practice saying them out loud. The following three questions normally come up. 1. Tell me about yourself. This is an opportunity to tell the story of why you want this position and mention one or two achievements. 2. Why do you want this position? And 3. What are your questions for us? Then, usually the interview will add some behavioral questions about the traits they care most about. They usually start, tell me about a time you, and to finish with things like, exhibited leadership. Had to work as a team. Had to deal with a difficult situation, or person. Failed, or succeeded. 7. Practice the meeting from start to finish. Meet with a friend and have them ask you five interview questions, then practice responding quickly. If you don't have a friend to help, then say your answers out loud and mentally rehearse how you want it to go. Ask yourself what's most likely to go wrong, and what you'll do if that happens. And 8. Learn. After each interview, jot down what went well, what could have gone better, and what you'll do differently next time. Improve and adapt your process. Applying to jobs is a difficult skill that takes time to learn. After every interview or other important interaction with an employer, jot down what went well, what could have gone better, and what you'll do differently next time. If you've done five to ten interviews and didn't make it through to the next stage, then it's time to do a more thorough reassessment. You might be making a mistake in how you present yourself. Ask someone in the area, ideally someone with hiring experience, to check over your materials, and do a mock interview with them, or explain what happened in the interviews.)
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(highlight:: Negotiations: Be Deliberate About What You Want and Why Its In the Employers Best Interest
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Speaker 1
How to negotiate? The basic idea is simple. Explain the value you'll give the employer, and why it's justified to give you the benefits you want. Then look for objective metrics and win-win solutions. Can you give up something the employer cares about in exchange for something you care about? For instance, other people with my level of experience in this industry are usually paid $50,000 and can work at home two days per week. But I'd prefer to work with you. Can you match the other companies? I'm really motivated to learn sales skills, so I'd like to work alongside Person X. This will make me much more effective in the role in six months. If your position is weaker, you could negotiate about a future promotion or salary increase. I'd like to work towards this insert position name. What would I need to do in the next six months to make that happen? Then ask them to commit to it if you hit their conditions.)
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(highlight:: Job Search Motivation Tips: Accountability Partner, Specific Goals, Reward Rejections
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Your first job search may be one of the hardest things you've ever done. You've probably never been rejected 30 times in a row before. It can involve months of work, and you may have to do most of it alone. It can make online dating look easy. This means that you'll need to throw every motivational technique you know at the job hunt. Here are some tips. One, perhaps the most useful single tip our readers have found is pairing up with someone else who's also job hunting. Check in on progress and share tips and leads. Alternatively, find someone who is recently successful at a similar hunt and is willing to meet up and give you tips. Two, set a really specific goal, like speaking to five people each week until you have an offer. Publicly commit to the goal and promise to make a forfeit if you miss it. Three, make it easier to face rejections. Maybe make yourself a loyalty card that you stamp every time you get a rejection and reward yourself with an ice cream once the card is filled up. Four, treat it like a job. You're most likely going to be doing the job for years at 40 hours per week, so it makes sense it might take 5% or more of that time to secure the position, and it's already one to two months Of full-time work. The more time you can put into it, the better the results are probably going to be. If you're not in a job right now, treating your job search as a job itself can help a lot with motivation. Turn up at 9am and work till 5pm. Five, apply other tips on how to motivate yourself. For example, check out the book The Motivation Hacker by Nick Winter and the advice on productivity in Appendix 2.)
- Time 4:21:05
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(highlight:: Find or Create Your Own Communities
Transcript:
Speaker 1
As an exercise, make a list of several communities you might join, meet a variety of people and attend events within each one, and then get more involved in those, ideally more than one, That you think are most supportive for you at this time. By community, we mean something very broad. It could be anything from a casual group of friends who are interested in the same thing to larger movements, like animal welfare, with conferences and websites. So when thinking about the communities you'd like to join, don't only think about formal organizations. Rather, think about the types of people you'd most like to be around, and then think how you might achieve that. This could even involve setting up your own small community by getting together a group of friends, starting a reading group or Slack, and so on.)
- Time 4:28:20
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(highlight:: People Best Suited to Earning Money Should Earn to Give and Fund Everyone Else
Transcript:
Speaker 1
And because there are so many ways we can help each other, this makes it possible to achieve far more. Earning to give can actually be an example of that kind of collaboration. In the early days of 80,000 hours, I, Benjamin and my friend Matt, had to choose between running the organization and earning to give. We realized that Matt had higher earning potential, and I would be better at running the organization. In part, this is why I became the CEO, and Matt became our first major donor, as well as a seed funder for several other organizations. The alternative would have been for both of us to earn to give, in which case 80,000 hours wouldn't have existed. Or both of us could have worked at 80,000 hours, in which case it would have taken much longer to fundraise, plus the other organizations Matt donated to wouldn't have gotten those donations. Within the community as a whole, some people are relatively better suited to earning money, and others to running nonprofits. We can achieve more if the people best suited to earning money earn to give and fund everyone else. There are lots of other examples of how we can work together. For instance, some people can go and explore new areas and share the information with everyone else, allowing everyone to be more effective in the long term. Or people can specialize rather than needing to be generalists. For instance, Dr. Greg Lewis did the research into how many lives the doctor saves that we saw earlier. After realizing it was fewer than he thought, he decided not to focus on clinical medicine. Instead, he studied public health, with the aim of becoming an expert on the topic within the community, particularly on issues relevant to pandemics. He actually thinks risks from artificial intelligence might be more urgent overall, but as a doctor, he's relatively best placed to work on health-related issues.)
- Time 4:31:56
- earning to give, collaboration, funding,

(highlight:: 1min Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Earning to give can actually be an example of that kind of collaboration. In the early days of 80,000 hours, I, Benjamin and my friend Matt, had to choose between running the organization and earning to give. We realized that Matt had higher earning potential, and I would be better at running the organization. In part, this is why I became the CEO, and Matt became our first major donor, as well as a seed funder for several other organizations. The alternative would have been for both of us to earn to give, in which case 80,000 hours wouldn't have existed. Or both of us could have worked at 80,000 hours, in which case it would have taken much longer to fundraise, plus the other organizations Matt donated to wouldn't have gotten those donations. Within the community as a whole, some people are relatively better suited to earning money, and others to running nonprofits. We can achieve more if the people best suited to earning money earn to give and fund everyone else. There are lots of other examples of how we can work together. For instance, some people can go and explore new areas and share the information with everyone else, allowing everyone to be more effective in the long term. Or people can specialize rather than needing to be generalists. For instance, Dr. Greg Lewis did the research into how many lives the doctor saves that we saw earlier. After realizing it was fewer than he thought, he decided not to focus on clinical medicine. Instead, he studied public health, with the aim of becoming an expert on the topic within the community, particularly on issues relevant to pandemics. He actually thinks risks from artificial intelligence might be more urgent overall, but as a doctor, he's relatively best placed to work on health-related issues.)
- Time 4:32:02
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(highlight:: What Kind of Life Would Your Near-Death Self Want You To Have?
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You're at the end of your 80,000-hour career. You're on your deathbed, looking back. What are some things you might regret? Perhaps you drifted into whatever seemed like the easiest option, or did what your parents did. Maybe you even made a lot of money doing something you were interested in, and had a nice house and car. But you still wonder, what was it all for? Now, imagine instead that you worked really hard throughout your life and ended up saving the lives of a hundred children. Can you really imagine regretting that? To have a truly fulfilling life, we need to turn outwards, rather than inwards. Rather than asking, what's my passion? Ask, how can I best contribute to the world? As we've seen, by using our fortunate positions and acting strategically, there's a huge amount we can all do to help others. We can do this at little cost to ourselves, and most likely while having a more successful and satisfying career too.)
- Time 4:35:59
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(highlight:: The 80,000 Hours Career Guide in 1 Minute
Transcript:
Speaker 1
The entire guide in one minute. To have a good career, do what contributes. Rather than expect to discover your passion in a flash of insight, your fulfillment will grow over time as you learn more about what fits, master valuable skills, and use them to help Others. To do what contributes, build useful skills and apply them to meaningful problems. Here's the three key stages to focus on over time. 1. Explore and investigate your key uncertainties, to find the best options, rather than going with your gut or narrowing down too early. Make this your key focus until you have enough confidence in some longer-term options to bet on one. 2. Build career capital to become as great as you can be. This means looking for jobs that let you generally improve your skills, reputation, connections, and character, and that most accelerate you towards your vision, as well as investing In your personal development. Do this until you've taken the best opportunities to invest in yourself. Then, use your career capital to 3. Deploy. Use your career capital to effectively help others. Do this by focusing on the most urgent social problems, rather than those you stumble into. Those that are big in scale, neglected, and solvable. To make the largest contribution to solving those problems, think broadly. Consider earning to give, research, communications, community building, organization building, and government and policy careers, as well as the direct helping careers that First come to mind, and focus on the paths that have the best personal fit. Although many efforts to help others fail, the best can be enormously effective, so be ambitious, and don't forget you can have a big impact in any job. While doing the above, keep adapting your plan, to find the best personal fit. Think like a scientist testing a hypothesis, make your best guess, clarify your key uncertainties, then investigate those uncertainties. Have some ideas about the best longer-term vision, but then put a lot of attention to finding the best next step, both working backwards and forwards. Eliminate any jobs that do significant direct harm, even if it seems like they might let you have a greater impact. If you keep learning more and improving your skills with each step, you can build a better and better career over time. Seek community to be more successful.)
- Time 4:36:53
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