I read your Overview and several of the other materials and feel there is a lack of examples. Your idea seems large and abstract, and even after reading a bunch of your materials, I don’t feel that I really understand what your career guidance is—or especially what it isn’t.
The only hook I have to compare this to is 80000 Hours, and the comparison you seem to be pointing at is “80k but for more kinds of people”. Instinctively, this feels too broad: 80k is presumably doing well in part because they chose to focus instead of do everything. To help with this, it might make sense to answer strategic questions like: if you were to merge with 80k, would it be better or worse for the world? why did 80k choose their focus one way, and why are you choosing differently? What sorts of impact can you make that 80k will never be able to achieve?
The lack of examples is totally reasonable at this early stage
It mostly seemed clear to me what this organisation’s scope, aims, and differences from 80k would be
The important uncertainties I’d have about the organisation’s intended scope, aims, and differences from 80k were mostly already in their explicit Open Questions.
There were some other uncertainties I had, which I raised in other comments. But that process itself seems like an example of why it’s ok for the materials to have been fairly abstract at this stage; it’s probably more efficient for the authors to (a) produce what they produced, post it publicly, have people ask about the specific confusing bits, and then provide clarity by answering those questions publicly, rather than (b) trying to guess by themselves what will and won’t be clear to other people.
Then they can adjust their materials in light of public feedback and questions.
(It’s often hard to guess what will be clear to other people when you yourself have lots of context on what you were thinking and why.)
I think some of the questions you raised are (at least partially) answered in our documents. Specifically, where we detail the impacts that we hope to achieve—those are impacts that we think we would potentially have a comparative advantage over 80,000 hours. Areas where we think we would be similar to 80,000 hours wouldn’t be areas where we’d expect to have significant counterfactual impact.
Regarding the abstractness and general nature of the documents, that’s completely fair. I expect things will be a lot clearer when we have a website up and some content, rather than documents explaining the principles by which we are creating the content.
As we’ve written in a few places, we’re taking this one step at a time and trying to get as much feedback as possible at every stage. I hope it won’t be very long before we’re able to start publishing some of our materials, which will be a good example of our actual work and will convey the specifics of our focus.
I read your Overview and several of the other materials and feel there is a lack of examples. Your idea seems large and abstract, and even after reading a bunch of your materials, I don’t feel that I really understand what your career guidance is—or especially what it isn’t.
The only hook I have to compare this to is 80000 Hours, and the comparison you seem to be pointing at is “80k but for more kinds of people”. Instinctively, this feels too broad: 80k is presumably doing well in part because they chose to focus instead of do everything. To help with this, it might make sense to answer strategic questions like: if you were to merge with 80k, would it be better or worse for the world? why did 80k choose their focus one way, and why are you choosing differently? What sorts of impact can you make that 80k will never be able to achieve?
FWIW, I personally felt like:
The lack of examples is totally reasonable at this early stage
It mostly seemed clear to me what this organisation’s scope, aims, and differences from 80k would be
The important uncertainties I’d have about the organisation’s intended scope, aims, and differences from 80k were mostly already in their explicit Open Questions.
There were some other uncertainties I had, which I raised in other comments. But that process itself seems like an example of why it’s ok for the materials to have been fairly abstract at this stage; it’s probably more efficient for the authors to (a) produce what they produced, post it publicly, have people ask about the specific confusing bits, and then provide clarity by answering those questions publicly, rather than (b) trying to guess by themselves what will and won’t be clear to other people.
Then they can adjust their materials in light of public feedback and questions.
(It’s often hard to guess what will be clear to other people when you yourself have lots of context on what you were thinking and why.)
Thank you for the input!
I think some of the questions you raised are (at least partially) answered in our documents. Specifically, where we detail the impacts that we hope to achieve—those are impacts that we think we would potentially have a comparative advantage over 80,000 hours. Areas where we think we would be similar to 80,000 hours wouldn’t be areas where we’d expect to have significant counterfactual impact.
Regarding the abstractness and general nature of the documents, that’s completely fair. I expect things will be a lot clearer when we have a website up and some content, rather than documents explaining the principles by which we are creating the content.
As we’ve written in a few places, we’re taking this one step at a time and trying to get as much feedback as possible at every stage. I hope it won’t be very long before we’re able to start publishing some of our materials, which will be a good example of our actual work and will convey the specifics of our focus.