I think this is going to be hard for university organizers (as an organizer at UChicago EA).
At the end of our fellowship, we always ask the participants to take some time to sign up for 1-1 career advice with 80k, and this past quarter myself and other organizers agreed that we felt somewhat uncomfortable doing this given that we knew that 80k was leaning a lot on AI—as we presented it as merely being very good for getting advice on all types of EA careers. This shift will probably make it so that we stop sending intro fellows to 80k for advice, and we will have to start outsourcing professional career advising to somewhere else (not sure where this will be yet).
Given this, I wanted to know if 80k (or anyone else) has any recommendations on what EA University Organizers in a similar position should do (aside from the linked resources like Probably Good).
Since last semester, we have made career 1-on-1s a mandatory part of our introductory program.
This semester, we will have two 1-on-1s
The first one will be a casual conversation where the mentee-mentor get to learn more about each other
The second one will be more in-depth, where we will share this 1-on-1 sheet (shamelessly poached from the 80K), the mentees will fill it out before the meeting, have a ≤1 hour long conversation with a mentor of their choice, and post-meeting, the mentor will add further resources to the sheet that may be helpful.
The advice we give during these sessions ends up being broader than just the top EA ones, although we are most helpful in cases where:
— someone is curious about EA/adjacent causes — someone needs graduate school related questions — general “how to best navigate college, plan for internships, etc” advice
As a (now ex-) UChicago organizer and current Organizer Support Program mentor (though this is all in my personal capacity), I share Noah’s concerns here.
I see how reasonable actors in 80k’s shoes could come to the conclusions they came to, but I think this is a net loss for university groups, which disappoints me — I think university groups are some of the best grounds we have to motivate talented young people to devote their careers to improving the world, and I think the best way to do this is by staying principles-first and building a community around the core ideas of scope sensitivity, scout mindset, impartiality, and recognition of tradeoffs.
I know 80k isn’t disavowing these principles, but the pivot does mean 80k is de-emphasizing them.
All this makes me think that 80k will be much less useful to university groups, because it
a) makes it much tougher for us to recommend 80k to interested intro fellows (personalized advising, even if it’s infrequently granted, is a powerful carrot, and the exercises you have to complete to finish the advising are also very useful), and
b) means that university groups will have to find a new advising source for their fresh members who haven’t picked a cause-area yet.
I hear this; I don’t know if this is too convenient or something, but, given that you were already concerned at the prioritization 80K was putting on AI (and I don’t at all think you’re alone there), I hope there’s something more straightforward and clear about the situation as it lies now where people can opt-in or out of this particular prioritization or hearing the case for it.
Appreciate your work as a university organizer—thanks for the time and effort you dedicate to this (and also hello from a fellow UChicagoan, though many years ago).
Sorry I don’t have much in the way of other recommendations; I hope others will post them.
Even though we might have been concerned about the prioritisation, it still made sense to refer to 80k because it still at least gave the impression of openness to a range of causes.
Now even if the good initial advice remains, all roads lead to AI so it feels like a bit of a bait and switch to send someone there when the advice can only lead one way from 80ks perspective.
Yes it’s more “straightforward” and clear, but it’s also a big clear gap now on the trusted, well known non-AI career advice front. Uni groups will struggle a bit but hopefully the career advice marketplace continues to improve
Huh, I think this way is a substantial improvement—if 80K had strong views about where their advice leads, far better to be honest about this and let people make informed decisions, than giving the mere appearance of openness
I think there’s a range of approaches one could take on career advice, ranging (for lack of better terms) from client-centered counseling to advocacy-focused recruiting. Once an advisor has decided where on the continuum they want to be, I think your view that it is “far better to be honest about this and let people make informed decisions” follows. But I think the decision about transparency only comes after the decision about how much to listen to the client-advisees vs. attempt to influence them has been made.
It is not inconsistent for an advisor to personally believe X but be open to a range of V . . . Z when conducting advising. For example, most types of therapists are supposed to be pretty non-directive; not allowing one’s views to shine too brightly to one’s therapy client is not a epistemic defect.
To be sure, 80K has never strongly been into a client-centered counseling model, nor should it have been. The end goal isn’t to benefit the client, and opera and many other things have never been on the table! But the recent announcement seems to be a move away from what physicians might analogize to a shared decisionmaking model toward a narrower focus on roles that are maximum impact in the organization’s best judgment. There are upsides and downsides of that shift.
n = 1 anecdotal point: during tabling early this semester, a passerby mentioned that they knew about 80K because a professor had prescribed one of the readings from the career guide in their course. The professor in question and the class they were teaching had no connection with EA, AI Safety, or our local EA group.
If non-EAs also find 80K’s career guide useful, that is a strong signal that it is well-written, practical, and not biased to any particular cause
I expect and hope that this remains unchanged, because we prescribe most of the career readings from that guide in our introductory program
Existing write-ups on non-AI problem profiles will also remain unchanged
There will be a separate AGI career guide
But the job board will be more AI focused
Overall, this tells me that groups should still feel comfortable sharing readings from the career guide and on other problem profiles, but selectively recommend the job board primarily to those interested in “making AI go well” or mid/senior non-AI people. Probably Good has compiled a list of impact-focused job boards here, so this resource could be highlighted more often.
In addition to the ideas raised above, some other thoughts:
Giving fellowship members a menu of career-coaching options they could apply to (like the trifecta Conor mentions here, who all offer career advising)
Consider encouraging people to sign up to community and networking events, like EAG/x’s
Directing folks to 80k resources with more caveats about which places you think we might be helpful for your group, and what things we might be overlooking
We think that lots of our resources like our career guide and career planning template should still be useful irrespective of cause prioritisation, and caveating might help allay your worries about misconstruing our focus.
We also hope that our explicit focusing on AGI can help our own site / resources be more clear and transparent about our views on what’s most pressing.
I think this is going to be hard for university organizers (as an organizer at UChicago EA).
At the end of our fellowship, we always ask the participants to take some time to sign up for 1-1 career advice with 80k, and this past quarter myself and other organizers agreed that we felt somewhat uncomfortable doing this given that we knew that 80k was leaning a lot on AI—as we presented it as merely being very good for getting advice on all types of EA careers. This shift will probably make it so that we stop sending intro fellows to 80k for advice, and we will have to start outsourcing professional career advising to somewhere else (not sure where this will be yet).
Given this, I wanted to know if 80k (or anyone else) has any recommendations on what EA University Organizers in a similar position should do (aside from the linked resources like Probably Good).
Another place people could be directed for career advice: https://probablygood.org/
Since last semester, we have made career 1-on-1s a mandatory part of our introductory program.
This semester, we will have two 1-on-1s
The first one will be a casual conversation where the mentee-mentor get to learn more about each other
The second one will be more in-depth, where we will share this 1-on-1 sheet (shamelessly poached from the 80K), the mentees will fill it out before the meeting, have a ≤1 hour long conversation with a mentor of their choice, and post-meeting, the mentor will add further resources to the sheet that may be helpful.
The advice we give during these sessions ends up being broader than just the top EA ones, although we are most helpful in cases where:
— someone is curious about EA/adjacent causes
— someone needs graduate school related questions
— general “how to best navigate college, plan for internships, etc” advice
Do y’all have something similar set up?
Also, for those interested in animal welfare specifically: https://www.animaladvocacycareers.org/
Seems fine to direct people to 80,000 Hours for AI/x-risk, Animal Advocacy Careers for animal welfare and Probably Good more generally.
As a (now ex-) UChicago organizer and current Organizer Support Program mentor (though this is all in my personal capacity), I share Noah’s concerns here.
I see how reasonable actors in 80k’s shoes could come to the conclusions they came to, but I think this is a net loss for university groups, which disappoints me — I think university groups are some of the best grounds we have to motivate talented young people to devote their careers to improving the world, and I think the best way to do this is by staying principles-first and building a community around the core ideas of scope sensitivity, scout mindset, impartiality, and recognition of tradeoffs.
I know 80k isn’t disavowing these principles, but the pivot does mean 80k is de-emphasizing them.
All this makes me think that 80k will be much less useful to university groups, because it
a) makes it much tougher for us to recommend 80k to interested intro fellows (personalized advising, even if it’s infrequently granted, is a powerful carrot, and the exercises you have to complete to finish the advising are also very useful), and b) means that university groups will have to find a new advising source for their fresh members who haven’t picked a cause-area yet.
I hear this; I don’t know if this is too convenient or something, but, given that you were already concerned at the prioritization 80K was putting on AI (and I don’t at all think you’re alone there), I hope there’s something more straightforward and clear about the situation as it lies now where people can opt-in or out of this particular prioritization or hearing the case for it.
Appreciate your work as a university organizer—thanks for the time and effort you dedicate to this (and also hello from a fellow UChicagoan, though many years ago).
Sorry I don’t have much in the way of other recommendations; I hope others will post them.
Even though we might have been concerned about the prioritisation, it still made sense to refer to 80k because it still at least gave the impression of openness to a range of causes.
Now even if the good initial advice remains, all roads lead to AI so it feels like a bit of a bait and switch to send someone there when the advice can only lead one way from 80ks perspective.
Yes it’s more “straightforward” and clear, but it’s also a big clear gap now on the trusted, well known non-AI career advice front. Uni groups will struggle a bit but hopefully the career advice marketplace continues to improve
Huh, I think this way is a substantial improvement—if 80K had strong views about where their advice leads, far better to be honest about this and let people make informed decisions, than giving the mere appearance of openness
I think there’s a range of approaches one could take on career advice, ranging (for lack of better terms) from client-centered counseling to advocacy-focused recruiting. Once an advisor has decided where on the continuum they want to be, I think your view that it is “far better to be honest about this and let people make informed decisions” follows. But I think the decision about transparency only comes after the decision about how much to listen to the client-advisees vs. attempt to influence them has been made.
It is not inconsistent for an advisor to personally believe X but be open to a range of V . . . Z when conducting advising. For example, most types of therapists are supposed to be pretty non-directive; not allowing one’s views to shine too brightly to one’s therapy client is not a epistemic defect.
To be sure, 80K has never strongly been into a client-centered counseling model, nor should it have been. The end goal isn’t to benefit the client, and opera and many other things have never been on the table! But the recent announcement seems to be a move away from what physicians might analogize to a shared decisionmaking model toward a narrower focus on roles that are maximum impact in the organization’s best judgment. There are upsides and downsides of that shift.
From the update, it seems that:
80K’s career guide will remain unchanged
I especially feel good about this, because the guide does a really good job of emphasizing the many approaches of pursuing an impactful career
n = 1 anecdotal point: during tabling early this semester, a passerby mentioned that they knew about 80K because a professor had prescribed one of the readings from the career guide in their course. The professor in question and the class they were teaching had no connection with EA, AI Safety, or our local EA group.
If non-EAs also find 80K’s career guide useful, that is a strong signal that it is well-written, practical, and not biased to any particular cause
I expect and hope that this remains unchanged, because we prescribe most of the career readings from that guide in our introductory program
Existing write-ups on non-AI problem profiles will also remain unchanged
There will be a separate AGI career guide
But the job board will be more AI focused
Overall, this tells me that groups should still feel comfortable sharing readings from the career guide and on other problem profiles, but selectively recommend the job board primarily to those interested in “making AI go well” or mid/senior non-AI people. Probably Good has compiled a list of impact-focused job boards here, so this resource could be highlighted more often.
That’s interesting and would be nice if it was the case. That wasn’t the vibe I got from the announcement but we will see.
Thanks for raising this Noah.
In addition to the ideas raised above, some other thoughts:
Giving fellowship members a menu of career-coaching options they could apply to (like the trifecta Conor mentions here, who all offer career advising)
Consider encouraging people to sign up to community and networking events, like EAG/x’s
Directing folks to 80k resources with more caveats about which places you think we might be helpful for your group, and what things we might be overlooking
We think that lots of our resources like our career guide and career planning template should still be useful irrespective of cause prioritisation, and caveating might help allay your worries about misconstruing our focus.
We also hope that our explicit focusing on AGI can help our own site / resources be more clear and transparent about our views on what’s most pressing.