Our intention is to eventually provide career advice to all graduates.
However, for the next 1-2 years, it seems far better for us to focus on especially talented graduates in their 20s. For startups the usual advice is to start by having strong appeal in a small market, and this audience is the best fit for us (it’s where we’ve had most success in the past, where we have the strongest advantage over existing advice, and where we can have the largest impact with a small number of users).
Unfortunately, this has the negative side effect of making effective altruism look more elitist, and I don’t see any easy way to avoid that.
The main bit that’s targeted to talented students are the career profiles:
https://80000hours.org/career-guide/profiles/
And the career recommender which is based on them.
Even here, we’d like to expand these to include a wider range of careers within the next 6 months.
If you’re talking to someone at 80,000 Hours who might be put off by it seeming overly elitist, stress the general principles (‘learn the basics’ section), approach to choosing a career (‘make a decision’ tool) and broad pathways to impact (building skills, etg, direct work, advocacy), since these apply to everyone.
Ever thought about reviewing high earning or direct work careers for non graduates? If someone did the work would it fit with the rest of the content to put it up? Do you have any considerations in the way of ‘we’re prettyt sure no one would take nottice’ etc?
Hi Tom, we have considered doing it, but it’s some way away from our target market and we have to specialise for now. If 80,000 Hours succeeds we’ll get to that eventually but I wouldn’t count on us doing it soon, if you were thinking of doing it yourself!
Just a few remarks about 80,000 Hours.
Our intention is to eventually provide career advice to all graduates.
However, for the next 1-2 years, it seems far better for us to focus on especially talented graduates in their 20s. For startups the usual advice is to start by having strong appeal in a small market, and this audience is the best fit for us (it’s where we’ve had most success in the past, where we have the strongest advantage over existing advice, and where we can have the largest impact with a small number of users).
Unfortunately, this has the negative side effect of making effective altruism look more elitist, and I don’t see any easy way to avoid that.
Another thing to bear in mind is that 2⁄3 of the sections of our guide apply to everyone: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/basics/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-choose/
We also have this article, which we link to in the intro material: https://80000hours.org/articles/how-to-make-a-difference-in-any-career/
The main bit that’s targeted to talented students are the career profiles: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/profiles/ And the career recommender which is based on them. Even here, we’d like to expand these to include a wider range of careers within the next 6 months.
If you’re talking to someone at 80,000 Hours who might be put off by it seeming overly elitist, stress the general principles (‘learn the basics’ section), approach to choosing a career (‘make a decision’ tool) and broad pathways to impact (building skills, etg, direct work, advocacy), since these apply to everyone.
Ever thought about reviewing high earning or direct work careers for non graduates? If someone did the work would it fit with the rest of the content to put it up? Do you have any considerations in the way of ‘we’re prettyt sure no one would take nottice’ etc?
Hi Tom, we have considered doing it, but it’s some way away from our target market and we have to specialise for now. If 80,000 Hours succeeds we’ll get to that eventually but I wouldn’t count on us doing it soon, if you were thinking of doing it yourself!