One factor nobody has mentioned is the lack of communication between these organizations and software engineers. On Reddit I see posts all the time with titles like “are there any orgs where I can have a meaningful career?”, especially in the /r/cscareerquestions and /r/experienceddevs sub-forums. The people creating these posts have never heard of 80,000 hours or even the term “effective altruism”.
I agree with other comments about how jobs might not match with programmer’s desires for work that creates career capital (i.e. uses modern tech stack not wordpress), or low pay, or not being in their city. All of these are valid reasons, but I think they are only valid for the people considering the roles. There are a lot of people who are never considering these roles because they have no idea they exist. The other thing is that low pay, etc. is hard to fix, but getting the word out to more people about impactful jobs is easy.
I know in college I spent a lot of time searching job boards, trying to find a meaningful software engineering job. I never found one. Years later I stumble upon 80,000 hours (and a few other ways to find meaningful jobs) but the internet is a big place, and finding 80,000 hours is like finding a needle in a haystack in some ways.
(Another thing to consider is that 80,000 hours recently added the job board? I’m not sure what was there before the job board, but the website as a whole would’ve helped much less if it didn’t have a job board. Currently the 80,000 hours website is kinda like “you probably shouldn’t be a software engineer unless you went to a top 10 school and then here are some great AI safety roles...” but the job board does highlight opportunities for the non-1% of software engineers.)
I think overall there is a small proportion of software engineers who care about EA and the like, and so connecting them with the also small proportion of engineer jobs that enable EA is kind of statistically unlikely.
Anyways there are probably ways to make the jobs at 80,000 hours easier to access. I have some personal plans on my small scope, and maybe 80,000 hours can do I dunno more SEO or something.
One factor nobody has mentioned is the lack of communication between these organizations and software engineers. On Reddit I see posts all the time with titles like “are there any orgs where I can have a meaningful career?”, especially in the /r/cscareerquestions and /r/experienceddevs sub-forums. The people creating these posts have never heard of 80,000 hours or even the term “effective altruism”.
I agree with other comments about how jobs might not match with programmer’s desires for work that creates career capital (i.e. uses modern tech stack not wordpress), or low pay, or not being in their city. All of these are valid reasons, but I think they are only valid for the people considering the roles. There are a lot of people who are never considering these roles because they have no idea they exist. The other thing is that low pay, etc. is hard to fix, but getting the word out to more people about impactful jobs is easy.
I know in college I spent a lot of time searching job boards, trying to find a meaningful software engineering job. I never found one. Years later I stumble upon 80,000 hours (and a few other ways to find meaningful jobs) but the internet is a big place, and finding 80,000 hours is like finding a needle in a haystack in some ways.
(Another thing to consider is that 80,000 hours recently added the job board? I’m not sure what was there before the job board, but the website as a whole would’ve helped much less if it didn’t have a job board. Currently the 80,000 hours website is kinda like “you probably shouldn’t be a software engineer unless you went to a top 10 school and then here are some great AI safety roles...” but the job board does highlight opportunities for the non-1% of software engineers.)
I think overall there is a small proportion of software engineers who care about EA and the like, and so connecting them with the also small proportion of engineer jobs that enable EA is kind of statistically unlikely.
Anyways there are probably ways to make the jobs at 80,000 hours easier to access. I have some personal plans on my small scope, and maybe 80,000 hours can do I dunno more SEO or something.