80k now has career profiles on doing Software Engineering, Data Science and a Computer Science PhD. I’m in a position where I could plausibly pursue any of these. What is the ratio of effective altruists currently pursuing each of these options, and where do you think adding an additional EA is of most value? (Having information this information on the career profiles might be a nice touch)
There are more EA software engineers than data scientists.
Seems pretty person-dependent though. Do you like math? Would you prefer research or industry? If you’ve done an honours or masters already, that might give you an idea of whether you’d like a PhD. Which skills do you lack in order to be able to work at a CS/data science area like machine learning?
Software engineers most common by some margin I think.
Then data science and compsci phd; not sure which is more common.
We’re not aiming the profiles at just at EAs, so aren’t including this info right now. I hope to have blog posts about EA skill shortages in the future though.
If you especially care about AI, then I reckon lean towards the compsci phd.
80k now has career profiles on doing Software Engineering, Data Science and a Computer Science PhD. I’m in a position where I could plausibly pursue any of these. What is the ratio of effective altruists currently pursuing each of these options, and where do you think adding an additional EA is of most value? (Having information this information on the career profiles might be a nice touch)
There are more EA software engineers than data scientists.
Seems pretty person-dependent though. Do you like math? Would you prefer research or industry? If you’ve done an honours or masters already, that might give you an idea of whether you’d like a PhD. Which skills do you lack in order to be able to work at a CS/data science area like machine learning?
Agree with Ryan that personal fit is also a very big consideration at this point
Software engineers most common by some margin I think. Then data science and compsci phd; not sure which is more common.
We’re not aiming the profiles at just at EAs, so aren’t including this info right now. I hope to have blog posts about EA skill shortages in the future though.
If you especially care about AI, then I reckon lean towards the compsci phd.