I have a fear/uncertainty/doubt about excessive cause-prioritization as a focus of the Effective Altruism movement’s message.
Let’s say Tess goes to an Ivy League school and wants to make an impact through work in education. She does Teach for America and teaches underprivileged kids in the US for a few years, and gradually rises within the schools she works at until she is an administrator and can allocate resources for an entire district. Because she’s very good at it and deeply cares about her work, she ends up making an enormous impact with her career, transforming a bad public school system into a great one, and substantially positively affecting the lives of thousands of kids per year.
I think the EA movement would disapprove of the early steps in this career path. So if Tess discovered the current EA movement too early in her career, she would either become disenchanted with EA, or “drop out” of TFA and instead go earn-to-give, or something like that—i.e., follow a career path which is more approved by EAs, but ultimately less impactful. Of course, this would be justified since she would have no way to know that she has the “plot armor” to succeed at her original path. But by dropping out of something she is passionate about and doing earning-to-give, she is sacrificing her potential upside through the passion/resonance she has with her work.
I guess I worry about a lot of people saying such-and-such isn’t really EA because it doesn’t maximize a narrow ideal of “effectiveness”, and that can either turn people off of EA, or turn them off of careers in which they might actually have real upside through resonance.
That scenario only makes sense with the benefit of hindsight. Generally speaking, people who choose impactful career paths tend to do more for the world, so we recommend accordingly. In EA career advice e.g. on 80,000 Hours, it’s well accounted for that personal enjoyment and passion are parts of being successful in one’s career, although they are not nearly the only components, and difficult to plan for.
I believe this is largely the reason why 80K has been trying harder more recently to downplay the importance of earning to give. It’s not the only good career path and it’s not something everyone should be doing.
Let’s say Tess goes to an Ivy League school and wants to make an impact through work in education. She does Teach for America and teaches underprivileged kids in the US for a few years, and gradually rises within the schools she works at until she is an administrator and can allocate resources for an entire district. Because she’s very good at it and deeply cares about her work, she ends up making an enormous impact with her career, transforming a bad public school system into a great one, and substantially positively affecting the lives of thousands of kids per year.
This career seems good ex post. It turned out well! But unfortunately forecasting is hard, especially about the future. The relevant question for Tess at age 21 is whether, in expectation, doing TfA is the best use of her time. And the answer is probably no—most TfA graduates achieve very little. In your story she got lucky—but 80k cannot advise ‘be lucky’ as a career strategy!
Have you seen Holden Karnofsky’s thoughts on career choice? I tend to agree with him (and with your concern here) that doing outstanding work in any career is more important than abstractly considering “which career is best” when it comes to opportunities to do good. Hence very specific personal factors may be the most important concerns. I’ve heard that the people at 80,000 Hours have been talking to him and moving in that direction, but if so they seem to have some trouble communicating this.
I tend to agree with him (and with your concern here) that doing outstanding work in any career is more important than abstractly considering “which career is best” when it comes to opportunities to do good.
This conclusion seems weird to me. The space of careers is wide and the space within any career is much narrower, so I’d expect that choosing which career to pursue is one of the most important decisions, similarly to how choosing a cause area is one of the most important parts of choosing a charity. Individual skill sets matter more for career choice, but I’d expect that most people (especially EAs) have many careers they could choose where they’d perform about as well in any of them.
Interesting! I honestly don’t think charity and career choices are all that similar. My impression has been that there are huge differences between positions in the same field, and even between positions with the same employer. What’s the team/management/environment like? How well does it fit your working style and skills? What will you learn, who will you meet? What would the prospective employer do if they didn’t hire you, and what will other applicants do if you take the job? What further opportunities will you be able to pursue that others wouldn’t be able or motivated to?
Holden’s angle as I interpret it is that answers to the first sorts of question might be the difference between doing good work—the level you’d perform about as well as in any career—and doing outstanding work. And doing outstanding work is what often turns up the best further opportunities, which often couldn’t have been known in advance (e.g. new initiatives, organizations, collaborations, leadership positions, policy change), and which make for much larger differences in outcomes than the between-career differences in acceptably good work.
But you can’t really get at the first questions at the level of “doctors may be replaceable” or “an additional PhD researcher gives marginal speedup X to biomedical progress.” At best this can narrow things down slightly from things you think you might be a good fit for, depending on how broad that category is to begin with.
Beyond that, there’s not really a substitute for doing a bunch of informational interviews, taking a variety of internships, volunteering in fields of interest, turning up as many positions as you can through your network, asking important questions during real interviews, and so on; then finally evaluating your specific options. And at that point it should not be surprising to find a better opportunity (for you personally) in what was a “worse” field in a more zoomed-out analysis.
I have a fear/uncertainty/doubt about excessive cause-prioritization as a focus of the Effective Altruism movement’s message.
Let’s say Tess goes to an Ivy League school and wants to make an impact through work in education. She does Teach for America and teaches underprivileged kids in the US for a few years, and gradually rises within the schools she works at until she is an administrator and can allocate resources for an entire district. Because she’s very good at it and deeply cares about her work, she ends up making an enormous impact with her career, transforming a bad public school system into a great one, and substantially positively affecting the lives of thousands of kids per year.
I think the EA movement would disapprove of the early steps in this career path. So if Tess discovered the current EA movement too early in her career, she would either become disenchanted with EA, or “drop out” of TFA and instead go earn-to-give, or something like that—i.e., follow a career path which is more approved by EAs, but ultimately less impactful. Of course, this would be justified since she would have no way to know that she has the “plot armor” to succeed at her original path. But by dropping out of something she is passionate about and doing earning-to-give, she is sacrificing her potential upside through the passion/resonance she has with her work.
I guess I worry about a lot of people saying such-and-such isn’t really EA because it doesn’t maximize a narrow ideal of “effectiveness”, and that can either turn people off of EA, or turn them off of careers in which they might actually have real upside through resonance.
That scenario only makes sense with the benefit of hindsight. Generally speaking, people who choose impactful career paths tend to do more for the world, so we recommend accordingly. In EA career advice e.g. on 80,000 Hours, it’s well accounted for that personal enjoyment and passion are parts of being successful in one’s career, although they are not nearly the only components, and difficult to plan for.
I believe this is largely the reason why 80K has been trying harder more recently to downplay the importance of earning to give. It’s not the only good career path and it’s not something everyone should be doing.
This career seems good ex post. It turned out well! But unfortunately forecasting is hard, especially about the future. The relevant question for Tess at age 21 is whether, in expectation, doing TfA is the best use of her time. And the answer is probably no—most TfA graduates achieve very little. In your story she got lucky—but 80k cannot advise ‘be lucky’ as a career strategy!
Have you seen Holden Karnofsky’s thoughts on career choice? I tend to agree with him (and with your concern here) that doing outstanding work in any career is more important than abstractly considering “which career is best” when it comes to opportunities to do good. Hence very specific personal factors may be the most important concerns. I’ve heard that the people at 80,000 Hours have been talking to him and moving in that direction, but if so they seem to have some trouble communicating this.
This conclusion seems weird to me. The space of careers is wide and the space within any career is much narrower, so I’d expect that choosing which career to pursue is one of the most important decisions, similarly to how choosing a cause area is one of the most important parts of choosing a charity. Individual skill sets matter more for career choice, but I’d expect that most people (especially EAs) have many careers they could choose where they’d perform about as well in any of them.
Interesting! I honestly don’t think charity and career choices are all that similar. My impression has been that there are huge differences between positions in the same field, and even between positions with the same employer. What’s the team/management/environment like? How well does it fit your working style and skills? What will you learn, who will you meet? What would the prospective employer do if they didn’t hire you, and what will other applicants do if you take the job? What further opportunities will you be able to pursue that others wouldn’t be able or motivated to?
Holden’s angle as I interpret it is that answers to the first sorts of question might be the difference between doing good work—the level you’d perform about as well as in any career—and doing outstanding work. And doing outstanding work is what often turns up the best further opportunities, which often couldn’t have been known in advance (e.g. new initiatives, organizations, collaborations, leadership positions, policy change), and which make for much larger differences in outcomes than the between-career differences in acceptably good work.
But you can’t really get at the first questions at the level of “doctors may be replaceable” or “an additional PhD researcher gives marginal speedup X to biomedical progress.” At best this can narrow things down slightly from things you think you might be a good fit for, depending on how broad that category is to begin with.
Beyond that, there’s not really a substitute for doing a bunch of informational interviews, taking a variety of internships, volunteering in fields of interest, turning up as many positions as you can through your network, asking important questions during real interviews, and so on; then finally evaluating your specific options. And at that point it should not be surprising to find a better opportunity (for you personally) in what was a “worse” field in a more zoomed-out analysis.