Hi there! In this comment, I will discuss a few things that I would like to see 80,000 Hours consider doing, and I will also talk about myself a bit.
I found 80,000 Hours in early/mid-2012, after a poster on LessWrong linked to the site. Back then, I was still trying to decide what to focus on during my undergraduate studies. By that point in time, I had already decided that I needed to major in a STEM field so that I would be able to earn to give. Before this, in late 2011, I had been planning on majoring in philosophy, so my decision in early 2012 to do something in a STEM field was a big change from my previous plans. I hadn’t known which STEM field I wanted to major in at this point; I had only realized that STEM majors generally had better earning potentials than philosophy majors.
The way that this ties back into 80,000 Hours is that I think that I would have liked someone to help me decide which STEM field to go into. Actually, I can’t find any discussion of choosing a college major on the 80,000 Hours site, though there are acouple of threads on this topic posted to LessWrong. I would like to see an in-depth discussion page on major choice as one of the core posts on 80,000 Hours.
Anyhow, I ended up majoring in chemistry because it seemed like one of the toughest things that I could major in—I made this decision under the rule-of-thumb that doing hard things makes you stronger. I probably should have majored in mathematics, because I actually really enjoy math, and have gotten good grades in most of my math classes; neither of those two things are true of the chemistry classes I have taken. I think that my biggest previous misconception about major choice was that all STEM majors were roughly equal in how well they prepared you for the job market—looking back, I feel that CS and Math are two of the best choices for earning to give, followed by engineering and then biology, with chemistry and physics as the two worst options for students interested in earning to give. Of course, YMMV, and people with physics degrees do go into quantitative finance, but I do think that not all STEM majors are equally useful for earning to give.
The second thing that I would like to mention is that, from my point of view, 80,000 Hours seems very elitist. I don’t mean this in a bad way, really, I don’t, but it is hard to be in the top third of mathematics graduates from an ivy league university. The first time that I had a face-to-face conversation with an effective altruist who had been inspired by 80,000 Hours, I told them that I was planning on doing important scientific research, and they just gave me a look and asked me why I wasn’t planning on going into one of the more lucrative earning-to-give type of careers.
I am sure that this person is a good person, but this episode leads me to wonder if adding more jobs that very smart people who aren’t quite ready to go into quantitative finance or strategic consulting could do to the top careers page on 80,000 Hours’ site would be a good idea. Specifically, mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering, as well as the actuarial sciences, could be acceptable fields for one to go into for earning to give.
We’ve written about how to choose what subject to study a bunch of times, but I agree it’s hard to find, and it’s not a major focus of what we do. Unfortunately we have very limited research capacity and have decided to focus on choosing jobs rather than subjects because we think we’ll be able to have more impact that way. In the future I’d love to have more content on subject choice though.
I also realise our careers list comes across badly. I’m really keen to expand the range of careers that we consider—we’re trying to hire someone to do more career profiles but haven’t found anyone suitable yet. Being an actuary and engineering are both pretty high on the list.
I also know that a lot of people around 80,000 Hours think most people should do earning to give. That’s not something I agree with. Earning to give is just one of a range of strategies.
“Actually, I can’t find any discussion of choosing a college major on the 80,000 Hours site, though there are a couple of threads on this topic posted to LessWrong.”
Not a tremendous excuse, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is basically because 80k is UK-based, where there is no strong analogue to ‘choosing a major’ as practised by US undergraduates; by the time someone is an undergraduate in the UK (actually, probably many months before that, given application deadlines), they’ve already chosen their subject and have no further choices to make on that front except comparatively minor specialisation choices.
Hi there! In this comment, I will discuss a few things that I would like to see 80,000 Hours consider doing, and I will also talk about myself a bit.
I found 80,000 Hours in early/mid-2012, after a poster on LessWrong linked to the site. Back then, I was still trying to decide what to focus on during my undergraduate studies. By that point in time, I had already decided that I needed to major in a STEM field so that I would be able to earn to give. Before this, in late 2011, I had been planning on majoring in philosophy, so my decision in early 2012 to do something in a STEM field was a big change from my previous plans. I hadn’t known which STEM field I wanted to major in at this point; I had only realized that STEM majors generally had better earning potentials than philosophy majors.
The way that this ties back into 80,000 Hours is that I think that I would have liked someone to help me decide which STEM field to go into. Actually, I can’t find any discussion of choosing a college major on the 80,000 Hours site, though there are a couple of threads on this topic posted to LessWrong. I would like to see an in-depth discussion page on major choice as one of the core posts on 80,000 Hours.
Anyhow, I ended up majoring in chemistry because it seemed like one of the toughest things that I could major in—I made this decision under the rule-of-thumb that doing hard things makes you stronger. I probably should have majored in mathematics, because I actually really enjoy math, and have gotten good grades in most of my math classes; neither of those two things are true of the chemistry classes I have taken. I think that my biggest previous misconception about major choice was that all STEM majors were roughly equal in how well they prepared you for the job market—looking back, I feel that CS and Math are two of the best choices for earning to give, followed by engineering and then biology, with chemistry and physics as the two worst options for students interested in earning to give. Of course, YMMV, and people with physics degrees do go into quantitative finance, but I do think that not all STEM majors are equally useful for earning to give.
The second thing that I would like to mention is that, from my point of view, 80,000 Hours seems very elitist. I don’t mean this in a bad way, really, I don’t, but it is hard to be in the top third of mathematics graduates from an ivy league university. The first time that I had a face-to-face conversation with an effective altruist who had been inspired by 80,000 Hours, I told them that I was planning on doing important scientific research, and they just gave me a look and asked me why I wasn’t planning on going into one of the more lucrative earning-to-give type of careers.
I am sure that this person is a good person, but this episode leads me to wonder if adding more jobs that very smart people who aren’t quite ready to go into quantitative finance or strategic consulting could do to the top careers page on 80,000 Hours’ site would be a good idea. Specifically, mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering, as well as the actuarial sciences, could be acceptable fields for one to go into for earning to give.
Hi Fluttershy,
Really appreciate hearing you’re feedback.
We’ve written about how to choose what subject to study a bunch of times, but I agree it’s hard to find, and it’s not a major focus of what we do. Unfortunately we have very limited research capacity and have decided to focus on choosing jobs rather than subjects because we think we’ll be able to have more impact that way. In the future I’d love to have more content on subject choice though.
I also realise our careers list comes across badly. I’m really keen to expand the range of careers that we consider—we’re trying to hire someone to do more career profiles but haven’t found anyone suitable yet. Being an actuary and engineering are both pretty high on the list.
I also know that a lot of people around 80,000 Hours think most people should do earning to give. That’s not something I agree with. Earning to give is just one of a range of strategies.
Ben
Seems like 80K could probably stand to link to more of Cognito Mentoring’s old stuff in general. No reason to duplicate effort.
Yeah I’ll add a link to Cognito on the best resources page next time I update it.
“Actually, I can’t find any discussion of choosing a college major on the 80,000 Hours site, though there are a couple of threads on this topic posted to LessWrong.”
Not a tremendous excuse, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is basically because 80k is UK-based, where there is no strong analogue to ‘choosing a major’ as practised by US undergraduates; by the time someone is an undergraduate in the UK (actually, probably many months before that, given application deadlines), they’ve already chosen their subject and have no further choices to make on that front except comparatively minor specialisation choices.
Not to take away from the substance of your post, but when you note that impact is power-law distributed, doing important scientific research sounds (much)[https://80000hours.org/2012/08/should-you-go-into-research-part-1/] (more skill-dependent)[https://80000hours.org/2013/01/should-you-go-into-research-part-2/] than quantitative finance.