Hey Arden, thanks for asking about that.
Let me start by also thanking you for all the good work you do at 80,000 Hours, and in particular for the various pieces you wrote that I linked to at 8. General Helpful Resources.
Regarding the key ideas vs old career guide, I have several thoughts which I have written below.
Because 80,000 Hours’ content is so central to EA, I think that this discussion is extremely important.
I would love to hear your thoughts about this Arden, and I will be glad if others could share their views as well, or even have a separate discussion somewhere else just about this topic.
Content
I think that two important aspects of the old career guide are much less emphasized in the key ideas page:
the first is general advice on how to have a successful career, and the second is how to make a plan and get a job.
Generally speaking, I felt like the old career guide gave more tools to the reader, rather than only information.
Of course, the key ideas page also discusses these issues to some extent, but much less so than the previous career guide.
I think that these were very good career advice which could potentially have a large effect on your readers’ careers.
Another important point is that I don’t like, and disagree with the choice of, the emphasis on longtermism and AI safety.
Personally, I am not completely persuaded by the arguments for choosing a career by a longtermist view, and even less by the arguments for AI safety.
More importantly, I had several conversations with people in the Israeli EA community and with people I gave career consultation to, who were alienated by this emphasis.
A minority of them felt like me, and the majority understood it as “all you can meaningfully do in EA is AI safety”, which was very discouraging for them.
I understand that this is not your only focus, but people whose first exposure to your website is the key ideas page might get that feeling, if they are not explicitly told otherwise.
Another point is that the “Global priorities” section takes a completely top-to-bottom approach.
I do agree that it is sometimes a good approach, but I think that many times it is not.
One reason is the tension between opportunities and cause areas which I already wrote about.
The other is that some people might already have their career going, or are particularly interested in a specific path.
In these situations, while it is true that they can change their careers or realize that they can enjoy a broader collection of careers, it is somewhat irrelevant and discouraging to read about rethinking all of your basic choices.
Instead, in these situations it would be much better to help people to optimize their current path towards more important goals.
Just to give an example, someone who studies law might get the impression that his choice is wrong and not beneficial, while I believe that if they tried they could find highly impactful opportunities (for example the recently established Legal Priorities Project looks very promising).
I think that these are my major points, but I do have some other smaller reservations about the content (for example I disagree with the principle of maximizing expected value, and definitely don’t think that this is the way it should be phrased as part of the “the big picture”).
Writing Style
I really liked the structure of the previous career guide.
It was very straightforward to know what you are about to read and where you can find something, since it was so clearly separated into different pages with clear titles and summaries.
Furthermore, its modularity made it very easy to read the parts you are interested in.
The key ideas page is much more convoluted, it is very hard to navigate and all of the expandable boxes are not making it easier.
Thanks for this quick and detailed feedback shaybenmoshe, and also for your kind words!
I think that two important aspects of the old career guide are much less emphasized in the key ideas page: the first is general advice on how to have a successful career, and the second is how to make a plan and get a job. Generally speaking, I felt like the old career guide gave more tools to the reader, rather than only information.
Yes. We decided to go “ideas/information-first” for various reasons, which has upsides but also downsides. We are hoping to mitigate the downsides by having practical, career-planning resources more emphasised alongside Key Ideas. So in the future the plan is to have better resources on both kinds of things, but they’ll likely be separated somewhat—like here are the ideas [set of articles], and here are the ways to use them in your career [set of articles]. We do plan to introduce the ideas first though, which we think are important for helping people make the most of their careers. That said, none of this is set in stone.
Another important point is that I don’t like, and disagree with the choice of, the emphasis on longtermism and AI safety. Personally, I am not completely persuaded by the arguments for choosing a career by a longtermist view, and even less by the arguments for AI safety. More importantly, I had several conversations with people in the Israeli EA community and with people I gave career consultation to, who were alienated by this emphasis. A minority of them felt like me, and the majority understood it as “all you can meaningfully do in EA is AI safety”, which was very discouraging for them. I understand that this is not your only focus, but people whose first exposure to your website is the key ideas page might get that feeling, if they are not explicitly told otherwise.
We became aware of the AI safety problem last year—we’ve tried to deemphasie AI Safety relative to other work since to make it clearer that, although it’s our top choice for most pressing problem and therefore what we’d recommend people work on if they could work on anything equally successfully, that doesnt’ mean that it’s the only or best choice for everyone (by a long shot!). I’m hoping Key Ideas no longer gives this impression, and that our lists of other problems and paths might help show that we’re excited about people working on a variety of things.
Re: Longtermism, I thnk our focus on that is just a product of most people at 80k being more convinced of longtermism’s truth/importance, so a longer conversation!
Another point is that the “Global priorities” section takes a completely top-to-bottom approach. I do agree that it is sometimes a good approach, but I think that many times it is not. One reason is the tension between opportunities and cause areas which I already wrote about. The other is that some people might already have their career going, or are particularly interested in a specific path. In these situations, while it is true that they can change their careers or realize that they can enjoy a broader collection of careers, it is somewhat irrelevant and discouraging to read about rethinking all of your basic choices. Instead, in these situations it would be much better to help people to optimize their current path towards more important goals.
I totally agree with this and think it’s a problem with Key Ideas. We are hoping the new career planning process we’ve released can help with this, but also know that it’s not the most accessible right now. Other things we might do: improve our ‘advice by expertise’ article, and try to make clear in the problems section (similar to the point about ai safety above) that we’re talking about what is most pressing and therefore best to work on for the person who could do anything equally successfully, but that career capital and personal fit mean that’s not going to be true of the reader, so while we think the problems are important for them to be aware of and an important input to their personal prioritisation, it’s not the end of it.
I disagree with the principle of maximizing expected value, and definitely don’t think that this is the way it should be phrased as part of the “the big picture”.
Similar to longtermism (and likely related) - it’s just our honest best guess at what is at least a good decision rule, if not the decision rule.
I really liked the structure of the previous career guide. It was very straightforward to know what you are about to read and where you can find something, since it was so clearly separated into different pages with clear titles and summaries. Furthermore, its modularity made it very easy to read the parts you are interested in. The key ideas page is much more convoluted, it is very hard to navigate and all of the expandable boxes are not making it easier.
Mostly agree with this. We’re planning to split key ideas into several articles that are much easier to navigate, but we’re having trouble making that happen as quickly as we would like. One thing is that lots of people skipped around the career guide, so we think many readers prefer a more ‘shopping’-like experience (like a newspaper) than the career guide had anyway. We’re hoping to go for a hybrid in the future.
Thanks for detailing your thoughts on these issues!
I’m glad to hear that you are aware of the different problems and tensions, and made informed decisions about them, and I look forward to seeing the changed you mentioned being implemented.
I want to add one comment about to the How to plan your career article, if it’s already mentioned. I think it’s really great, but it might be a little bit too long for many readers’ first exposure. I just realized that you have a summary on the Career planning page, which is good, but I think it might be too short. I found the (older) How to make tough career decisions article very helpful and I think it offers a great balance of information and length, and I personally still refer people to it for their first exposure. I think it will be very useful to have a version of this page (i.e. of similar length), reflecting the process described in the new article.
With regards to longtermism (and expected values), I think that indeed I disagree with the views taken by most of 80,000 hours’ team, and that’s ok. I do wish you offered a more balanced take on these matters, and maybe even separate the parts which are pretty much a consensus in EA from more specific views you take so that people can make their own informed decisions, but I know that it might be too much to ask and the lines are very blurred in any case.
Strong upvoted this as I feel almost exactly the same way! I’ve tried the new 80k Google doc but looked the old career guide and career decision making tool a lot better.
Hey Arden, thanks for asking about that. Let me start by also thanking you for all the good work you do at 80,000 Hours, and in particular for the various pieces you wrote that I linked to at 8. General Helpful Resources.
Regarding the key ideas vs old career guide, I have several thoughts which I have written below. Because 80,000 Hours’ content is so central to EA, I think that this discussion is extremely important. I would love to hear your thoughts about this Arden, and I will be glad if others could share their views as well, or even have a separate discussion somewhere else just about this topic.
Content
I think that two important aspects of the old career guide are much less emphasized in the key ideas page: the first is general advice on how to have a successful career, and the second is how to make a plan and get a job. Generally speaking, I felt like the old career guide gave more tools to the reader, rather than only information. Of course, the key ideas page also discusses these issues to some extent, but much less so than the previous career guide. I think that these were very good career advice which could potentially have a large effect on your readers’ careers.
Another important point is that I don’t like, and disagree with the choice of, the emphasis on longtermism and AI safety. Personally, I am not completely persuaded by the arguments for choosing a career by a longtermist view, and even less by the arguments for AI safety. More importantly, I had several conversations with people in the Israeli EA community and with people I gave career consultation to, who were alienated by this emphasis. A minority of them felt like me, and the majority understood it as “all you can meaningfully do in EA is AI safety”, which was very discouraging for them. I understand that this is not your only focus, but people whose first exposure to your website is the key ideas page might get that feeling, if they are not explicitly told otherwise.
Another point is that the “Global priorities” section takes a completely top-to-bottom approach. I do agree that it is sometimes a good approach, but I think that many times it is not. One reason is the tension between opportunities and cause areas which I already wrote about. The other is that some people might already have their career going, or are particularly interested in a specific path. In these situations, while it is true that they can change their careers or realize that they can enjoy a broader collection of careers, it is somewhat irrelevant and discouraging to read about rethinking all of your basic choices. Instead, in these situations it would be much better to help people to optimize their current path towards more important goals. Just to give an example, someone who studies law might get the impression that his choice is wrong and not beneficial, while I believe that if they tried they could find highly impactful opportunities (for example the recently established Legal Priorities Project looks very promising).
I think that these are my major points, but I do have some other smaller reservations about the content (for example I disagree with the principle of maximizing expected value, and definitely don’t think that this is the way it should be phrased as part of the “the big picture”).
Writing Style
I really liked the structure of the previous career guide. It was very straightforward to know what you are about to read and where you can find something, since it was so clearly separated into different pages with clear titles and summaries. Furthermore, its modularity made it very easy to read the parts you are interested in. The key ideas page is much more convoluted, it is very hard to navigate and all of the expandable boxes are not making it easier.
Thanks for this quick and detailed feedback shaybenmoshe, and also for your kind words!
Yes. We decided to go “ideas/information-first” for various reasons, which has upsides but also downsides. We are hoping to mitigate the downsides by having practical, career-planning resources more emphasised alongside Key Ideas. So in the future the plan is to have better resources on both kinds of things, but they’ll likely be separated somewhat—like here are the ideas [set of articles], and here are the ways to use them in your career [set of articles]. We do plan to introduce the ideas first though, which we think are important for helping people make the most of their careers. That said, none of this is set in stone.
We became aware of the AI safety problem last year—we’ve tried to deemphasie AI Safety relative to other work since to make it clearer that, although it’s our top choice for most pressing problem and therefore what we’d recommend people work on if they could work on anything equally successfully, that doesnt’ mean that it’s the only or best choice for everyone (by a long shot!). I’m hoping Key Ideas no longer gives this impression, and that our lists of other problems and paths might help show that we’re excited about people working on a variety of things.
Re: Longtermism, I thnk our focus on that is just a product of most people at 80k being more convinced of longtermism’s truth/importance, so a longer conversation!
I totally agree with this and think it’s a problem with Key Ideas. We are hoping the new career planning process we’ve released can help with this, but also know that it’s not the most accessible right now. Other things we might do: improve our ‘advice by expertise’ article, and try to make clear in the problems section (similar to the point about ai safety above) that we’re talking about what is most pressing and therefore best to work on for the person who could do anything equally successfully, but that career capital and personal fit mean that’s not going to be true of the reader, so while we think the problems are important for them to be aware of and an important input to their personal prioritisation, it’s not the end of it.
Similar to longtermism (and likely related) - it’s just our honest best guess at what is at least a good decision rule, if not the decision rule.
Mostly agree with this. We’re planning to split key ideas into several articles that are much easier to navigate, but we’re having trouble making that happen as quickly as we would like. One thing is that lots of people skipped around the career guide, so we think many readers prefer a more ‘shopping’-like experience (like a newspaper) than the career guide had anyway. We’re hoping to go for a hybrid in the future.
Thanks for detailing your thoughts on these issues! I’m glad to hear that you are aware of the different problems and tensions, and made informed decisions about them, and I look forward to seeing the changed you mentioned being implemented.
I want to add one comment about to the How to plan your career article, if it’s already mentioned. I think it’s really great, but it might be a little bit too long for many readers’ first exposure. I just realized that you have a summary on the Career planning page, which is good, but I think it might be too short. I found the (older) How to make tough career decisions article very helpful and I think it offers a great balance of information and length, and I personally still refer people to it for their first exposure. I think it will be very useful to have a version of this page (i.e. of similar length), reflecting the process described in the new article.
With regards to longtermism (and expected values), I think that indeed I disagree with the views taken by most of 80,000 hours’ team, and that’s ok. I do wish you offered a more balanced take on these matters, and maybe even separate the parts which are pretty much a consensus in EA from more specific views you take so that people can make their own informed decisions, but I know that it might be too much to ask and the lines are very blurred in any case.
Strong upvoted this as I feel almost exactly the same way! I’ve tried the new 80k Google doc but looked the old career guide and career decision making tool a lot better.