I would imagine if you look at number of jobs in EA that focus on longtermism vs Global health & Development, the picture would be more skewed towards longtermism relatively to funding.
I expected you to be right, but when I looked on the 80k job board right now of the 962 roles: 161 were in AI, 105 were in pandemics, and 308 were in global health and development. Hard to say exactly how that relates to funding, but regardless I think it shows development is also a major area of focus when measured by jobs instead of dollars.
Thanks for sharing the job counts, that’s interesting data. But I also think it’s important to note how those jobs are framed on the job board. The AI and pandemic jobs are listed as “top recommended problems”, while the global health jobs are listed as “other pressing problems” (along with jobs related to factory farming).
Late reply here but I think a potential difference is that the global health and development jobs attract significantly more non-EA applicants than the AI and pandemics jobs.
So if we are talking about EA shifting away from global health, maybe it is more about the number of EA-aligned individuals applying to global health and development jobs vs longtermist jobs.
The 80K board is an understandable proxy for “jobs in EA”. But that description can be limiting.
Many non-student EA Global attendees had jobs at organizations that most wouldn’t label “EA orgs”, and that nevertheless fit the topics of the conference.
Examples:
The World Bank
Schmidt Futures
Youth for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
UK Department of Health and Social Care
US Treasury Department
House of Commons
Development Innovation Lab
A bunch of think tanks
Some of these might have some of their jobs advertised by 80K, but there are also tons of jobs at those places that wouldn’t make the 80K job board* but that nevertheless put people in an excellent position to make an impact across any number of areas. And because global development is bigger than all the LT areas put together**, I expect there to be many more jobs on the non-LT side in this category.
*Not necessarily because 80K examined them and found them wanting, but as (I’d expect) a practical matter — there are 157 open jobs at the World Bank right now, and I wouldn’t expect 80K to evaluate all of them (or turn the World Bank into 15% of the whole job board).
**Other than biosecurity, maybe? As a quick sanity-check, USAID’s budget is ~4x the CDC budget, results may vary across countries and international institutions.
I would imagine if you look at number of jobs in EA that focus on longtermism vs Global health & Development, the picture would be more skewed towards longtermism relatively to funding.
I expected you to be right, but when I looked on the 80k job board right now of the 962 roles: 161 were in AI, 105 were in pandemics, and 308 were in global health and development. Hard to say exactly how that relates to funding, but regardless I think it shows development is also a major area of focus when measured by jobs instead of dollars.
Thanks for sharing the job counts, that’s interesting data. But I also think it’s important to note how those jobs are framed on the job board. The AI and pandemic jobs are listed as “top recommended problems”, while the global health jobs are listed as “other pressing problems” (along with jobs related to factory farming).
I completely agree.
Late reply here but I think a potential difference is that the global health and development jobs attract significantly more non-EA applicants than the AI and pandemics jobs.
So if we are talking about EA shifting away from global health, maybe it is more about the number of EA-aligned individuals applying to global health and development jobs vs longtermist jobs.
The 80K board is an understandable proxy for “jobs in EA”. But that description can be limiting.
Many non-student EA Global attendees had jobs at organizations that most wouldn’t label “EA orgs”, and that nevertheless fit the topics of the conference.
Examples:
The World Bank
Schmidt Futures
Youth for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
UK Department of Health and Social Care
US Treasury Department
House of Commons
Development Innovation Lab
A bunch of think tanks
Some of these might have some of their jobs advertised by 80K, but there are also tons of jobs at those places that wouldn’t make the 80K job board* but that nevertheless put people in an excellent position to make an impact across any number of areas. And because global development is bigger than all the LT areas put together**, I expect there to be many more jobs on the non-LT side in this category.
*Not necessarily because 80K examined them and found them wanting, but as (I’d expect) a practical matter — there are 157 open jobs at the World Bank right now, and I wouldn’t expect 80K to evaluate all of them (or turn the World Bank into 15% of the whole job board).
**Other than biosecurity, maybe? As a quick sanity-check, USAID’s budget is ~4x the CDC budget, results may vary across countries and international institutions.