Do you have plans for increasing class diversity via 80k career advice / tailoring advice to those with less resources? If so, what are some strategies you have?
I’ve loved 80k career advice and have benefited a ton from it. But one frustration I’ve had (especially earlier in my career) is that it doesn’t offer much advice for people starting with less resources. For example, non-profit jobs can be out-of-reach without relevant / outstanding credentials or money to do a Masters degree if moving into policy.
I also suspect there’s working-class cultural factors some need to un-learn (this was true for me). Manual labor tends to reward putting your head down and doing the hard work. But professional + managerial jobs reward creativity, relationships, and questioning systems.
Thanks for your question & feedback about our advice!
Just to clarify, my responsibility is for outreach and promotion, and that’s all this post is intended to be about. The content of our advice/website/podcast is written & handled by others at 80k.
I passed along your question, and Arden from the content team asked me to share this:
We think a lot of our advice can be useful for people from a variety of backgrounds, but it’s true that most of our advice is geared toward people who have or are planning to get a college degree, because we think that’s our comparative advantage. There might also be cases where we’re unintentionally alienating people from working class backgrounds by not acknowledging the specific challenges they face — thanks for raising that.
If you have concrete ideas about how we could do better at these kinds of issues, we’d be really excited to hear it!
epistemic status: started reading the sequences while delivering food to people on a bike.
I never really felt excluded by problem profile pages. I felt like I could access the tone they take of “here’s some broken stuff why don’t you go fix it”, I just had to discount or not read any sections that talked about status, top universities, etc., kind of assumed I’d have to write my own theory of change and have a thick skin about not always being taken seriously. (and then what happened was the actually-existing EA movement contained tons of more sr people doing actual work saying “yeah here take a crack at it”, encouraging me to accept mentorship or jobs from them. If anyone’s ever assumed I’m low potential it’s been the more community builder types lol)
Age is a more likely vector of neglectedness for 80k than class. I’d be more excited about 80k targeting the frustration people older than 25 or 35 have with 80k, that seems more useful than thinking deeply about class. Related to both of these, we also have to talk about the risk intolerant: are people with obligations and responsibilities (family members with expensive diseases, childrearing projects) low EV? This again seems like a more potent surface for 80k criticism and improvement than class stuff. (But of course, both age and obligation load have some correlations with class!)
I never felt excluded either. And 80k does a lot of things right on this front. The messages of ambition and “here’s some broken stuff why don’t you go fix it” are good and certainly have pushed me to do things I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I genuinely feel people from underprivileged backgrounds need to hear more of it and I try to promote them as much as I can.
>I just had to discount or not read any sections that talked about status, top universities, etc., kind of assumed I’d have to write my own theory of change and have a thick skin about not always being taken seriously.
I think this is where our experiences diverge. I also discounted these sections… by charging straight ahead into applying for my dream jobs and thinking I had the similar chances to Ivy League graduates. But (1) college brand name does matter if comparing two people with no experience, (2) the Ivy League graduate probably had more opportunities, networks and internships than me, and (3) many of my dream jobs were magnitudes more competitive than I initially thought.
Maybe 80k advice worked too well and I flew too close to the sun? I don’t know. Messaging is tricky.
>I’d be more excited about 80k targeting the frustration people older than 25 or 35 have with 80k, that seems more useful than thinking deeply about class.
Agreed. To be clear, I’m not endorsing thinking deeply about class. The “business case” for class diversity doesn’t seem great to me. But I saw “demographic diversity” mentioned in the original post and I was wondering if class was included in that.
One concrete idea could be an article centered on “class migrants”. Perhaps it could be similar to the format of the anonymous interview series, or it could be like the imposter syndrome article where there’s one personal profile and a few mini-profiles attached.
Partly, this is to help people feel less alone. But also, I think the strategy for developing your career differs based on where you’re starting. Even between colleges, there’s variation.
Beyond that, I’m not sure. I get that 80k’s target audience is different from me and messaging is hard. So I’m hesitant to recommend huge strategic changes in content.
Do you have plans for increasing class diversity via 80k career advice / tailoring advice to those with less resources? If so, what are some strategies you have?
I’ve loved 80k career advice and have benefited a ton from it. But one frustration I’ve had (especially earlier in my career) is that it doesn’t offer much advice for people starting with less resources. For example, non-profit jobs can be out-of-reach without relevant / outstanding credentials or money to do a Masters degree if moving into policy.
I also suspect there’s working-class cultural factors some need to un-learn (this was true for me). Manual labor tends to reward putting your head down and doing the hard work. But professional + managerial jobs reward creativity, relationships, and questioning systems.
Thanks for your question & feedback about our advice!
Just to clarify, my responsibility is for outreach and promotion, and that’s all this post is intended to be about. The content of our advice/website/podcast is written & handled by others at 80k.
I passed along your question, and Arden from the content team asked me to share this:
If you have concrete ideas about how we could do better at these kinds of issues, we’d be really excited to hear it!
epistemic status: started reading the sequences while delivering food to people on a bike.
I never really felt excluded by problem profile pages. I felt like I could access the tone they take of “here’s some broken stuff why don’t you go fix it”, I just had to discount or not read any sections that talked about status, top universities, etc., kind of assumed I’d have to write my own theory of change and have a thick skin about not always being taken seriously. (and then what happened was the actually-existing EA movement contained tons of more sr people doing actual work saying “yeah here take a crack at it”, encouraging me to accept mentorship or jobs from them. If anyone’s ever assumed I’m low potential it’s been the more community builder types lol)
Age is a more likely vector of neglectedness for 80k than class. I’d be more excited about 80k targeting the frustration people older than 25 or 35 have with 80k, that seems more useful than thinking deeply about class. Related to both of these, we also have to talk about the risk intolerant: are people with obligations and responsibilities (family members with expensive diseases, childrearing projects) low EV? This again seems like a more potent surface for 80k criticism and improvement than class stuff. (But of course, both age and obligation load have some correlations with class!)
I never felt excluded either. And 80k does a lot of things right on this front. The messages of ambition and “here’s some broken stuff why don’t you go fix it” are good and certainly have pushed me to do things I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I genuinely feel people from underprivileged backgrounds need to hear more of it and I try to promote them as much as I can.
>I just had to discount or not read any sections that talked about status, top universities, etc., kind of assumed I’d have to write my own theory of change and have a thick skin about not always being taken seriously.
I think this is where our experiences diverge. I also discounted these sections… by charging straight ahead into applying for my dream jobs and thinking I had the similar chances to Ivy League graduates. But (1) college brand name does matter if comparing two people with no experience, (2) the Ivy League graduate probably had more opportunities, networks and internships than me, and (3) many of my dream jobs were magnitudes more competitive than I initially thought.
Maybe 80k advice worked too well and I flew too close to the sun? I don’t know. Messaging is tricky.
>I’d be more excited about 80k targeting the frustration people older than 25 or 35 have with 80k, that seems more useful than thinking deeply about class.
Agreed. To be clear, I’m not endorsing thinking deeply about class. The “business case” for class diversity doesn’t seem great to me. But I saw “demographic diversity” mentioned in the original post and I was wondering if class was included in that.
Noted! Sorry for the misinterpretation.
One concrete idea could be an article centered on “class migrants”. Perhaps it could be similar to the format of the anonymous interview series, or it could be like the imposter syndrome article where there’s one personal profile and a few mini-profiles attached.
Partly, this is to help people feel less alone. But also, I think the strategy for developing your career differs based on where you’re starting. Even between colleges, there’s variation.
Beyond that, I’m not sure. I get that 80k’s target audience is different from me and messaging is hard. So I’m hesitant to recommend huge strategic changes in content.