It is extremely upsetting for people to apply and get turned down, especially if they found 80k materials at some emotional time (releasing they are not satisfied with their current job or studies). It is very hard to not interpret this as “you are not good enough”.
I am so sad that we are causing this. It is really tough to make yourself vulnerable to strangers and reach out for help, only to have your request rebuffed. That’s particularly hard when it feels like a judgement on someone’s worth, and more particularly on their ability to help others. And I think there are additional reasons for these rejections being particularly tough:
If you’re early on in your career (as most of our readers are) and haven’t yet experienced many rejections, they will hit harder than if you’re more used to them
Effective altruism is often experienced as an identity, above and beyond its ideas and the community. This makes a rejection feel particularly sensitive
Whenever you’re being judged, it’s hard to keep in mind how little information the person has about you. Our application is far shorter and more informal than, say, university applications. We therefore often have pretty little information about people and so are correspondingly likely to make the wrong call. But since the person filling in the application knows all about themselves, it’s hard for them not to take it as an indictment of them overall.
I do want to highlight that our not talking to someone isn’t a sign we don’t think they will have an (extremely) impactful career; rather it is simply a sign that we don’t think we’ll be as helpful to them as we could be to some other people. So while I deeply empathise with the feelings I describe above and I expect I would feel the same way in a similar situation, I don’t think people are actually right to feel like they “are not good enough”.
I realise it’s probably no consolation, but, on a personal note, needing to turn down people who are asking for my help is unquestionably the worst part of my job. We spent a significant part of last year trying to find an alternative model we believe would be as impactful as our current process but wouldn’t involve soliciting and then rejecting so many applications. Unfortunately, we didn’t find one. I think it’s my responsibility to implement the model we think is best, but it’s hard to feel like I’m doing the right thing when I know I’m disappointing so many people. I often only get through reviewing applications by reminding myself of our mission and trying to bring to mind the huge numbers of people in the future who may never get to exist and are entirely voiceless, and for whose sake it is that I have to refuse to help people in front of me today that I care about.
Spitballing here, but have you considered putting some thoughts to this effect on your website? Currently, the relevant part of the 80k website reads as follows.
Why wasn’t I accepted?
Unfortunately, due to overwhelming demand, we can’t advise everyone who applies. However, we’re confident that everyone who is reading this has what it takes to lead a fulfilling, high impact career. Our key ideas series contains lots of our best advice on this topic – we hope you’ll find it useful.
If you’re thinking of re-applying, you can improve your chances by:
Using our planning tool, which we developed to help people think through their own decisions.
You can also get involved in our community to get help from other people trying to do good with their careers.
This is ok as far as it goes, but to me does feel a little like a fake-positive ‘I’m sure you’ll do just fine, whoever-you-are!‘. Pointing out things like the fact that you have very little information to go on, and that you’re optimising for people you can help most rather than making some kind of pure ‘how valuable is this person’ call, seems like it could help soften the blow the margin, though I appreciate it’ll never make that large a difference given the other things you mentioned.
Thanks for this feedback. I had a go at rewriting that our ‘why wasn’t I accepted’ FAQ. It now reads:
Why wasn’t I accepted?
We sincerely regret that we can’t advise everyone who applies. We read every application individually and are thankful that you took the time to apply. It’s really touching reading about people who have come across 80,000 Hours and are excited about using their careers to help others.
We aim to talk to the people we think we can help most. Our not speaking with you does not mean we think you won’t have a highly impactful career. Whether we can be helpful to you sometimes depends on contingent factors like whether one of our advisers happens to know of a role or introduction right now that might be a good fit for you. We also have far less information about you than you do, so we aren’t even necessarily making the right calls about who we can help most.
You’re very welcome to reapply, particularly if your situation changes. If you’re thinking of doing so, it might be worth reading our key ideas series and trying out our career planning process, which we developed to help people think through their career decisions. You can also get involved in our community to get help from other people trying to do good with their careers.
I am so sad that we are causing this. It is really tough to make yourself vulnerable to strangers and reach out for help, only to have your request rebuffed. That’s particularly hard when it feels like a judgement on someone’s worth, and more particularly on their ability to help others. And I think there are additional reasons for these rejections being particularly tough:
If you’re early on in your career (as most of our readers are) and haven’t yet experienced many rejections, they will hit harder than if you’re more used to them
Effective altruism is often experienced as an identity, above and beyond its ideas and the community. This makes a rejection feel particularly sensitive
Whenever you’re being judged, it’s hard to keep in mind how little information the person has about you. Our application is far shorter and more informal than, say, university applications. We therefore often have pretty little information about people and so are correspondingly likely to make the wrong call. But since the person filling in the application knows all about themselves, it’s hard for them not to take it as an indictment of them overall.
I do want to highlight that our not talking to someone isn’t a sign we don’t think they will have an (extremely) impactful career; rather it is simply a sign that we don’t think we’ll be as helpful to them as we could be to some other people. So while I deeply empathise with the feelings I describe above and I expect I would feel the same way in a similar situation, I don’t think people are actually right to feel like they “are not good enough”.
I realise it’s probably no consolation, but, on a personal note, needing to turn down people who are asking for my help is unquestionably the worst part of my job. We spent a significant part of last year trying to find an alternative model we believe would be as impactful as our current process but wouldn’t involve soliciting and then rejecting so many applications. Unfortunately, we didn’t find one. I think it’s my responsibility to implement the model we think is best, but it’s hard to feel like I’m doing the right thing when I know I’m disappointing so many people. I often only get through reviewing applications by reminding myself of our mission and trying to bring to mind the huge numbers of people in the future who may never get to exist and are entirely voiceless, and for whose sake it is that I have to refuse to help people in front of me today that I care about.
Spitballing here, but have you considered putting some thoughts to this effect on your website? Currently, the relevant part of the 80k website reads as follows.
This is ok as far as it goes, but to me does feel a little like a fake-positive ‘I’m sure you’ll do just fine, whoever-you-are!‘. Pointing out things like the fact that you have very little information to go on, and that you’re optimising for people you can help most rather than making some kind of pure ‘how valuable is this person’ call, seems like it could help soften the blow the margin, though I appreciate it’ll never make that large a difference given the other things you mentioned.
Thanks for this feedback. I had a go at rewriting that our ‘why wasn’t I accepted’ FAQ. It now reads:
Why wasn’t I accepted?
We sincerely regret that we can’t advise everyone who applies. We read every application individually and are thankful that you took the time to apply. It’s really touching reading about people who have come across 80,000 Hours and are excited about using their careers to help others.
We aim to talk to the people we think we can help most. Our not speaking with you does not mean we think you won’t have a highly impactful career. Whether we can be helpful to you sometimes depends on contingent factors like whether one of our advisers happens to know of a role or introduction right now that might be a good fit for you. We also have far less information about you than you do, so we aren’t even necessarily making the right calls about who we can help most.
You’re very welcome to reapply, particularly if your situation changes. If you’re thinking of doing so, it might be worth reading our key ideas series and trying out our career planning process, which we developed to help people think through their career decisions. You can also get involved in our community to get help from other people trying to do good with their careers.