I don’t want to imply that you should go work for a hedge fund, only that I suspect 80K has likely thought about it. So figuring out why they may have reached the conclusion they did should hopefully help you to evaluate the pros and cons and make a decision that aligns best with your values.
The take on medical careers in this post is the flipside of the cynical defense I described, and maybe it is easier to see the flipside. Basically, the argument is that if you decide to go to med school, you replaced someone who would have otherwise been a physician. So the counterfactual difference in the world is limited to the difference in the quality of the medical services you would have provided vs. the quality your replacement would have provided.
I am less utilitarian than the average person here, and would personally not work for an organization as harmful as you believe hedge funds to be. (I never had any interest in working for one, so never took the time to investigate their net social impact.)
I don’t want to imply that you should go work for a hedge fund, only that I suspect 80K has likely thought about it. So figuring out why they may have reached the conclusion they did should hopefully help you to evaluate the pros and cons and make a decision that aligns best with your values.
The take on medical careers in this post is the flipside of the cynical defense I described, and maybe it is easier to see the flipside. Basically, the argument is that if you decide to go to med school, you replaced someone who would have otherwise been a physician. So the counterfactual difference in the world is limited to the difference in the quality of the medical services you would have provided vs. the quality your replacement would have provided.
I am less utilitarian than the average person here, and would personally not work for an organization as harmful as you believe hedge funds to be. (I never had any interest in working for one, so never took the time to investigate their net social impact.)