Speaking from experience running workshops based on 80K for college students (1st and 2nd years) we always emphasise the personal list view and balance it with more general 80K career/ācause profiles in the following ways:
1) Exploring unfamiliar careers and career paths 80K covers some unusual careers that are worth spending time on, both on cause areas and job types (like the High Impact Management profile). This helps expand peoplesā options, especially early in their college career.
2) Build flexible career capital Unless someone is sure of their interests we suggest building flexible career capital and experimenting with different experiences/āinternships before committing to one career path. Edit: We also try to emphasize the flexibility of different paths, and how each choice closes off or opens different paths, so people are making the best choices based on their interests.
3) Personal fit & Comparative advantage Iāve been surprised at how quickly people evaluate their own personal fit, and encourage them to use 1) to consider jobs that they might be good at but unfamiliar with. We also emphasize comparative advantage to further personalize this.
4) Critiquing 80Kās claims We try to engage students to critically think about the claims we (and 80K) make and push back against them. We have had some really good discussions about moral frameworks and the article What skills make you most employable?
In general, I think the first step to 80K is really to develop this robust framework first with the advice that is generally true for all careers, get exposure to different career paths and come to your own list before looking at the annual reports and more recent recommendations.
I also think that 80K should create resources for local group leaders, many of whom engage in one-on-one career advice, and that more effort should be made to track EAs pursuing different careers.
I would disagree with this too, especially for advice given to college students (the students in our course are mostly first- and second-years, added to my original comment for clarity). We recommend they try out different paths because often their go-to career options may not be particularly high-impact. Our advice is targeted mostly for the 4 years of College. But I think itās generally good advice for most people to know, because of your own personal interests and inclinations.
I also noticed in the link you provide that 80K suggests going straight to graduate school, which I would also not recommend unless you are certain of what you want to do (and because it can be a substantial financial burden, especially in the US).
One of 80Kās strongest features was (since they seem to be moving in a different direction) giving good generic career advice, especially for undergraduates. It would be a shame to lose this because I think it makes a great initial impression to newcomers and convinces them straight off the bat of how useful EA can be in helping them make meaningful impact, even if they arenāt convinced by all of the ideas behind EA immediately.
One of 80Kās strongest features was (since they seem to be moving in a different direction) giving good generic career advice, especially for undergraduates. It would be a shame to lose this because I think it makes a great initial impression to newcomers and convinces them straight off the bat of how useful EA can be in helping them make meaningful impact, even if they arenāt convinced by all of the ideas behind EA immediately.
That sounds plausible to me if the same recommendations apply to newcomers and to die-hard EAs, such that ādo we give advice thatās useful for general audiences?ā is just a question of āwhich good-to-follow advice do we emphasize?ā and not āwhich advice is good for a given demographic to follow?ā.
On the other hand, I donāt want 80K to give advice thatās actively bad for die-hard EAs to follow, no matter how useful that advice is to students in general. From my perspective (which might reflect a different set of goals than yours, since Iām not coming at this question from your position), that would make it too hard to just zip over to 80Kās website for advice and trust that Iām getting relevant information.
I donāt think we should underestimate the value of being able to trust that an information source is giving us exactly what it thinks the very best advice is, without having to worry about how much the source might be diluting that advice to make it more memetic or easy-to-sell. Being able to just take statements on the 80K website at face value is a big deal.
If a certain piece of advice turns out to be good for most students but bad for most EA students, then I could see it being possibly interesting and useful for 80K to make a page like āHereās how our advice to most students would differ from our advice to EA students.ā That could then serve a dual purpose by clarifying what sensible ābaselineā advice looks like. I think it would also be fine for 80K to link to some offsite, non-80K-branded career advice that they especially endorse for other students, even though they specifically donāt endorse it for maximizing your careerās altruistic impact.
If a certain piece of advice turns out to be good for most students but bad for most EA students, then I could see it being possibly interesting and useful for 80K to make a page like āHereās how our advice to most students would differ from our advice to EA students.ā That could then serve a dual purpose by clarifying what sensible ābaselineā advice looks like. I think it would also be fine for 80K to link to some offsite, non-80K-branded career advice that they especially endorse for other students, even though they specifically donāt endorse it for maximizing your careerās altruistic impact.
I think this is a good idea. I personally donāt think general advice (that Iāve been referring to about personal fit and flexible career capital) would actively harm individual EAs personally (it might, but I doubt it) as a general framework. I also donāt think it would harm the community in the long term either, because we donāt want people to be demoralized or burn out. But, what you suggest might alleviate some of these concerns.
An alternative is to have clear paramterized if X then Y lists, like cole_haus suggests above would solve this issue of not getting the best advice. That way, there is not dilution, simply targeting different audiences. Any kind of mass-outreach has the problem that not everything will apply to everyone.
My biggest concern with what you suggest is that 80K as a major first point-of-contact for new EAs. According to the most recent EA Survey, 25% of new EAs in 2018 first heard of EA through 80K, way up from previous years of 5%. For the reasons I gave above, I think giving general (but still impact-related) advice is going to be really important for people to continue engaging with the community. It also probably wonāt help the diversity issue (in professional expertise) with EA (although it seems like thatās fairly low-priority across the board). So, hardcore EA advice might be too much for newcomers vs. the more general āease into the EA mindsetā approach of the original 80K guide, which is still EA branded in some way so maintains engagement with the community.
Yeah, I donāt have a strong object-level view about exactly which advice is best for most EAs; I just wanted to voice some support for letting those recommendations drift apart if it does end up looking like EAs and non-EAs benefit from different things. I think āif X then Yā can definitely be a good solution.
This seems great to me! Thanks for writing this out. As for building flexible career capital (re: the comment below): flexibility is of course good all else equal, and more important the earlier people are in their careers. Itās just that people can face a trade-off at some point between flexibility and usefulness to something specific. I think 80,000 Hours has changed its views on how to weight the considerations in that trade-off, favoring usefulness to something specific more than they used to. But if someone can both work toward something that they think will be really valuable and build flexible career capital at the same time, that seems all the better.
Ideally doing both is definitely niceāand I think itās true that the trade off is definitely important. As I mentioned above in my comments to Rob, targeted advice may solve the trade-off question.
Speaking from experience running workshops based on 80K for college students (1st and 2nd years) we always emphasise the personal list view and balance it with more general 80K career/ācause profiles in the following ways:
1) Exploring unfamiliar careers and career paths 80K covers some unusual careers that are worth spending time on, both on cause areas and job types (like the High Impact Management profile). This helps expand peoplesā options, especially early in their college career.
2) Build flexible career capital Unless someone is sure of their interests we suggest building flexible career capital and experimenting with different experiences/āinternships before committing to one career path. Edit: We also try to emphasize the flexibility of different paths, and how each choice closes off or opens different paths, so people are making the best choices based on their interests.
3) Personal fit & Comparative advantage Iāve been surprised at how quickly people evaluate their own personal fit, and encourage them to use 1) to consider jobs that they might be good at but unfamiliar with. We also emphasize comparative advantage to further personalize this.
4) Critiquing 80Kās claims We try to engage students to critically think about the claims we (and 80K) make and push back against them. We have had some really good discussions about moral frameworks and the article What skills make you most employable?
In general, I think the first step to 80K is really to develop this robust framework first with the advice that is generally true for all careers, get exposure to different career paths and come to your own list before looking at the annual reports and more recent recommendations.
I also think that 80K should create resources for local group leaders, many of whom engage in one-on-one career advice, and that more effort should be made to track EAs pursuing different careers.
These days 80k explicitly advises against trying to build flexible career capital (though I think theyāre probably wrong about this).
I would disagree with this too, especially for advice given to college students (the students in our course are mostly first- and second-years, added to my original comment for clarity). We recommend they try out different paths because often their go-to career options may not be particularly high-impact. Our advice is targeted mostly for the 4 years of College. But I think itās generally good advice for most people to know, because of your own personal interests and inclinations.
I also noticed in the link you provide that 80K suggests going straight to graduate school, which I would also not recommend unless you are certain of what you want to do (and because it can be a substantial financial burden, especially in the US).
One of 80Kās strongest features was (since they seem to be moving in a different direction) giving good generic career advice, especially for undergraduates. It would be a shame to lose this because I think it makes a great initial impression to newcomers and convinces them straight off the bat of how useful EA can be in helping them make meaningful impact, even if they arenāt convinced by all of the ideas behind EA immediately.
That sounds plausible to me if the same recommendations apply to newcomers and to die-hard EAs, such that ādo we give advice thatās useful for general audiences?ā is just a question of āwhich good-to-follow advice do we emphasize?ā and not āwhich advice is good for a given demographic to follow?ā.
On the other hand, I donāt want 80K to give advice thatās actively bad for die-hard EAs to follow, no matter how useful that advice is to students in general. From my perspective (which might reflect a different set of goals than yours, since Iām not coming at this question from your position), that would make it too hard to just zip over to 80Kās website for advice and trust that Iām getting relevant information.
I donāt think we should underestimate the value of being able to trust that an information source is giving us exactly what it thinks the very best advice is, without having to worry about how much the source might be diluting that advice to make it more memetic or easy-to-sell. Being able to just take statements on the 80K website at face value is a big deal.
If a certain piece of advice turns out to be good for most students but bad for most EA students, then I could see it being possibly interesting and useful for 80K to make a page like āHereās how our advice to most students would differ from our advice to EA students.ā That could then serve a dual purpose by clarifying what sensible ābaselineā advice looks like. I think it would also be fine for 80K to link to some offsite, non-80K-branded career advice that they especially endorse for other students, even though they specifically donāt endorse it for maximizing your careerās altruistic impact.
I think this is a good idea. I personally donāt think general advice (that Iāve been referring to about personal fit and flexible career capital) would actively harm individual EAs personally (it might, but I doubt it) as a general framework. I also donāt think it would harm the community in the long term either, because we donāt want people to be demoralized or burn out. But, what you suggest might alleviate some of these concerns.
An alternative is to have clear paramterized if X then Y lists, like cole_haus suggests above would solve this issue of not getting the best advice. That way, there is not dilution, simply targeting different audiences. Any kind of mass-outreach has the problem that not everything will apply to everyone.
My biggest concern with what you suggest is that 80K as a major first point-of-contact for new EAs. According to the most recent EA Survey, 25% of new EAs in 2018 first heard of EA through 80K, way up from previous years of 5%. For the reasons I gave above, I think giving general (but still impact-related) advice is going to be really important for people to continue engaging with the community. It also probably wonāt help the diversity issue (in professional expertise) with EA (although it seems like thatās fairly low-priority across the board). So, hardcore EA advice might be too much for newcomers vs. the more general āease into the EA mindsetā approach of the original 80K guide, which is still EA branded in some way so maintains engagement with the community.
Yeah, I donāt have a strong object-level view about exactly which advice is best for most EAs; I just wanted to voice some support for letting those recommendations drift apart if it does end up looking like EAs and non-EAs benefit from different things. I think āif X then Yā can definitely be a good solution.
This seems great to me! Thanks for writing this out. As for building flexible career capital (re: the comment below): flexibility is of course good all else equal, and more important the earlier people are in their careers. Itās just that people can face a trade-off at some point between flexibility and usefulness to something specific. I think 80,000 Hours has changed its views on how to weight the considerations in that trade-off, favoring usefulness to something specific more than they used to. But if someone can both work toward something that they think will be really valuable and build flexible career capital at the same time, that seems all the better.
Ideally doing both is definitely niceāand I think itās true that the trade off is definitely important. As I mentioned above in my comments to Rob, targeted advice may solve the trade-off question.