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. It’s 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 nice—and I think it’s 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.
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. It’s 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 nice—and I think it’s 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.