I very much agree with Danielâs paragraph on personal fit.
The message on personal fit I got from 80k was basically âPersonal fit is really important. This is one reason to find an area and type of work that youâll be very passionate about. But that doesnât mean you should just follow your current passion; you might discover later that you donât remain passionate about something once you actually do it for a job, and you might discover that you can become passionate about things you arenât yet passionate about, or havenât even heard of. So itâs generally good to try to explore a lot early on, figure out what you have strong personal fit for, and then do one of those things.â
I wrote that from my remembered impression, but then googled â80,000 Hours personal fitâ, and hereâs part of their summary from 2017 career guide article on âHow to find the right career for youâ (which was the first hit):
Your degree of personal fit in a job depends on your chances of excelling in the job, if you work at it. Personal fit is even more important than most people think, because it increases your impact, job satisfaction and career capital.
Research shows that itâs really hard to work out what youâre going to be good at ahead of time, especially through self-reflection.
Instead, go investigate. After an initial cut-down of your options, learn more and then try them out.
I think that thatâs great advice, and has been really helpful for me. There are some things I thought Iâd like/âbe good at but wasnât, and vice versa. And there are many things I hadnât even considered but turned out to like and be good at.
Unfortunately, it seems like itâs common for people to round off what 80k said to âPersonal fit and passion donât matterâ, even thought they explicitly argue against that. (80kâs 2014-2015 review does say that they think they previously hadnât emphasised personal fit enough; perhaps this common misinterpretation can be traced back to ripple effects from 80kâs early messaging?)
Of course, itâs still necessary to figure out precisely how important personal fit and interest are relative to other things, and so itâs still possible and reasonable for someone to âemphasise personal fit and interest significantly more than 80k does, when giving career adviceâ. But Iâm pretty confident that 80k would already agree, for example, that âpassion about a field is a very important component of doing world-class research in itâ.
What Michael says is closer to the message weâre trying to get across, which I might summarise as:
Donât immediately rule out an area just because youâre not currently interested in it, because you can develop new interests and become motivated if other conditions are present.
Personal fit is really important
When predicting your fit in an area, lots of factors are relevant (including interest & motivation in the path).
Itâs hard to predict fitâbe prepared to try several areas and refine your hypotheses over time.
We no longer mention âdonât follow your passionâ prominently in our intro materials.
I think our pre-2015 materials didnât emphasise fit enough.
The message is a bit complicated, but hopefully weâre doing better today. Iâm also planning to make personal fit more prominent on the key ideas page and also give more practical advice on how to assess it for further emphasis.
A related matter: I get the impression from the section â2. I should have prioritised personal fit moreâ that you (Richard) think it wouldâve been better if youâd skipped trying out engineering-style roles and gone straight into philosophy-style roles. Do you indeed think that?
It seems plausible that going in an engineering direction for a couple years first was a good move ex ante, because you already knew you were a fit for philosophy but didnât know whether you were a fit for things more along the lines of engineering? So maybe it was worth checking whether something else was an even better fit for you, or whether something else was a good enough fit that your comparative advantage (including your interest as a factor) would be things that somehow draw on both skillsets to a substantial degree?
I.e., even if ex post it appears that âexploitingâ in the philosophy path is the best move, perhaps, ex ante, it was worth some exploration first?
(Of course, I donât know the details of your career, plans, or your own knowledge several years ago of your skills and interests. And even if the answers to the above questions are basically âyesâ, itâs still plausible that it wouldâve been better to explore for less time, or in a way more consciously focused on exploration valueâwhich mightâve entailed different roles or a different approach.)
Iâve had a related experience. I did an economics PhD, and I started with a speculative, exploratory intent: I meant to use that time to figure out whether I was a good fit for a career in academic economics research. It turned out I was not a good fit, and the experience was miserable. I hadnât minded taking classes or working as a research assistant for other people, but I disliked the speculative and open-ended nature of leading my own research projects. Once I realized that, I graduated as fast as I could. Now Iâm much happier as a tech industry economist and data scientist.
Iâm still not sure if I made a mistake in choosing to start the PhD. On one hand, I think it was a reasonable gamble that could have had a huge payoff, and I donât know if I could have figured out I was not cut out for academic research without actually doing it. And it was a good investment; my current job requires an economics PhD or long experience in a related field, as do highly-compensated jobs in other industries. On the other hand, 4-5 years is a very long time to feel like you hate your job. Itâs hard to be creative and hardworking and build your Plan B when youâre totally miserable.
If I were to start my career over, I would spend more time thinking about how to âfail earlyâ and make exploration more pleasant and efficient.
I get the impression that you (Richard) think it wouldâve been better if youâd skipped trying out engineering-style roles and gone straight into philosophy-style roles. Do you indeed think that?
I donât think this; learning about technical ideas in AI, and other aspects of working at DeepMind, have been valuable for me; so itâs hard to point to things which I should have changed. But as I say in the post, in worlds where I wasnât so lucky, then I expect it would have been useful to weight personal fit more. For example, if Iâd had the option of committing to a ML PhD instead of a research engineering role, then I might have done so despite uncertainty about the personal fit; this would probably have gone badly.
I very much agree with Danielâs paragraph on personal fit.
The message on personal fit I got from 80k was basically âPersonal fit is really important. This is one reason to find an area and type of work that youâll be very passionate about. But that doesnât mean you should just follow your current passion; you might discover later that you donât remain passionate about something once you actually do it for a job, and you might discover that you can become passionate about things you arenât yet passionate about, or havenât even heard of. So itâs generally good to try to explore a lot early on, figure out what you have strong personal fit for, and then do one of those things.â
I wrote that from my remembered impression, but then googled â80,000 Hours personal fitâ, and hereâs part of their summary from 2017 career guide article on âHow to find the right career for youâ (which was the first hit):
I think that thatâs great advice, and has been really helpful for me. There are some things I thought Iâd like/âbe good at but wasnât, and vice versa. And there are many things I hadnât even considered but turned out to like and be good at.
Unfortunately, it seems like itâs common for people to round off what 80k said to âPersonal fit and passion donât matterâ, even thought they explicitly argue against that. (80kâs 2014-2015 review does say that they think they previously hadnât emphasised personal fit enough; perhaps this common misinterpretation can be traced back to ripple effects from 80kâs early messaging?)
Of course, itâs still necessary to figure out precisely how important personal fit and interest are relative to other things, and so itâs still possible and reasonable for someone to âemphasise personal fit and interest significantly more than 80k does, when giving career adviceâ. But Iâm pretty confident that 80k would already agree, for example, that âpassion about a field is a very important component of doing world-class research in itâ.
What Michael says is closer to the message weâre trying to get across, which I might summarise as:
Donât immediately rule out an area just because youâre not currently interested in it, because you can develop new interests and become motivated if other conditions are present.
Personal fit is really important
When predicting your fit in an area, lots of factors are relevant (including interest & motivation in the path).
Itâs hard to predict fitâbe prepared to try several areas and refine your hypotheses over time.
We no longer mention âdonât follow your passionâ prominently in our intro materials.
I think our pre-2015 materials didnât emphasise fit enough.
The message is a bit complicated, but hopefully weâre doing better today. Iâm also planning to make personal fit more prominent on the key ideas page and also give more practical advice on how to assess it for further emphasis.
A related matter: I get the impression from the section â2. I should have prioritised personal fit moreâ that you (Richard) think it wouldâve been better if youâd skipped trying out engineering-style roles and gone straight into philosophy-style roles. Do you indeed think that?
It seems plausible that going in an engineering direction for a couple years first was a good move ex ante, because you already knew you were a fit for philosophy but didnât know whether you were a fit for things more along the lines of engineering? So maybe it was worth checking whether something else was an even better fit for you, or whether something else was a good enough fit that your comparative advantage (including your interest as a factor) would be things that somehow draw on both skillsets to a substantial degree?
I.e., even if ex post it appears that âexploitingâ in the philosophy path is the best move, perhaps, ex ante, it was worth some exploration first?
(Of course, I donât know the details of your career, plans, or your own knowledge several years ago of your skills and interests. And even if the answers to the above questions are basically âyesâ, itâs still plausible that it wouldâve been better to explore for less time, or in a way more consciously focused on exploration valueâwhich mightâve entailed different roles or a different approach.)
Iâve had a related experience. I did an economics PhD, and I started with a speculative, exploratory intent: I meant to use that time to figure out whether I was a good fit for a career in academic economics research. It turned out I was not a good fit, and the experience was miserable. I hadnât minded taking classes or working as a research assistant for other people, but I disliked the speculative and open-ended nature of leading my own research projects. Once I realized that, I graduated as fast as I could. Now Iâm much happier as a tech industry economist and data scientist.
Iâm still not sure if I made a mistake in choosing to start the PhD. On one hand, I think it was a reasonable gamble that could have had a huge payoff, and I donât know if I could have figured out I was not cut out for academic research without actually doing it. And it was a good investment; my current job requires an economics PhD or long experience in a related field, as do highly-compensated jobs in other industries. On the other hand, 4-5 years is a very long time to feel like you hate your job. Itâs hard to be creative and hardworking and build your Plan B when youâre totally miserable.
If I were to start my career over, I would spend more time thinking about how to âfail earlyâ and make exploration more pleasant and efficient.
I donât think this; learning about technical ideas in AI, and other aspects of working at DeepMind, have been valuable for me; so itâs hard to point to things which I should have changed. But as I say in the post, in worlds where I wasnât so lucky, then I expect it would have been useful to weight personal fit more. For example, if Iâd had the option of committing to a ML PhD instead of a research engineering role, then I might have done so despite uncertainty about the personal fit; this would probably have gone badly.