80K Hour’s advice seems aimed, perhaps implicitly, at extremely talented people. I would roughly describe the level of success/talent as ‘top half of Oxford’. If you do not have that level of ability, then the recommend career paths are going to be long shots at best. Most people are not realistically capable of getting a job at Jane Street (I am certainly not). It is also very hard to get a job at a well regarded EA organization.
Unless someone has a very good track record of success I would advise them not to follow 80K style advice. Trying to get a ‘high impact job’ has lead to failure for every rationalist I know who was not ‘top half of Oxford’ talented. In some cases they made it to ‘work sample’ got an internship, but they still failed to land a job. Many of these rationalists are well regarded and considered quite intelligent. These people are fairly talented and in many cases make low six figures.
80K is very depressing to read. Making ‘only’ 200K and donating 60K a year is implicitly treated like a failure. We at least need advise for people who are ‘only’ Google-programmer levels of talented. And ideally we need advice for EAs of all skill levels. But the fact that our standard advice is not even applicable to ‘normal Google programmer’ levels of talent is extremely depressing.
I think this actually understates the problem. I studied maths at Cambridge (with results roughly in the middle of my cohort there), and my intuitions informing the above concerns about 80k are in part based on watching my similarly-situated friends there struggle to get any kind of non-menial job after graduating. I’m a ‘normal Google programmer’ in the US now (after a long stint as a maths PhD student) but none of the others I’ve kept in touch with from Cambridge make ‘even’ $200k (though perhaps some of those I lost touch with who went into finance do). So I think 80k’s target audience must be even more rarefied than “top half of Oxbridge”. (Though I’m not sure if it’s “top 10% of Oxbridge” or “top third of Oxbridge plus extraordinary talent in at least one skill that isn’t assessed academically” or “literally like ten people in the whole world” or what; it sure would be nice if they’d specify it explicitly!)
It’s not our intention to give this impression—finding someone who donates $60k per year would be seen as a significant success within the team. We also highlight an example of someone doing exactly this (working at Google and earning to give) in our key career guide article on high impact jobs. I’d be curious to hear about anything we’ve done to exacerbate the problem other than our discussions of certain very competitive paths, which I admit can be demoralizing in themselves.
I think the main aspect of our advice that might be mainly relevant to people who have ‘top half of Oxford’ credentials is the list of priority paths. However, even within this list of our highest priorities, are options that don’t require that kind of academic background, such as government jobs and operations positions. We know lots of people without this background currently succeeding in these roles. What’s more, on that page, we also highlight five broader paths that a significant fraction of college graduates could pursue, as well as a general step-by-step process for coming up with options.
Are you able to briefly characterize here who your intended audience is, if we’re mistaken about it being “top half of Oxford” or similar? I guess it varies some between pages.
Curious what impact-adjusted career plan change weight 80k would assign to someone who was already a software engineer earning $200k/year, and then decided to start giving away $60k/year.
Though perhaps that metric can’t be applied to hypotheticals like this without knowing more of the context?
Hi Milan, it would depend a lot on the details, but if it were mainly due to us and they were donating to the EA Long-term Fund or equivalent, then it would roughly be a rated-10 plan change, which would mean it’s in the top 150 of all time.
Thanks Ben! Can you give a sense of how sensitive your answer is to the specific org(s) someone gives to? Would your rating change if someone gave the same amount to e.g. the global development or animal welfare funds?
We asked leaders their views on the relative cost-effectiveness of donations to four funds operated by the community. The median view was that the Long-Term Future fund was 1.6x as cost-effective as the EA Community fund, which in turn was 10 times more cost-effective than the Animal Welfare fund, and twenty times as cost-effective as the Global Health and Development fund.
This suggests that someone giving $60k/year to the Global Health or Animal Welfare Funds (or one of the orgs they’re likely to support) would probably be rated as a single plan change even after impact adjustment (at least in a quick and dirty assessment). I would have guessed giving such a substantial amount to highly effective charities would be scored much higher.
Making ‘only’ 200K and donating 60K a year is implicitly treated like a failure.
A person in this position can do a tremendous amount of good by functioning as an early-stage funder of speculative projects.
altruism.vc is an interesting entry point for people who want to explore what being an early-stage funder could look like but don’t know quite how to dive in.
80K Hour’s advice seems aimed, perhaps implicitly, at extremely talented people. I would roughly describe the level of success/talent as ‘top half of Oxford’. If you do not have that level of ability, then the recommend career paths are going to be long shots at best. Most people are not realistically capable of getting a job at Jane Street (I am certainly not). It is also very hard to get a job at a well regarded EA organization.
Unless someone has a very good track record of success I would advise them not to follow 80K style advice. Trying to get a ‘high impact job’ has lead to failure for every rationalist I know who was not ‘top half of Oxford’ talented. In some cases they made it to ‘work sample’ got an internship, but they still failed to land a job. Many of these rationalists are well regarded and considered quite intelligent. These people are fairly talented and in many cases make low six figures.
80K is very depressing to read. Making ‘only’ 200K and donating 60K a year is implicitly treated like a failure. We at least need advise for people who are ‘only’ Google-programmer levels of talented. And ideally we need advice for EAs of all skill levels. But the fact that our standard advice is not even applicable to ‘normal Google programmer’ levels of talent is extremely depressing.
I think this actually understates the problem. I studied maths at Cambridge (with results roughly in the middle of my cohort there), and my intuitions informing the above concerns about 80k are in part based on watching my similarly-situated friends there struggle to get any kind of non-menial job after graduating. I’m a ‘normal Google programmer’ in the US now (after a long stint as a maths PhD student) but none of the others I’ve kept in touch with from Cambridge make ‘even’ $200k (though perhaps some of those I lost touch with who went into finance do). So I think 80k’s target audience must be even more rarefied than “top half of Oxbridge”. (Though I’m not sure if it’s “top 10% of Oxbridge” or “top third of Oxbridge plus extraordinary talent in at least one skill that isn’t assessed academically” or “literally like ten people in the whole world” or what; it sure would be nice if they’d specify it explicitly!)
It’s not our intention to give this impression—finding someone who donates $60k per year would be seen as a significant success within the team. We also highlight an example of someone doing exactly this (working at Google and earning to give) in our key career guide article on high impact jobs. I’d be curious to hear about anything we’ve done to exacerbate the problem other than our discussions of certain very competitive paths, which I admit can be demoralizing in themselves.
I think the main aspect of our advice that might be mainly relevant to people who have ‘top half of Oxford’ credentials is the list of priority paths. However, even within this list of our highest priorities, are options that don’t require that kind of academic background, such as government jobs and operations positions. We know lots of people without this background currently succeeding in these roles. What’s more, on that page, we also highlight five broader paths that a significant fraction of college graduates could pursue, as well as a general step-by-step process for coming up with options.
Are you able to briefly characterize here who your intended audience is, if we’re mistaken about it being “top half of Oxford” or similar? I guess it varies some between pages.
Curious what impact-adjusted career plan change weight 80k would assign to someone who was already a software engineer earning $200k/year, and then decided to start giving away $60k/year.
Though perhaps that metric can’t be applied to hypotheticals like this without knowing more of the context?
Hi Milan, it would depend a lot on the details, but if it were mainly due to us and they were donating to the EA Long-term Fund or equivalent, then it would roughly be a rated-10 plan change, which would mean it’s in the top 150 of all time.
Thanks Ben! Can you give a sense of how sensitive your answer is to the specific org(s) someone gives to? Would your rating change if someone gave the same amount to e.g. the global development or animal welfare funds?
That’s a complex topic, but our starting point for conversions would be the figures in the EA leaders survey: https://80000hours.org/2018/10/2018-talent-gaps-survey/
This suggests that someone giving $60k/year to the Global Health or Animal Welfare Funds (or one of the orgs they’re likely to support) would probably be rated as a single plan change even after impact adjustment (at least in a quick and dirty assessment). I would have guessed giving such a substantial amount to highly effective charities would be scored much higher.
Got it, thanks!
A person in this position can do a tremendous amount of good by functioning as an early-stage funder of speculative projects.
altruism.vc is an interesting entry point for people who want to explore what being an early-stage funder could look like but don’t know quite how to dive in.
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That’s what happens when everyone who runs EA graduated from either an Ivy League school or Oxford