Great post Ben, this seems like a really good point to make clear. I think there’s a general point here that it’s much easier, and often better, to choose between specific options than general categories of options.
Generally when I think about career choice I think it’s useful to begin by narrowing down to a few different fields that seem best for impact and fit, and then within those fields seek out concrete opportunities—and ultimately the decision will come down to how good the opportunities are, not a comparison between the fields themselves. But you’ve still narrowed by field initially. This seems to be the case especially when the fields you’re comparing seem roughly as good as each other or each have different advantages.
I like the suggestion of putting a lot of effort into looking for really good opportunities, too—I imagine this is often neglected. A side point there is that obviously in some fields this is more worth doing than others, because some fields are going to be higher variance than others in terms of how good the opportunities are. e.g. I’d imagine there’s higher variance in software jobs than in certain academic ones.
Great post Ben, this seems like a really good point to make clear. I think there’s a general point here that it’s much easier, and often better, to choose between specific options than general categories of options.
Generally when I think about career choice I think it’s useful to begin by narrowing down to a few different fields that seem best for impact and fit, and then within those fields seek out concrete opportunities—and ultimately the decision will come down to how good the opportunities are, not a comparison between the fields themselves. But you’ve still narrowed by field initially. This seems to be the case especially when the fields you’re comparing seem roughly as good as each other or each have different advantages.
I like the suggestion of putting a lot of effort into looking for really good opportunities, too—I imagine this is often neglected. A side point there is that obviously in some fields this is more worth doing than others, because some fields are going to be higher variance than others in terms of how good the opportunities are. e.g. I’d imagine there’s higher variance in software jobs than in certain academic ones.