Be the first person to take the Better Career Pledge! A pledge to use your career to make a meaningful difference for the World. The site is currently in beta, and we’d greatly appreciate your feedback!
Perhaps you’re about to graduate soon, and looking to gather some career capital and save some runway before (as an example) applying for one of AIM’s programmes. But a part of you is concerned that time spent, and that delicious income increase from your soon-to-be employer, will result in forgetting what you really stand for. You’re not alone with this worry, it’s called Value Drift, and it’s a legitimate concern.
The Better Career Pledge is modeled on GWWC’s 10% pledge, It serves as a public declaration of lasting commitment.
Value Drift
In a post on Value drift, it’s estimated that the rate of attrition of engaged individuals is 50% after 5 years—which the author, Joey, summarises as being “high” and “pretty scary”.
[Paraphrased from Original] “Alice discovers EA in college, becomes deeply involved, and takes the GWWC pledge. She interns at an EA organization but later prioritizes school and personal life over restarting her EA chapter. After graduation, she takes a consulting job, intending to donate, but delays due to financial concerns and family expectations. Over time, EA fades from her priorities, and she donates only a modest amount. What felt like reasonable decisions led to “value drift,” leaving her less connected to EA than her college self would have hoped”
By making a public pledge, we hope to significantly reduce your chance of experiencing value drift.
The Better Career Pledge:
As of time of writing, the Better Career Pledge States:
I recognize that my career is one of the most powerful tools I have to create a positive impact in the world.
I pledge to align my professional life with my values by pursuing work that contributes to the greater good. I commit to using my skills, time, and opportunities to maximize my ability to make a meaningful difference, remaining thoughtful and purposeful in the choices I make throughout my career.
I make this pledge freely, openly, and sincerely, knowing that my actions can create lasting change.
Help us Improve:
We’ve announced the Better Career Pledge at a very early stage, to help gauge interest. That means you can help us a lot right now, by doing any of the following:
Take the pledge, and consider leaving us a testimony to be used on the website
Telling us what you think of the macro idea, the vision of the organisation.
Conditional on raising $2000 USD, we would like to spend $1000 on branding consultants, and $1000 on a web developer, but we will update on these goals based on the outcome of the feedback we get
What’s next for the Better Career Pledge:
If we receive 5-10 pledgers by January 2025, and several testimonies. We will build out the member page of the site, and create marketing materials. We’ll onboard some volunteers, working on either the website or the brand and vision. We will then find a lead for the organisation, spinning it out of EA-Denmark, and building the brand to a point it’s widely recognisable among college students in the US and UK by 2035.
Appendix:
Meta notes:
The Better Career Pledge is an initiative by Effective Altruism Denmark. This idea has been referenced before on the EA-Forum, and it turned up in our long-list of potential projects.
After making some Back-of-the-envelopeCost-Effective Analyses(I.e. BOTEC CEA’s) of 20+ projects, we found it to score among the most promising. We’re very unsure on both (1) How much demand there is for such an organization and (2) How much of an impact taking the better career pledge creates.
We hope that this post will begin to tease out the answer to (1) and that (2) can be remedied by some conversations with GWWC, and some M&E infrastructure.
We’ve budgeted 40 hours for this project, and have spent 12 of those to date (~4 hours on branding, 4 hours on the website, and ~4 hours writing this post).
M&E
A quick note on our M&E. With significant demand, we would be excited to partner with some local groups to run randomised outreach, with follow-up on an annual basis (think RCT).
Under scenarios with less demand, we will send out a survey to annual pledgers, and conduct some ad-hoc interviews. We expect this approach can only rule-out impact, rather than “rule-in”.
Be the First Person to Take the Better Career Pledge!
Be the first person to take the Better Career Pledge! A pledge to use your career to make a meaningful difference for the World. The site is currently in beta, and we’d greatly appreciate your feedback!
Perhaps you’re about to graduate soon, and looking to gather some career capital and save some runway before (as an example) applying for one of AIM’s programmes. But a part of you is concerned that time spent, and that delicious income increase from your soon-to-be employer, will result in forgetting what you really stand for. You’re not alone with this worry, it’s called Value Drift, and it’s a legitimate concern.
The Better Career Pledge is modeled on GWWC’s 10% pledge, It serves as a public declaration of lasting commitment.
Value Drift
In a post on Value drift, it’s estimated that the rate of attrition of engaged individuals is 50% after 5 years—which the author, Joey, summarises as being “high” and “pretty scary”.
In the same post, a semi-fictional example is given:
By making a public pledge, we hope to significantly reduce your chance of experiencing value drift.
The Better Career Pledge:
As of time of writing, the Better Career Pledge States:
Help us Improve:
We’ve announced the Better Career Pledge at a very early stage, to help gauge interest. That means you can help us a lot right now, by doing any of the following:
Take the pledge, and consider leaving us a testimony to be used on the website
Telling us what you think of the macro idea, the vision of the organisation.
Give us concrete ideas for improvement: For example: review the website, tell us what needs implementing, and how important it is to you.
Calibrate our Manifold Market to estimate demand for The Better Career Pledge.
Join the team: We are looking for volunteers! We’d be especially interested to hear from you if you have marketing, web development or writing skills.
Consider donating to the project:
Conditional on raising $2000 USD, we would like to spend $1000 on branding consultants, and $1000 on a web developer, but we will update on these goals based on the outcome of the feedback we get
What’s next for the Better Career Pledge:
If we receive 5-10 pledgers by January 2025, and several testimonies. We will build out the member page of the site, and create marketing materials. We’ll onboard some volunteers, working on either the website or the brand and vision. We will then find a lead for the organisation, spinning it out of EA-Denmark, and building the brand to a point it’s widely recognisable among college students in the US and UK by 2035.
Appendix:
Meta notes:
The Better Career Pledge is an initiative by Effective Altruism Denmark. This idea has been referenced before on the EA-Forum, and it turned up in our long-list of potential projects.
After making some Back-of-the-envelope Cost-Effective Analyses (I.e. BOTEC CEA’s) of 20+ projects, we found it to score among the most promising. We’re very unsure on both (1) How much demand there is for such an organization and (2) How much of an impact taking the better career pledge creates.
We hope that this post will begin to tease out the answer to (1) and that (2) can be remedied by some conversations with GWWC, and some M&E infrastructure.
We’ve budgeted 40 hours for this project, and have spent 12 of those to date (~4 hours on branding, 4 hours on the website, and ~4 hours writing this post).
M&E
A quick note on our M&E. With significant demand, we would be excited to partner with some local groups to run randomised outreach, with follow-up on an annual basis (think RCT).
Under scenarios with less demand, we will send out a survey to annual pledgers, and conduct some ad-hoc interviews. We expect this approach can only rule-out impact, rather than “rule-in”.