Update: Our spin-out from Effective Ventures is now complete. We’ve established 80,000 Hours Limited and 80,000 Hours Foundation, each with their own board. See our recent blog post for details.
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80,000 Hours has completed its spin-out and has new boards
We’re pleased to announce that 80,000 Hours has officially completed its spin-out from Effective Ventures and is now operating as an independent organisation.
We’ve established two entities with the following board members:
80,000 Hours Limited (a nonprofit entity where our core operations live):
Konstantin Sietzy — Deputy Director of Talent and Operations at UK AISI
Alex Lawsen — Senior Program Associate at Open Philanthropy and former 80,000 Hours Advising Manager
Anna Weldon — COO at the Centre for Effective Altruism and former EV board member
Joshua Rosenberg — CEO of the Forecasting Research Institute
Emma Abele — Former CEO of METR
80,000 Hours Foundation:
Susan Shi — General counsel at EV, soon to move to CEA
Katie Hearsum — COO at Longview Philanthropy
Anna Weldon — An overlapping member of both boards
Within our mission of helping people use their careers to solve the world’s most pressing problems, we’ve recently sharpened our focus on careers that can help make AI go well. This organizational change won’t affect our core work or programs in any significant way, though we’re excited about the strategic guidance our new boards will provide and the greater operational flexibility we’ll have going forward as we address these crucial challenges.
See our blog post announcing our completed spin-out here.
Ah, thanks, that’s now fixed!
Thanks, fixed!
80,000 Hours is hiring a Head of Video!
Role
We’re looking for a Head of Video to start, and run, a new video programme at 80,000 Hours.
This is a senior hire. We’re looking for someone who will:
Come up with a strategic vision and plan for producing videos at 80,000 Hours
Hire, and then manage, a team executing on that vision
Be responsible for getting feedback on and evaluating the impact of their videos.
Exactly what these videos look like, and how they get made, would be up to you.
Salary, benefits & location
Salary will vary based on your skills, fit, and experience, but to give you a sense, the starting salary for a promising Head of Video with 5 years of relevant prior experience would be £80k per year (though would be higher for an exceptionally strong fit for the role).
We’re open to remote applications, though we’d prefer if remote candidates can spend some significant time in London.Employee benefits include private healthcare, pension scheme/retirement account with employer contributions, a £5k mental health allowance, £5k self-development budget, 10% self-development time, up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave and a childcare allowance for children under 5.
About you
We’re looking for:
Interest in EA/longtermism/80k’s mission
Strong judgement, especially for setting a strategic vision
Clear communication, especially for getting buyin on that vision / stakeholder management
Video and/or content experience is not required, but you do have to be the kind of person who could get obsessed with online video production.
For full details of what we’re looking for and what the role will involve, check out the full job description.
Apply
Apply by 23:59 on 25 August 2024:
Read more and apply for Head of VideoAbout 80,000 Hours
Our mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems — we aim to be the world’s best source of support and advice for them on how to do so. We’ve had over 10 million readers on our website, have 450,000 subscribers to our newsletter and have given 1on1 advice to over 4,000 people. After ‘personal contact’, we’re the top way people who get involved in EA first hear about it (ahead of the combined “book, article, or blog post”), and we’re the most commonly cited factor for ‘getting involved’ in the EA community. Over 1,000 people have told us that, due to engaging with us, they have significantly changed their career plans and expect to have a larger social impact as a result.
80,000 Hours is hiring to the Marketing team!
Roles
Marketer
We’re looking for a new Marketer to help us reach our target audience at scale, by managing channels within marketing, contributing to our strategy, and helping to deploy our marketing budget.
Head of Marketing
We’re looking for a new Head of Marketing to lead our efforts to reach our target audience at scale, by setting and executing on a strategy, managing and building a team, and deploying our yearly budget of $3mn.
Salary, benefits & location
~£58-80k depending on the role and your experience. We’d prefer you to work in-person in London, but we’re open to remote candidates.
Employee benefits include private healthcare, pension scheme/retirement account with employer contributions, a £5k mental health allowance, £5k self-development budget, 10% self-development time, up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave and a childcare allowance for children under 5.
About you
We’re looking for:
Interest in EA/longtermism/80k’s mission
Strong judgement
Excellent communication skills
For the head of marketing role: either management experience or you could become a great manager with experience.
Marketing experience isn’t required for either role but would be a bonus, as would other relevant experience (e.g. measurement and evaluation of a product or programme, product experience, communications experience).
For full details of what we’re looking for and what the roles will involve, check out the full job descriptions.
Apply
Apply for the Marketer role, or apply for the Head of Marketing role, by 23:59 on 18 August.
You can apply to whichever seems like the right fit for you — if it seems like the other role is a better fit later in the process, we can change this later on.
About 80,000 Hours
Our mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems — we aim to be the world’s best source of support and advice for them on how to do so. We’ve had over 10 million readers on our website, have 450,000 subscribers to our newsletter and have given 1on1 advice to over 4,000 people. After ‘personal contact’, we’re the top way people who get involved in EA first hear about it (ahead of the combined “book, article, or blog post”), and we’re the most commonly cited factor for ‘getting involved’ in the EA community. Over 1,000 people have told us that, due to engaging with us, they have significantly changed their career plans and expect to have a larger social impact as a result.
I wanted to quickly say thank you for your suggestion that orgs increase information sharing transparency. I haven’t seen this discussed elsewhere, and I think it’s a good idea! It’s now on our list of things to consider for future hiring rounds at 80k.
-- Sash, Head of Recruiting at 80k
We also offer audio version of those highlights for all episodes on the ’80k After Hours’ feed: https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/
Here’s a quick update to say that we’ve closed this fundraising round.
If you’re still interested in donating to 80,000 Hours, we always welcome donations through our Giving What We Can donation page and are excited to hear from potential donors at jess.smith@80000hours.org.
We have also updated the donate page of our site — updating the metrics to cover the whole of 2023 and making an adjustment to account for cookie banner changes in 2023 which affects our growth over time metrics. Going forward, our page is a better source of up-to-date information than this forum post.
80,000 Hours is hiring for multiple positions across our operations and web teams!
Operations team
Please see here for the full role descriptions and application form.
Salary, benefits & location
~£50-75k depending on the role and your experience. Our preferred location is London, but we’re open to remote candidates.
Our benefits for employees include private healthcare, pension scheme / retirement account with employer contributions, a £5,000 mental health allowance, £5,000 self-development budget, 10% self-development time, up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave and a childcare allowance for children under 5.
Roles
People operations specialists & associates – the people in these roles will build and run our HR and recruiting systems, run hiring rounds, plan and host team events, and develop and implement our internal policies (e.g. our salary policy).
Operations specialists & associates – the people in these roles will work on designing and managing our internal systems. Responsibilities will depend on the candidate, but might include working on our finances, improving and maintaining our data sources, helping to track and communicate our metrics to internal and external stakeholders, and overseeing our IT security and support systems.
We’re planning to make several hires to each role, and will work with the chosen candidates to create a responsibility set which works well – so please reach out even if only 1 or 2 things listed (e.g. finance or recruiting) sound like a good fit!
Specialists are likely to manage larger areas of responsibility, oversee complex / poorly-scoped projects and design new policies and processes. We expect these candidates to have some previous experience, though it doesn’t have to be in operations – it might be in another generalist role such as consulting, communications, project management or community building.
Associates will focus on implementing our processes, identifying improvements and optimisations, and will take on more complex projects over time. Previous experience is not required. If you’re hired for these roles and performing particularly well, we’re likely to promote you to the specialist level quickly.
If you’re interested in any of these roles, please apply here!
Web team
Salary, benefits & location
For the writer and writer/researcher roles:
~£60-90k depending on the role and your experience. Our preferred location is London, but we’re open to remote candidates.
Our benefits for employees include private healthcare, pension scheme / retirement account with employer contributions, a £5,000 mental health allowance, £5,000 self-development budget, 10% self-development time, up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave and a childcare allowance for children under 5.
Roles
Executive assistant(contractor) – this person will help make the web team hires listed in this post happen! You’ll be working with our Website Director (Arden Koehler) on recruiting, to help her systematically identify and assess great candidates and deliver a great candidate experience. Qualifications: great organisation and communication skills. No previous experience as an executive assistant necessary, but it’s a big plus. UPDATE 22/02: applications are now closed for the executive assistant position.Writer / researcher (not actively hiring now; will likely hire for later this year) – the core of this role is researching and writing articles for our website, including (but not limited to!) problem profiles, career reviews and research articles. You’ll also help to prioritise what we work on, generate ideas for new content and could take on other responsibilities (e.g. running our newsletter), depending on your skills & interest.
Writer (not actively hiring now; will likely hire for later this year) – similar to the writer / researcher role, but with more of a focus on writing engaging content that will appeal to our target audience particularly well. Think: writing articles that would go viral on Hacker News, or spearheading a new 80k book project.
Experience in research or writing is preferred, but not essential. If you’re energetic and willing to learn, you can learn a lot on the job!
If you’re interested in the writer or writer/researcher roles, please email arden@80000hours.org.
About 80,000 Hours
Our mission is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems — we aim to be the world’s best source of support and advice for them on how to do so. We’ve had over 10 million readers on our website, have 450,000 subscribers to our newsletter and have given 1on1 advice to over 4,000 people. After ‘personal contact’, we’re the top way people who get involved in EA first hear about it (ahead of the combined “book, article, or blog post”), and we’re the most commonly cited factor for ‘getting involved’ in the EA community. Over 1,000 people have told us that, due to engaging with us, they have significantly changed their career plans and expect to have a larger social impact as a result.
Relevant to giving season: 80,000 Hours will soon be doing a public fundraising round! If you’d like to be notified when we launch, leave your email here. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact jess@80000hours.org.
Hi Michael,
I wonder if there might have been a misunderstanding. In previous comments, we’ve said that:
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We’re adding an episode making the case for near termism, likely in place of the episode on alternative foods. While we want to keep it higher level, that episode is still likely to include more object-level material than e.g. Toby’s included episode does.
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We’re going to swap Paul Christiano’s episode out for Ajeya Cotra, which is a mostly meta-level episode that includes coverage of the advantages of near-termism over longtermism.
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We’re adding the ‘10 problem areas’ feed.
These changes will leave the ‘An Introduction’ series with very little object-level content at all, and most of it will be in Holden’s first episode, which covers a bit of everything.
That means there won’t be dedicated episodes to our traditional top priorities like AI, biosecurity, nuclear security, or extreme risks from climate change.
They’ll all instead be included on our ‘ten problems’ feed, along with global development, animal welfare, and other topics like journalism and earning-to-give.
Hope that clears things up,
— Rob and Keiran
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Hey commenters — so as we mentioned we’ve been discussing internally what other changes we should make to address the concerns raised in the comments here, beyond creating the ‘ten problem areas’ feed.
We think the best change to make is to record a new episode with someone who is in favour of interventions that are ‘higher-evidence’, or that have more immediate benefits, and then insert that into the introduction series.
Our current interviews about e.g. animals or global development don’t make the case in favour of ‘short-termist’ approaches because the guests themselves aren’t focused on that level of problem prioritisation. That makes them an odd fit for the high-level nature of this series.
An episode focused on higher-evidence approaches has been on the (dismayingly long) list of topics we should cover for a while, but we can expedite it. We’ve got a shortlist of candidate guests to make this episode but would be very interested in getting nominations and votes from folks here to inform our choice.
(It’s slightly hard to say when we’ll be able to make this switch because we won’t be sure whether an interview will fit the bill until we’ve recorded it, but we can make it a priority for the next few months.)
Thanks so much,
— Rob and Keiran
Hi all of the commenters here — thanks again for all the further thoughts on the compilation.
We’re in the process of discussing your feedback internally and figuring out whether to make any further changes, and if so what they should be. We don’t want to rush that, but will get back to you as soon as we can.
— Rob and Keiran
Hey Khorton, thanks for checking that. Initially I was puzzled by why I’d made this error but then I saw that “People could rate more than one area as the “top priority”. As a result the figures sum to more than 100%.
That survey design makes things a bit confusing, but the end result is that each of these votes can only be read as a vote for one of the top few priorities. — Rob
Hi Neel thanks for these thoughts. I’ve responded to the broader issue in a new top-level comment.
Just on the point that we should be explicit that this is longtermism focused, while longtermism isn’t in the title I tried to make it pretty explicit in the series’ ‘Episode 0’:
One final note before we start. We wanted to keep this introduction to just ten episodes, which meant we had to make some tough decisions about what made the cut. This selection skews towards focusing on longtermism and efforts to preserve a long and positive future for humanity, because at 80,000 Hours we think that’s a particularly promising way for many of our readers to make a difference.
But as I was saying just a moment ago, people in the community have a wide range of views on the question of what is most valuable to work on, and unfortunately there’s no room for them all to get a dedicated episode in this series.
The good news is there are episodes about many more problems on the main 80,000 Hours Podcast feed to satisfy your curiosity. For instance, if you’d like to hear more about global health and development I can recommend #49 – Dr Rachel Glennerster on a year’s worth of education for under $1 and other development best buys.
If you’d prefer to hear more about climate change, I can suggest #85 – Mark Lynas on climate change, societal collapse & nuclear energy
And if you want to hear more about efforts to improve the wellbeing of animals, especially those raised in farms, I can recommend going and listening to #8 – Lewis Bollard on how to end factory farming in our lifetimes.
There’s also this earlier on:
A 2019 survey of people involved in effective altruism found that 22% thought global poverty should be a top priority, 16% thought the same of climate change, and 11% said so of risks from advanced artificial intelligence. So a wide range of views on which causes are most pressing are represented in the group.
[Just threading responses to different topics separately.] Regarding including Dave Denkenberger’s episode, the reason for that isn’t that alternative foods or disaster resilience are especially central EA problem areas.
Rather, in keeping with the focus on worldview and ‘how we think’, we put it in there as a demonstration of entrepreneurship, independent thinking, and general creativity. I can totally see how people could prefer that it be replaced with a different theme, but that was the reasoning. (We give the motivation for including each episode in their respective intros.) — Rob and Keiran
Hey Brian, Ula, and other commenters,
Thanks again for all the feedback! To what extent each piece of content closely associated with EA should aim to be ‘representative’ is a vexed issue that folks are going to continue to have different views on, and we can’t produce something that’s ideal to everyone simultaneously.
Fortunately in this case I think there’s a change we can make that will be an improvement from everyone’s perspective.
We had planned to later make another collection that would showcase a wider variety of things that EAs are up to. Given your worries combined with the broader enthusiasm for the underlying concept, it seems like we should just do that as soon as it’s practical for Keiran and me to put it together.
That feed would be called something like ‘Effective Altruism: Ten Problem Areas’ and feature Bollard and Glennerster, and other guests on topics like journalism, climate change, pandemics, earning to give, and a few others which we’ll think about.
We’ll promote it similarly — and cross-promote between the two collections — so anyone who wants to learn about those problem areas will end up doing so.
(Independently we also realised that we should sub Ajeya’s episode into ‘An Introduction’. That only didn’t happen the first time around because we settled on this list of ten in 2020 before Ajeya’s episode existed. Ajeya’s interview will be more neutral about longtermism than what it replaces.)
Speaking personally as Rob (because I know other people at 80,000 Hours have different perspectives), I favour a model where there are a range of varied introductory materials, some of which lean towards a focus on poverty, some towards animals, some towards longtermism, some with other angles, and still others that aims to be representative.
In any case, after this reshuffle we’ll have two feeds for you — one that leans into the way we think about things at 80,000 Hours, and another that shows off the variety of causes prioritised by EAs.
Folks can then choose whichever one they would rather share, or listen to themselves. (And fingers crossed many people will opt to listen to both!)
Look forward to hearing your thoughts,
— Rob and Keiran
- Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’ by (15 Apr 2021 21:01 UTC; 47 points)
- 's comment on Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’ by (17 Apr 2021 8:25 UTC; 30 points)
- 's comment on Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’ by (16 Apr 2021 17:21 UTC; 10 points)
Hi Brian, (also Ula and Neel below),
Thanks for the feedback. These comments have prompted us to think about the issue some more — I won’t be able to get you a full answer before the weekend, but we’re working on a bigger picture solution to this which I hope will address some of your worries.
We should be able to fill you in on our plans next week. (ADDED: screw it we’ll just finish it tonight — posted as a new top level comment.)
— Rob
Hi Vasco,
We decided on a dual-entity structure because some of 80k’s work — for example, giving career advice to someone who is considering work at a for-profit — falls outside the scope of what the UK Charity Commission considers clearly charitable, and having only a charitable entity would restrict our ability to engage in this work. At the same time, receiving donations through a non-charity entity is much less tax efficient. These two considerations mean we settled on a dual-entity structure — where the charity funds only our clearly charitable work — even though it’s more complex.
(Note that 80,000 Hours Limited is a non-profit — it’s just not a registered charity.)
- Inés