80000_Hours

Karma: 4,122

80000_Hours 27 Mar 2024 17:20 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Charles He’s comment on: Ben_West’s Shortform
We also offer audio version of those highlights for all episodes on the ’80k After Hours’ feed: https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/

80000_Hours 26 Mar 2024 10:59 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: 80,000 Hours spin out announcement and fundraising
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.

80000_Hours 13 Feb 2024 17:45 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Who’s hiring? (Feb-May 2024)
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.

80000_Hours 21 Nov 2023 16:14 UTC
9 points
0 ∶ 0
on: 80000_Hours’s Quick takes
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.

80000_Hours 27 Apr 2021 18:13 UTC
7 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: MichaelPlant’s comment on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
Hi Michael,

I wonder if there might have been a misunderstanding. In previous comments, we’ve said that:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

80000_Hours 21 Apr 2021 18:45 UTC
49 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
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

80000_Hours 20 Apr 2021 12:23 UTC
17 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
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

80000_Hours 17 Apr 2021 16:40 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Kirsten’s comment on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
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

80000_Hours 16 Apr 2021 21:50 UTC
14 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
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.

80000_Hours 16 Apr 2021 21:27 UTC
18 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: BrianTan’s comment on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
[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

80000_Hours 16 Apr 2021 21:13 UTC
27 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
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
What links here?

80000_Hours 16 Apr 2021 17:21 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: BrianTan’s comment on: Launching a new resource: ‘Effective Altruism: An Introduction’
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

80000_Hours 10 Aug 2020 20:12 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Will Bradshaw’s comment on: The emerging school of patient longtermism
Just a visual metaphor of most centuries being boring and only a few standing out as uniquely influential.

80000_Hours 3 Jun 2019 20:41 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Is EA Growing? EA Growth Metrics for 2018
Thanks for producing this Peter, it’s very helpful. I sent you some metric data on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, but now that I’ve seen the post, I can give you the best numbers for the table. I would suggest putting these figures in instead.

Net new podcast subscribers added

2017 − 4,600

2018 − 10,500

Total podcast downloads/plays

2017 − 87,600 (average episode length 1.61 hours.)

2018 − 517,100 (average episode length 1.97 hours.)

Notes on interpretation
1. The podcast only started half way through 2017, I’m not sure how you want to handle that.
2. Those are the maximum number of subscribers recorded at any point in the year. It’s probably a few % too high in both cases, but I’ve found that’s the measure most robust to random measurement variations. The overestimation should also be constant year to year.
3. Podcast downloads/plays don’t correspond to actual times people listened to a full episode. They include people pressing play but only listening to a few seconds; bots downloading the show; automatic downloads by the podcasting software that are never actually listened to; and so on. So they’re massive overestimates of the number of times an episode was listened to, say, half way to completion. However, the overestimate is likely to be a pretty constant fraction year-to-year, so you can still make relative comparisons.
  
  — RW
What links here?
- Is EA Growing? EA Growth Metrics for 2018 by Peter Wildeford (2 Jun 2019 4:08 UTC; 181 points)

80000_Hours 26 Apr 2019 13:26 UTC
6 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: lexande’s comment on: Thoughts on 80,000 Hours’ research that might help with job-search frustrations
Hi lexande—thanks for taking the time to share your worries with us. We take our responsibility towards our users seriously.

I don’t think we’re likely to come to agreement right now on a lot of the other specific issues that have been raised.

That said, it’s helpful to know when our users strongly disagree with our priorities and we take that into account when we form our plans.

80000_Hours 20 Nov 2018 4:52 UTC
13 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Effective Altruism in non-high-income countries
80,000 Hours wrote some quick notes on this back in 2015:

Potentially promising career paths in poorer countries

They were rough then and may have become out of date in the last 3 years, but hopefully can still help people generate ideas.

80000_Hours 12 Oct 2018 22:14 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: joel_duplicate0.5816669276037654’s comment on: Many EA orgs say they place a lot of financial value on their previous hire. What does that mean, if anything? And why aren’t they hiring faster?
We have a forthcoming post on whether the expressions ‘talent gap/bottleneck/constraint’ are generating more heat than light and should be phased out in favour of more specific terms.

80000_Hours 12 Oct 2018 19:47 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Evan_Gaensbauer’s comment on: Survey of EA org leaders about what skills and experience they most need, their staff/donations trade-offs, problem prioritisation, and more.
Hi Evan,

Responses to the survey do help to inform our advice but it’s only considered as one piece of data alongside all the other research we’ve done over the years. Our writeup of the survey results definitely shouldn’t be read as our all-things-considered view on any issue in particular.

Perhaps we could have made that clearer in the blog post but we hope that our frank discussion of the survey’s weaknesses and our doubts about many of the individual responses gives some sense of the overall weight we put on this particular source.

80000_Hours 12 Oct 2018 19:01 UTC
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: Survey of EA org leaders about what skills and experience they most need, their staff/donations trade-offs, problem prioritisation, and more.
We’ve written a new post in part to address this question: Many EA orgs say they place a lot of financial value on their previous hire. What does that mean, if anything? And why aren’t they hiring faster?

80000_Hours 12 Oct 2018 6:27 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Peter Wildeford’s comment on: Survey of EA org leaders about what skills and experience they most need, their staff/donations trade-offs, problem prioritisation, and more.
Hi Peter,

It sounds like you mostly agree with our take on earning to give in the high impact careers article. That article is fairly new but it will become one of the central pages on the site after a forthcoming re-organisation. Let us know if there are other articles on the site you think are inconsistent with that take—we can take a look and potentially bring them into line.

We agree with you that earning to give can be a genuinely great option and don’t intend to demoralize people who choose that path. As we write in that article, we believe that “any graduate in a high income country can have a significant impact” by earning to give.

That said, we do stand by our recommendation that most people who might be a good fit to eventually enter one of our priority paths should initially pursue one of those paths over earning to give (though while maintaining a back-up option). Those paths have higher upside, so it’s worth testing out your potential, while bearing in mind that they might not work out.

Many of the best options on these paths require substantial career capital, so often this won’t mean starting a direct impact job today. Instead, we think many readers should consider acquiring career capital that can open up these paths, including graduate school in relevant disciplines (e.g. AI/ML, policy, or international relations) entry level policy jobs (e.g. as a Congressional staffer, or working as an early employee at a startup to gain skills and experience in operations. We hope to release an article discussing our updated views on career capital soon.

Of course, these paths aren’t a good fit for everyone, and we continue to believe that earning to give can be a great option for many.

It’s also worth emphasizing that our advice is, of course, influenced by our views on the highest priority problems. We tried to make that clear in “high impact careers” by including a section on how our recommendations would change if someone is focused on global health or factory farming. In that case, we believe “earning to give, for-profit work and advocacy become much more attractive.”

80000_Hours

Operations team

Salary, benefits & location

Roles

Web team

Salary, benefits & location

Roles

About 80,000 Hours