I work at 80,000 Hours, talking to people about their careers; opinions I share here are my own.
Abby Hoskin
Karma: 1,908
I first got interested in Effective Altruism in 2011, before CEA or Anthropic existed. Over the past 13 years, I’ve been rejected from jobs at Open Philanthropy, GiveWell, DeepMind, and the Forethought Foundation. I work at a core EA org now, so I don’t know if my perspective is what you’re looking for. But it still might be useful to think about the EA community from a historical perspective.
Back in ye olden days, EA was a philosophy more than a career plan; you could agree with the core concepts—we should care about how efficiently we can convert resources to helping people; we should care about all people equally, even people we will never meet—but there were very few EA orgs/jobs. So many of the super hardcore EAs were just doing normal things in their daily lives, then thinking hard about where to donate relatively small amounts of money.
This seems great. People got to meet their personal obligations/follow their passions, and then make a difference via donations. Some people took EA principles extremely seriously by deciding to go vegan, massively cutting back on personal consumption to donate more, or totally changing their career to optimize for earning to give. But none of this was necessary to remain a member of good standing in the community. I myself didn’t really change my career trajectory until about 10 years after I first heard about EA. None of my EA friends seemed to judge me for this.
If you also care about people across the world (not just those in your tribe), consider the effectiveness of different charitable programs, and take weird ideas seriously if they’re logically sound, then I think you too qualify as a valued member of the EA community, if you want that affiliation.
To be honest, I am actually excited about people who share these values to be active participants in the normal/real world, instead of all sequestered away in insular EA orgs. Your career path could be: “I do normal things at my normal job, but I vote and donate in ways guided by my principles, and I talk to my social network about problems that I think are really important in the world. I raise the sanity level of my company and social network, and make it easier for the world to coordinate around important issues by signaling that citizens care about this stuff and will support policies that protect the future. I save a life in expectation every year via my donations.” That seems pretty great! People who do stuff like that are welcome in the community.
I think maybe this sort of “normal” trajectory seems disappointing because there are more EA opportunities available now than there used to be. But I think the “normal” route is still the right path for many (most?) people who agree with EA principles.
Not sure what the inclusion criteria is for conferences, but I thought it was interesting the Cognitive Neuroscience Society made it on the list you linked. I would consider the Society for Neuroscience conference, just because it has tens of thousands of attendees, so somebody will be presenting on the neuro topic you’re interested in there: https://www.sfn.org/
This is so, so, so, wonderful! Thanks for organizing such a fantastic event, as well as sharing all this analysis/feedback/reflection. I want to go next year!!!!
EA Funds That Exist 2024 (Linkpost)
So glad somebody is finally fixing Swapcard!
Any plans to have this printed on t shirts?
Would the new CEA be considered EA adjacent?
This so interesting, thanks for writing this up, Jess! As one of your 80k coworkers, I’m always blown away by how organized and detail oriented you are. Reading about your general approach to solving problems/mindset about your job; I’m not surprised that you’re always trying to anticipate how to improve processes for the team, but it’s still super impressive!
To others reading this post: I also endorse 80k as a cool place to work ;)
These are great things to check! It’s especially important to do this kind of due diligence if you’re leaving your support network behind (e.g. moving country). Thanks for spelling things out for people new to the job market ❤️
Thanks so much for sharing this, Michelle! It’s always strange to visit our past selves, remembering who we used to be and thinking about all of the versions of ourselves we chose not to become.
I’m glad you became who you are now ❤️
Hahaha, thanks for posting!! :)
This is a really interesting question! Unfortunately, it was posted a little too late for me to run it by the team to answer. Hopefully other people interested in this topic can weigh in here. This 80k podcast episode might be relevant? https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/michael-webb-ai-jobs-labour-market/
This is an interesting idea! I don’t know the answer.
Thanks for the interesting questions, but unfortunately, they were posted a little too late for the team to answer. Glad to hear writing them helped you clarify your thinking a bit!
On calls, the way I do this is not assume people are part of the EA community, and instead see what their personal mindset is when it comes to doing good.
I think 80k advisors give good advice. So I hope people take it seriously but not follow it blindly.
Giving good advice is really hard, and you should seek it out from many different sources.
You also know yourself better than we do; people are unique and complicated, so if we give you advice that simply doesn’t apply to your personal situation, you should do something else. We are also flawed human beings, and sometimes make mistakes. Personally, I was miscalibrated on how hard it is to get technical AI safety roles, and I think I was overly optimistic about acceptance rates at different orgs. I feel really badly about this (my mistakes were pointed out by another advisor and I’ve since course corrected), just being explicit that we do make mistakes!
Tricky, multifaceted question. So basically, I think some people obsess too much about intelligence and massively undervalue the importance of conscientiousness and getting stuff done in the real world. I think this leads to silly social competitions around who is smarter, as opposed to focusing on what’s actually important, i.e. getting stuff done. If you’re interested in AI Safety technical research, my take is that you should try reading through existing technical research; if it appeals to you, try replicating some papers. If you enjoy that, consider applying to orgs, or to some alignment bootcamps. If you’re not getting any traction on applications, consider upskilling in a PhD program or industry. Some 80k advisors are more keen on independent research/taking time off to upskill; I’m not as keen on this. I would totally fail at structuring my time during an independent upskilling period, and I could see myself becoming quite isolated/anxious/depressed doing this. So I would prefer to see people pick up technical skills in a more structured way. For people who try all these things and still think they’re not making valuable progress, I would suggest a pivot into governance, support/non-technical roles at AI safety relevant orgs, or E2G. Or potentially another cause entirely!
I don’t have as many opinions about outreach strategies for getting people into AI Safety work; overall outreach seems good, but maybe the focus should be “AI risk is a problem” more than, “You should work at these specific orgs!” And there are probably a lot of ways outreach can go badly or be counterproductive, so I think a lot of caution is needed — if people disagree with your approach, try and find out why and incorporate the fact of their disagreement into your decision making.
Alex Lawsen, my ex-supervisor who just left us for Open Phil (miss ya 😭), recently released a great 80k After Hours Podcast on the top 10 mistakes people make! Check it out here: https://80000hours.org/after-hours-podcast/episodes/alex-lawsen-10-career-mistakes/
We had a great advising team chat the other day about “sacrificing yourself on the altar of impact”. Basically, we talk to a lot of people who feel like they need to sacrifice their personal health and happiness in order to make the world a better place.
The advising team would actually prefer for people to build lives that are sustainable; they make enough money to meet their needs, they have somewhere safe to live, their work environment is supportive and non-toxic, etc. We think that setting up a lifestyle where you can comfortably work in the long term (and not quickly flame out) is probably best for having a greater positive impact.
Another thing I talk about on calls a lot is: the job market can be super competitive. Don’t over update on the strength of your CV if you only apply to two places and get rejected. You should probably not conclude much until you get rejected without an interview 10 times (this number is somewhat arbitrary, but a reasonable rule of thumb). If you keep getting rejected with no interviews, then it makes sense to upskill in industry before working in a directly impactful role; this was the path to impact for a huge number of our most productive community members, and should not be perceived negatively! Job applications can also be noisy, so if you want to work an ambitious job you probably need to be applying widely and expect to get quite a few rejections. Luisa Rodriguez has a great piece on dealing with rejection. One line I like a lot is: “If I’m not getting rejected, I’m not being ambitious enough.”
I think we’re still the youngest parents at daycare, a year and a half after I initially posted this.
CNN reporting US fertility rates dropping to “lowest in a century”. Seems bad: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/24/health/us-birth-rate-decline-2023-cdc/index.html