I was doing the 80,000 hours career guide, but I suppose it’s too ambitious for me. I just want to work for an org with a good altruistic mission, not completely maximize my impact. What’s the career advice for that? I’ve been doing full-stack web dev for 11 years now, so I’ve learned a thing or two about running big complicated projects, at least in the software world, but I think this transfers, since complexity is complexity.
I looked at the orgs listed in the software dev career path, but they didn’t seem very inspiring. I’m open to going back to college, but I wouldn’t be sure for what. I hear EA still has an operations bottleneck, but it doesn’t seem like that’s something you can study for, and I’m not sure if transitioning my career to management (a tricky move, as I haven’t really gunned for leadership, though I have been the lead at times) would enable a jump to operations later on.
Any advice?
Those expected value arguments about low probability but very high yield opportunities (moonshots) being more valuable than lower yield, but more certain ones, always rubbed me the wrong way. I suppose because in a very real sense, a 1% odds outcome might as well be 0% odds, specially for something that will only be attempted once, but I was also thinking about the economy. I suspect the overwhelming majority of economic activity is directed at lower risk, lower yield opportunities, and that it is necessary for things to be this way for the economy to function: there is some optimal proportion of the economy that should be dedicated to moonshots of course, but I wonder what that is. And similarly for altruism, there is probably some optimal proportion of altruistic effort that should be directed to moonshots, relative to effort on lower risk, lower yield stuff.
Has anyone written about this, about what would be the best proportion of moonshots to non-moonshots in EA? In the economy? My point is that it’s not as simple as saying moonshots are better.
I also recently read someone saying that the worst case with a moonshot is that nothing happens, but that is not true, the moonshot has opportunity cost, all the time, effort, and money spent on it could’ve been used on something else.