Show HN: Why the most popular ways to do good in careers aren’t best

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/

by BenjaminTodd • 10 years ago

93 73 10 years ago

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

This is a Show HN because the article we link to is just one part of a much larger career guide (we checked with the mod). http://80000hours.org/career-guide/

There’s 8 articles, each with a video, and a planning tool at the end. You can get it delivered over 9 weeks by email. It’s the main thing we’ve worked on building since Feb, and grew out of an in-person workshop that was changing lots of careers.

The guide aims to help people switch into careers that have a greater social impact. It covers what we’ve learned in five years of research at Oxford, including:

1. Why you can sometimes do more good by taking a higher earning career, like software engineering, and donating to effective charities.

3. How any reader of HN could save hundreds of lives in their career.

3. How to work out which global problem is most pressing.

4. What psychology says about how to find a satisfying job and make good career decisions.

See the full guide: http://80000hours.org/career-guide/

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

Usage stats:

* In the last month the guide has 140,000 pageviews.

* From the cover sheet, the bounce rate is 50%. Of people who start reading the intro article, about 20% make it to the end.

* Of people who land on the cover sheet, about 5% join the newsletter to receive the whole guide by email.

* Ultimately the aim is to change career plans. About 1% of newsletter subs and tool users report plan changes. Our biggest challenge right now is increasing this conversion rate.

We’re keen for questions and feedback.

eterm• 10 years ago

Your stated aim is to change career plans. Why is that?

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

I'm another creator of the guide, look forward to fielding your questions and improving it with your feedback! :)

tomp3• 10 years ago

Disable the popup.

fiatjaf3• 10 years ago

This is not a Show HN, it is an article!

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Hey fiatjaf, because it's part of a larger product that includes several interactive elements, the mods thought it should be a Show HN. :)

mbesto• 10 years ago

Thanks for sharing. I'm curious...

Find a fulfilling career that does good.

1. What do you define as "good"?

free guide will put you on the path to a good career,

2. What do you define as a "good career"?

can have a hugely positive impact on the world

3. What do you consider as a "hugely positive impact on the world?

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

1. What do you define as "good"?

We explain that here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-...

2. What do you define as a "good career"?

We explain that here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/

3. What do you consider as a "hugely positive impact on the world?

Helping a lot of people in a really significant way!

fiatjaf3• 10 years ago

It is an article, not a Show HN.

dang• 10 years ago

I told the authors that they could make it a Show HN after they explained it's part of a project they've been working on for months, which included an exhaustive literature review. That's a lot more work than a garden-variety blog post or article, and the intention behind Show HN has always been to let people share their work.

So while you're definitely right that by default a Show HN needs to be more than just an article, in this case it's a borderline call that we let through. HN is a spirit-of-the-law kind of place.

Edit: I forgot to mention, and don't see it elsewhere on the page, that 80,000 Hours is a YC S15 nonprofit. Sorry; should have made that clear.

projectramo• 10 years ago

One suggestion I have is to come up with tools to think about the variance in future earnings.

Let me be more specific: if a person makes $300k/year they may be willing to give away 50% if they know it is going to last 40 years. However, if the job could go away tomorrow and they may end up with a $100k job for 40 years, they will want to have saved some of the money for themselves.

Is there a good framework to think about that situation?

I read a statistic that 50% of Americans will find themselves earning in the top 10% at least one year of their lives.

We just don't know how long it lasts. When should one give it away?

p.s. great superman comic in the beginning. makes the point very succinctly.

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

You could do hardcore analysis with a utility function and some risk-aversion weighting etc.

But some rough rules of thumb:

* Make a target level of personal consumption you want to meet over your life (we suggest income doesn't have much effect on happiness after $40k, or $60k if you live somewhere expensive, and plus $20k if you have a child)

* First, save enough that you could live for 12+ months with no income. This covers you in emergencies and career changes.

* Then save a decent fraction of your income to maintain this level of income in retirement (at least $6k per year to be able to have $40k per year at retirement).

* Always donate a small amount (say several percent) to keep in the habit of giving and learn more about charities.

* After you're meeting your saving and consumption targets, you can donate most of the remainder. Or if you're not sure where to give right away, then put it in a donor advised fund so it can be donated later.

Beyond this, it can vary from person to person, depending on how risk averse you are, how much you're prepared to sacrifice in order to do good, and how urgent you think it is to do good now rather than later. It gets complicated. e.g. if you don't think it's urgent to donate, then you might want to take care of retirement savings first, then donate later.

Some more discussion: https://80000hours.org/articles/should-you-wait/

antisthenes• 10 years ago

we suggest income doesn't have much effect on happiness after $40k, or $60k if you live somewhere expensive, and plus $20k if you have a child

Huh? Are you guys based in the United States? Did you pull that number out of your ass? Do you know the difference between "diminishing returns" and "doesn't have much effect"? In the vast majority of the United States where the median income is $40k and above, it won't actually be enough to meet what most people on HN would consider basic needs - housing, healthcare, food and some savings for retirement.

First, save enough that you could live for 12+ months with no income.

An impossible task for the majority of Americans. Again, I'm not sure where you are based, so this is forgivable.

Then save a decent fraction of your income to maintain this level of income in retirement

You're telling people who are earning $40k to save $6k and meet their living expenses on $34k. While that may be possible in some areas, these areas tend to be the ones where $40k jobs are at a premium and are not available for the majority of the people there. See my first comment.

Always donate a small amount (say several percent) to keep in the habit of giving and learn more about charities.

Donating money while earning below median income nationwide is an advice so terribly inane, it doesn't warrant a response. You're always better spending that amount (minus the marginal tax rate) on yourself or your family, especially at the levels of income you're suggesting.

After you're meeting your saving and consumption targets, you can donate most of the remainder.

Which for most Americans would be never. You have to step out of your bubble and look at some BLS numbers if you want to give economic advice.

TheCoelacanth• 10 years ago

One way around that problem would be to give the money away when you die instead of giving it away as you earn it.

whamlastxmas2• 10 years ago

This is my plan. I guess it sounds greedy but until I have $10 million+ in the bank, I don't think I'd ever donate any large amounts to charities. I need to make sure my own future is secure: that I can continue to live a regular (reasonable) life regardless of disability, and that I can afford healthcare that may wind up costing millions of dollars. That money is also useful for the ability to, in a small way, afford to fight for my legal rights if needed, since those legal fees can easily cost millions.

If I lived in a society with socialized, efficient, good healthcare, a guaranteed standard of living for everyone, and a legal system that provided competent, free legal assistance, I would have no problem giving a big chunk of every paycheck to charities. Until then, I have no guarantee I won't become seriously ill tomorrow, blow through my meager 5 digit savings in less than a week in a hospital (even with insurance), and then die on the streets hungry and disabled.

codegeek• 10 years ago

you video thumbnail has a typo in the text "In which careeer". Notice the extra 'e'

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Thanks! We're on it.

tomp3• 10 years ago

I'm flagging this because of the terrible popup. If I submit a (fake) email, it still won't let me read the article, but rather redirect me to a page demanding even more info!

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Hey Tom, we have that second step because we often deliver free workshops to people at their universities. Just this week I was emailing people who told us they are at universities in London to let them know about date we will be available to meet them personally.

If you just click anywhere else on the page, the popup will close and you can get back to reading the page! :)

I understand pop-ups are annoying, but without them I don't think 80,000 Hours' model would be sustainable (we couldn't show much impact and so donors wouldn't fund us).

tomp3• 10 years ago

Oh well, I guess it's better to polarize the public, and have some that really hate you and others that really love you.

Kind-of like the US presidential candidates right now :)

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

I've turned off the university page redirect for now until we can evaluate whether it's overall a positive.

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

I think it was a good way to introduce the notion of living for positive impact. And it is certainly helpful for people who feel like they "aren't doing anything good with their lives" to see ways in which they maybe already are, or could be.

That said, it felt a bit "all of nothing" in the sense of picking a single strategy for impact rather than trying to be impactful all around. There is probably a place the the "7 habits of highly impactful people" piece somewhere.

The final bit that I'd suggest would be having an impact without drawing attention to yourself. A number of really great people I know do wonderful things without having to deal with the issues of public accolades. A friend of mine who became wealthy though Sun stock and good financial management of it, made the mistake of donating directly to an organization he wished to support. And while the donation was not considered "large" by him, it was the largest donation this organization had received so they put a big thank you in their newsletter. And that resulted in literally thousands of other organizations pestering this poor guy for donations. Ever since that time he has made is impact less direct and harder to trace back to him.

It walks a very fine line though, between a person believing what they are doing is helping and outside validation that it actually is. Fixing that communication channel would be big win for getting more participation.

adamsea• 10 years ago

Its ironic that the Superman comic, where in the end Superman says "this seems monotonous" also is the perfect critique of the article. The qualitative, non-quantifiable parts of what we do for a living are equally important. Who would want to be Superman if he turned a crank, at a constant speed, every day of his life?

ozziegooen• 10 years ago

If I had the choice between saving Millions of lives vs. being a supposedly more interesting person, I'd save the lives.

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

We also say at the end it's important to find something you enjoy and that you're good at, because that will result in a greater long-run impact (more success means more influence, less chance of burning out etc.).

Also we cover which jobs are enjoyable elsewhere in the guide. This article is just about impact.

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Fortunately, none of the paths we suggest are necessarily boring! And as we point out, personal fit and interest are really important.

J_Darnley• 10 years ago

Absolutely, you're still Superman.

slgeorge3• 10 years ago

"Earning to give" is highly unlikely to work unless you're a very strong willed individual (in my opinion). We're social animals, so if you decide to focus on a "high earning" area you land-up working with others who are focused on their earnings. This leads to a focus on life-style (as life-style always expands to meet earnings), relative position in the group, and other values. Over time we tend to adjust our values to the social group we're in, so values other than "making a social difference" are likely.

Clayton Christensen's book "How will you measure your life" mentions this social dynamic (http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/how-will-you-measure...) - lots of his peers started out meaning to make a difference but got sucked in. It's a fantastic book for thinking about your life in a well-rounded manner, and not too long!

Aside: Did anyone else think the title was odd? I initially thought it meant "how to have a good career", when it means "how to make a difference to the world".

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

That's what we expected, but actually today hundreds of people are doing it and sticking with it.

I think the key things that have changed include:

1. The existence of a community who earn to give, which makes this effect work in the opposite way. (You can also seek out firms with a good culture.)

2. People making public commitments of their intentions to donate e.g. through Giving What We Can, or Founder's Pledge if an entrepreneur, or simply telling their friends.

bpchaps• 10 years ago

My method for "earning to give" was to push my career and learning as quickly as possible so that I always have a way to fallback if things go south. It worked pretty well, and I got to take the past six months off to work on some really fun and potentially impactful civics-oriented projects.

Well, things kinda went south, and if things go well I'll be back in the job fold in the next month. The break wasn't as as long I was hoping, but it was a great chance to learn some amazing things around civics, data and security. Hopefully the six months will make any future 'good' work take a LOT less energy.

I highly recommend others do it. You don't need huge amounts of income or massive amounts of stored cash to do it.

slgeorge3• 10 years ago

Hmm, interesting. Perhaps involvement in a community of 'givers' and making a public statement, counter-act the 'values erosion' of working with people who are more focused on themselves.

morgante• 10 years ago

I don't think it requires extraordinary strength to earn to give.

Yes, lifestyle inflation is a real problem. But it's certainly not universal. Plenty of people maintain high savings rates instead of consuming excess income. The discipline required for early retirement communities isn't very different from that required for earning to give.

That being said, I have found that it helps to maintain a diverse social sphere. The majority of my friends make far less money than me, so it's easy to match my lifestyle to theirs (in fact, a bit better) while having plenty left over for donations.

slgeorge3• 10 years ago

I guess that the 'diverse social sphere' helps.

I'm sure there's a real term for what I'm trying to describe. I've found our opinions and values change slowly, over time as we interact and take on new experiences. We think we're more fixed than we really are. Often, that's a good thing - "When the facts change I change my mind what do you do Sir". But, in the same way that only seeing news of one political kilter can subtly reinforce our views, interacting with people who have one set of values has the same impact. Professions tend to filter for values that people care about and that reduces the 'diverse social sphere', it's the real-life version of Facebook filtering news feeds!

Perhaps I should add I'm thinking "in the long term", so comparing working directly in a charity for 10 years versus working as a trader and giving a high percentage of earnings to charity.

Kurimo3• 10 years ago

Title was VERY misleading. And that whole earning to give notion is bull. You work at a non-profit or as a social worker and you have a DIRECT impact on people's lives. You donate to a charity and you have no idea where that money goes. Many charities are corrupt and don't use your dollars at a positive rate to help others and even those that do often find their donations ending up being misused or apprehended by crooks and tyrants.

Earning to give is a way the wealthy ease their conscience (not unlike carbon offsets). It is not good advice to give people with the heart, courage, and strength to be one of those front line warriors at a non-profit or in social work and to claim otherwise is garbage.

Nobody makes a bigger difference to the children and families who experience birth defects or childhood illness than the nurse in the children's hospital. Certainly not the rich goon who contributed the most money and got it named after him/her. Without that rich goon, a need would still be fulfilled by people whose lives were effected by the lack of such a facility coming together and pooling their resources to make it happen (the whole point of government, taxes, and society in the first place).

Without that nurse, there's nobody to take care of those children post surgery and offer the love, support, and attentive care that only someone with that kind of courage and compassion can provide.

No one says your mind and talents must be constrained to your job forever, but if you can do it you should.

Superman DID run vaccines to people in ADDITION to saving the world from more petty (and also much more catastrophic) crime. So the example (which in the comic is hilarious and presented ironically) the article sets itself on is a false choice.

cheetos• 10 years ago

Good thing Bill Gates didn't follow this advice or he might be a nurse instead of starting the Gates Foundation!

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

We agree many charities aren't effective, so you can't just earn to give to random organisations. You need to spend time working out where the donations can be most effective.

I think GiveWell is a good starting point: http://www.givewell.org/giving101

Though there's a lot more to say: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/where-should-you-donate-to-ha...

blablablame• 10 years ago

I sorta agree with you, and have been cutting back on where I give (and now only work with places I trust and visit personally). But coming back to the nurse example, I could volunteer my time to be with the kids, use my very basic carpentry skills to do maybe a bed or two OR, I can do contract work for a few days and give enough that it pays for that nurse's salary. What do you think is best? Me spend 5 days doing 2-3 beds/playing with the kids or me working 5 days and with that money be able to pay for 10 beds + a nurse's salary at a worthwhile charity??

duaneb• 10 years ago

I initially thought it meant "how to have a good career", when it means "how to make a difference to the world".

This only makes sense if you read "good" as an adverb rather than a noun.

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Yeah we use the expression 'do good in your career' because it requires few characters, and in titles we often have to explain what we are about in under 60 characters!

As dianeb says, I think how to have a successful career would actually be 'how to do well in your career'.

devishard4• 10 years ago

The article starts of suggesting a strategy of working and then donating your money, referencing Bill Gates and a Google software developer as examples.

This strategy is basically, vacuum up a bunch of money and then pour it into doing good. But necessarily a lot of this money gets pulled out of places where it would do good, even if that good is simply putting food on the table of a poor family.

If you're an engineer or someone who creates things, it's probably actually creating value, not just moving it around and siphoning off some of it. But often that value you create is harmful: the Google engineers, for example, probably spend a lot of time working on ads, user data collection, partnerships with banks, etc.

And with CEOs like Bill Gates, the harm is much clearer. The money that has been spent by for example the US government, on Microsoft products could have been spent on building equivalent Linux products for a fraction of the cost, and the remainder spent directly on help programs. Bill Gates isn't some savior because he inserted himself as a middle man in the process of spending money on good. Sure, he's putting money into good now, but only after taking money out of good for decades, spending a lot of it on himself, and still keeping a sizable chunk for himself.

This applies to almost any rich philanthropist. They look good when they donate billions of dollars, but the world would have been better off if they hadn't amassed those billions of dollars in the first place. I'm not impressed when people decide to do a little good after building a fortune on a mountain of skulls.

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Hey Devishard - keep in mind this is only one of four suggested approaches. We also say if you think your work to make money is going to do harm you shouldn't do it and link to a list of jobs you shouldn't take because they are harmful.

I don't personally agree with you that Microsoft has done much harm - maybe not even any harm at all on balance, given the positive inventions they made.

Certainly I don't think Microsoft was so bad that saving 10 million people's lives wouldn't go a long way to making up for it.

But if I did think Microsoft was very harmful, like you, I would agree you shouldn't earn to give there.

devishard4• 10 years ago

Even if we buy that Microsoft hasn't done any harm at all in balance (which I don't) why would them collecting billions of dollars and then disbursing them be considered a net good when the alternative is that money not going into their pockets in the first place, and doing good earlier?

Microsoft was founded in 1975. The Gates Foundation was founded in 2000. Why did we have to wait 25 years to see any money go into good instead of Gates' pockets?

Also, Gates is still very, very rich, even after giving away a lot of his money. He also helped a lot of his friends get very, very rich, and even the ones of them who give to charity will remain very, very rich. That's billions and billions of dollars that came from crushing smaller businesses, hardening monopolies, and pulling money from governments that could have gone to aid programs.

I am not sure where you got the "saving 10 million people's lives" statistic from, but if it's true, then how many millions more would have been saved by the billions of dollars that Gates and his friends have siphoned off by being middle men? Do you really think even half the money that has gone into MS will come out in the form of aid?

If $x spent to save 10 million lives saved between 2000 and 2015 are good, wouldn't $2x spent between 1975 and 2000 have been better?

dasil003• 10 years ago

I agree every billionaire has some insanely cut-throat business activities behind them, and they shouldn't necessarily be absolved of their sins by philanthropy; but on the other hand it doesn't mean they were parasites either, I mean Microsoft made a ton of software, much of it quite good.

afarrell2• 10 years ago

building equivalent Linux products for a fraction of the cost.

Would this have actually been cheaper for the government to integrate into their processes? Even though the sticker price is $0, Linux is not actually Free as in Beer for most people and organizations.

devishard4• 10 years ago

Agreed, but equally, the cost of Windows products doesn't stop at paying for a license. I think you'd be hard-pressed to say that the cost of using Linux is higher than Windows, and when you throw in licensing and support, Windows is almost certainly more expensive.

When you take my full proposal, which is that perhaps 10% of the money spent on Windows were spent on Linux instead, I think that 10% would go very far toward making Linux cheaper than Windows even if you discount fees. Keep in mind that a lot of the money put into developing Windows goes into branding and creating vendor lock-in, which Linux doesn't have any reason to pursue.

jdminhbg• 10 years ago

No, the economy is not zero-sum.

whamlastxmas2• 10 years ago

I don't think we can assume that if the government saved $50 billion dollars using Linux instead of buying Windows that we would see that money going towards aid. In reality, that money would be going into the pocket of some other business owner for some other reason. I doubt anyone in charge of a large public budget says "Hey we saved a lot of money with that decision, that's take that saved money and give it away".

tgb• 10 years ago

I'm disappointed by the negativity here. The full article is nuanced and encourages thinking about many aspects of one of the most important decisions we'll each make. Then the replies here grab into one aspect and say "what about the others". They're right, we have to consider the others too, but may of us go through life without seriously considering any of these aspects. If you took this article merely as a prod to reflect on your decisions using your own values, it could be great even without ever moving you an inch towards charity.

Persinally I find self reflection like this challenging to even consider, my mind tends to flinch away from the thought. Thinking about what would be best make me focus on what might currently be wrong. At least reading this article makes me consider my options explicitly instead of my usual implicit choice.

(I signed up for the newsletter.)

robertwiblin13• 10 years ago

Thanks for your support tgb! I hope you enjoy the newsletter. :)

The full article is indeed quite long and nuanced. Figuring out the best thing to do with your life can't be reduced to really simple slogans.

Dangeranger• 10 years ago

If people are looking for the full video course list here it is: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-BRtcBm4Yj6ZpOG49cbH...

33a• 10 years ago

This is an article, not a project. Does it really belong on Show HN?

mesozoic• 10 years ago

This is why I'm getting into promoting colonization of Mars and beyond. All human life could be wiped out forever by a single catastrophic event which is surely more important than most other problems.

BenjaminTodd11• 10 years ago

Broadly, we agree that catastrophic risks are among the most important problems, but we don't think colonizing mars is the most effective thing you could do about them right now. https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/

singbaby• 10 years ago

Summary:

Three steps to a high impact job:

1. Work out which problems are most pressing – those that are big in scale, neglected and tractable – as we covered in part 2b.

2. Choose the most effective approaches. Think broadly by considering research, advocacy and earning to give as well as direct work, and choose the best approach for the problem. That’s what we covered in this article.

3. Within those approaches, find a position with excellent personal fit and job satisfaction – something where you have the chance to excel, the work is engaging, you like your colleagues, it meets your basic needs and it fits with the rest of your life. Otherwise you’ll burn out and have much less impact. We’ll explain how to work out where you have the best personal fit in part 4.

If you do this, you’ll be doing what contributes, and have all the ingredients of a personally fulfilling career too. In this way, there’s less trade-off between doing what’s best for the world and doing what’s best for you than there first seems.

Show HN: Why the most popular ways to do good in careers aren’t best

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