New core career advice series from Probably Good!

By Probably Good @ 2024-04-24T18:05 (+79)

We recently published a new core career advice series. It provides a concise, accessible intro to some of the most important ideas for planning an impactful career. Check it out on our site!

What is the core advice series?

The core advice series distills the most important ideas from our in-depth career guide and repackages them with a more accessible framing. It was born out of the question: "If I have less than an hour to learn about pursuing an impact-focused career, what do I need to know?”

We ended up with a series of 7 short articles that could be read in one sitting. Each article takes about 5 minutes to read and covers a critical concept we think is important to pursuing an impactful career, including:

While many of our readers want to engage with our more in-depth material, we also want to provide an option for those who can’t afford the time. This series is intended to be a helpful on-ramp for someone who wants to make a positive impact but hasn’t been exposed to tools to think about their career decisions strategically.

How you can help

If you know someone who could benefit from accessible, impact-focused career advice, please share this with them! 

As always, if you have feedback, thoughts on future content, or questions about how Probably Good could support you, your organization, or your community, feel free to get in touch.

Jamie_Harris @ 2024-04-26T17:22 (+7)

What do you think are some of the main differences between your guide/advice and 80k's?

I realise that to some extent, merely covering similar ideas with a slightly different framing and emphasis can add value because variations in these things land more or less well with different people.

But I'm wondering about more substantive differences. E.g. this page implies that you either don't endorse longtermism or endorse it less strongly than 80k, and my impression from your content is that you do tend to highlight a broader range of opportunities, including a much more prominent emphasis on global health (and climate change?).

Are then any other differences that jump to mind? E.g. like how Holden Karnofsky's "aptitudes" post was quite a different take to 80k's more 'cause prio first' approach.

(A more provocative framing of this qu: imagine that Probably Good and 80k both have an article on the same topic. Without reading either, if I do endorse longtermism, is there any reason why (or person for who) the Probably Good article is likely to be more useful?)

Thanks!

Probably Good @ 2024-04-26T21:42 (+24)

Hey Jamie, thanks for the comment!

80K and Probably Good have the same goal: get more people into impactful careers. Where we differ is mostly in emphasis and approach. 

At a high level Probably Good differs in a few significant ways:

  • While 80K focuses more on longtermism, x-risk, and AI risk, we aim to provide impact-focused career advice for people in a wide range of high-impact careers, across many cause areas (more cause areas still coming :)).
  • Correspondingly, we aim to give (relatively) more weight to worldview diversification, moral uncertainty, and epistemic uncertainty. This leads us to focus more on information and tools for making career decisions rather than final conclusions.
  • Finally, as you noted - we have a different perspective and tone even when discussing the same issues.

So folks who already strongly endorse longtermism (and even more so 80K's top priority paths) are most likely to find that 80K already pretty much fulfills their needs (and we tend to direct people towards them—not because we don't also support the relevant cause areas, but because they’ve specialized in those areas more).