The career questions thread

Good question. I'll try to come back to this with a longer answer, but for the time being, which causes did you have in mind? The answer depends quite a bit on the area.

Like I say in the comments, I broadly agree. I'm not so excited about more people optimising around earnings at the margin, unless they especially want to go into a high-earning career or have an especially strong advantage for earning money. If I had to guess the optimal medium-term proportion of EAs earning to give, I might go for 10%. Note the balance depends quite a bit on your views of which causes are most important.

My personal take is that being a research manager at CSER is good. Researcher at MIRI or CSER would be good if one was quantitatively inclined or expert in policy or risky tech. Tech policy would be good in general if one was expert at that.

Broadly, I think that most promising careers currently accumulate and leverage some resource that is not money, but that relates to humanity's future potential, in a way that folks like Musk or Moskovitz can't easily purchase. Things like political clout, influence of researchers and influence of nvestors. If one can't run a program to get any such resources, then earning to give could be decent if - like Matt Wage and Jaan Tallinn, you see opportunities that others miss.

On the first question:

One you get to the level of choosing between EA orgs, I think the most key consideration is personal fit (i.e. your chances of being really really good at the job). Within EA orgs, good personal fit seems like the best proxy for both your impact and your career capital. (the next most important would be how generally promising the org is).

Given that, it's hard to talk about the best generally good opportunities. It's also hard because the situation changes very rapidly.

And that means, I think it's more about talking to lots of different organisations and seeing if there's a good role for you that's available or could be created.

Looking at 80K's career profiles, you could try being a foundation program manager or founding effective non-profits. Software Engineering and Data Science are also quite collaborative.

Civil service

I agree that thinking about your advocacy efforts is important, but I'm not sure with this example there's an obvious way to call it one way or the other. It would depend on the extent to which you're actually influencing other people. Also, there's effects in the opposite direction e.g. doing more remarkable, drastic actions makes you stand out more, which gives you greater reach. (e.g. giving 5% of your income is good, but giving 50% means you get international press coverage). Doing what you sincerely believe is best can also be powerful.

Some more relevant reading:

http://www.jefftk.com/p/optimizing-looks-weird

https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/the-economy-of-weirdness/

Hi there,

One quick thing is that although our career profiles (currently) focus on those kinds of people, a lot of our advice is more general e.g. our framework, strategy advice, how to choose pages.

If you're trying to figure out your next step, then the first thing I'd recommend is working through the process on our how to choose page: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-choose/

After you've done that, let me know what your key uncertainties are.

Turning to expected earnings directly, there's doesn't really exist a general model for someone's expected earnings. You can get an idea of potential earnings of different jobs with these kinds of resources: https://80000hours.org/2013/02/how-to-find-out-earnings-for-different-jobs/

There's also some literature about whether doing a degree boosts your earnings: https://80000hours.org/2014/01/the-value-of-a-degree/ It generally finds that it does, on average, but whether it's worth it for you will depend on your situation. If lack of a degree isn't a blockage with respect to your current set of opportunities, then it might not be an issue. It also depends on what areas you want to enter. It will also depend on which program you could get into and your chances of finishing it.

There's also some literature about whether being self-employed boosts your earnings. It finds that on average self-employed people earn less, though those who own incorporated companies earn more.

Ben

If you're smart but you don't like school, maybe you have a comparative advantage in doing independent research and blogging about EA topics? Just a thought.

I'm just going to state my views not fully back them up. I hope to cover this topic in more depth later.

I'll go through a couple of key considerations and how to settle them.

1) Expected earnings

We have a bunch of unpublished research on this. I think the earnings as a startup founder are considerably higher in expectation (say at least 5x) BUT only if you make it into a top 5 accelerator or similar. More broadly, top accelerators seem to have very strong selection power - almost no-one who's rejected by YC succeeds, but the odds are pretty good if you get in.

So I think reframe the question as "is it worth me spending a couple of months seeing if I can get into a top accelerator?".

That depends on your situation. Do you have a cofounder? Do you have a problem in mind? Other entrepreneurs in the EA community can probably advise you on this.

Also since the earnings of founding are delayed 5-10 years, they're worth about 50% less.

2) Career capital

You'll may improve your technical skills more as a SWE, but as a founder you'll learn more entrepreneurial skills and I think those are more valuable (in particular, within EA, there are loads of SWE, but a real shortage of entrepreneurs).

It's also better for networking, and you'll have to try out all types of work, making it good for exploration. The greater intensity also means you'll probably push yourself more.

If you fail as an entrepreneur in the US, I think you can go back to SWE with little or no penalty.

Overall I'd say the startup path is better for career capital, though there are counterpoints: http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2014/09/if-you-want-to-start-startup-go-work.html

3) Lifestyle

Being a startup founder is far harder work and far more stressful. Most founders say they went through really high highs and really low lows. Even the most successful startups are often close to failure several times. All startup founders work very long hours. If you can't hack this, then don't do it.

Startups also take over your life and become your sole focus. If you succeed, you'll be locked in for 5-10 years. If you're unwilling to commit to this one thing for so long, don't do it.

This means you'll also have little time for side projects.

4) Direct impact

Entrepreneurship probably generates more consumer surplus and positive externalities than being a SWE because it's more innovative. It'll depend on the companies though.

How strong a consideration this is depends on what cost-benefit ratio you put on your donations. If it's around 10, then it's probably important. If it's more like 100-1000, the donations dominate.

5) Flexibility

The startup founder path involves more 'lock-in', so if you're highly unsure, lean against.

6) The right reasons

In the startup world, people don't recommend starting unless you're extremely driven by the problem you're trying to solve. Going into it because you expect to earn more probably isn't good enough.

http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec01/

Conclusion

Overall, of those 2 options, I'd lean towards encouraging you to experiment with the startup path - try to put something together that you could pitch to an accelerator.

If you don't have a good idea, try to join an early stage startup instead (especially one via your network that's got top backers). This is also much better for lifestyle, in particular, it's much easier to quit, so you can try several times before hitting on a success.

Finally, this is a bigger question, but I don't think you should optimise for earning to give. I think you should work towards working at an EA org or potentially exploring other areas neglected by EAs.

As a distant observer, your .impact EA work seems unlikely to get replaced, whereas there are plenty of people doing startups - are you worried that adding a startup to your earning to give might squeeze EA work out?

Take your time. Your efforts are much appreciated.

We do try to rate careers based on their 'advocacy potential' (basically how promising is this career as a way to spread important ideas), listing some of the most promising of those we've considered here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/strategy/strategies/advocacy/

However, more broadly I think this is a very difficult question. You can narrow down to a plausible short-list, but after that it's all about personal fit (i.e. choosing the area where you have the highest chances of outsized success).

It's also worth bearing in mind that success in almost any field translates into some measure of influence, because success gives you some combination of credibility, money and connections. So again, personal fit could be the key thing to focus on in the medium-term.

The short-list would be things like:

• Academia with an emphasis on being a public intellectual
• Non-academic public intellectuals
• Journalists and bloggers
• The media generally
• Politicians
• Advocacy and campaigning groups

Maybe teaching too, though the scale seems somewhat less than those above.

What type of arts do you enjoy? For instance, I always really enjoyed English and drama, and am now in a data science job where I am going to be writing up publications and doing talks in addition to my coding/stats work. If you go for a small or start-up company, you can often have a broader job like this where you can take on tasks that interest you - my perception is that larger companies tend to have more regimented roles.

If you're more into visual arts, web design, marketing or some sort of community-building/social logistics could be good options. They'd also provide good skills in short supply to volunteer to the EA community.

I think communication skills are very important. Some careers that 80,000 hours has explored relevant to what you are saying:

• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/foundation-program-manager/
• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/work-in-marketing/
• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/policy-oriented-civil-service-uk/
• https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/program-manager-in-international-organisations/

Hi Amon,

If you're just looking to maximise salary, then I reckon look for the following factors:

1. Average earnings of graduates
2. Flexibility of skills
3. Personal fit - test this by trying out the subject

Average earnings of graduates is a clue to the earning potential. http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/majors-that-pay-you-back/graduate-degrees http://fortune.com/2015/04/27/best-worst-graduate-degrees-jobs/

However, bear in mind the data is normally not corrected for selection effects (i.e. smarter ppl study maths, and that's why maths phds earn more etc.). So take it with quite a bit of salt.

Also, you need to take into account flexibility of the skills, because it's highly uncertain what professions will be highest paid in the future.

Petroleum engineer graduate degrees are currently among the highest paid, but that industry might go into structural decline due to cheap solar panels. More broadly, it's common for skilled professions to be highly cyclical.

So, I'd say it's better to go for more widely applicable subjects like statistics or computer science, rather than something narrower like finance or a particular type of engineering.

Finally, the rankings are only averages. It also really matters how good you'll be within the subject i.e. it's probably better to be great at economics than mediocre at engineering, even if engineers are higher paid on average. So that's why to factor in personal fit.

Finally, I'd say put especially high weight on flexbility, in case you decide to stop earning to give.

What would you say now ranks top based on this?

My guess for maximising salary would be something which is going to make you into a quant trader or financial engineer. There is a useful discussion on this site: https://www.quantstart.com/articles/Why-a-Masters-in-Finance-Wont-Make-You-a-Quant-Trader

Hard to say.

One quick thought is it depends a lot on what you want to do long-term. e.g. Studying economics would be a bit of a shift in direction, which could make sense if you wanted to go into policy or research, but not so much otherwise.

Another thought is to focus more on figuring out where you can really kick ass at what you do. All the options you list are good, so often then it comes more down to personal fit. Being really really good at something is often one of the best things you can do for your career capital.

A lot will also depend on the specific opportunities. Where can you work with great people? Where can you get a good mentor? If you want to build career capital, these are really important considerations too.

Final small thing, overall data science seems a little more in demand and a little higher paid than SWE, so could be good to move in that direction. I wouldn't put much weight on this though.

I'm currently doing a PhD in bioinformatics after doing a B.S. in biology. This probably isn't where I would have ended up if I could do it all over again, but it's a great way to get into a more quantitative field from a life sciences background. I took little math and no computer science in college, but I got into my PhD program on the strength of my biology experience. Now I'm using my PhD to make up for the skills I lack.

I did consider doing a masters, but I think a PhD offers much more career capital and prestige than a masters or certification. It also leaves more options open: for example, I've considered working for a funding agency like NSF. This would be impossible without a PhD. In my experience, biotech masters students were noticeably less sophisticated than the PhD students. They took fairly easy classes and did little research. Most PhDs in the U.S. are free and pay you a stipend. Compare that to masters degrees, which can cost $40K or more at a private university.

I'm doing bioinformatics at present. It seems to pay similarly to programming. Have you considered just doing programming / software development? That is usually more dependent on technical skill than credentialisation. Data science or data engineering could also be feasible if you like maths.

Could you do something more quantitative at Trinity? Generally more hard and quantitative keeps your options open better i.e. maths keeps your options open better than economics, and that keeps your options open better than finance.

I'd focus on options open more than prep for earning to give at this stage, however, if you were going for earning to give, then quantitative subjects like statistics, applied maths, engineering, and physics are also associated with the highest earnings. Though finance can be fine too.

I see that at Trinity you could also do pure economics, or you could do maths and economics or maths and philosophy. Maths and philosophy can be a great option if you're into it. From our recent profile:

In our view, philosophy is a good subject to study at undergraduate level if it’s taken in combination with a quantitative subject, like maths, computer science, or economics, because it teaches you how to write clearly, how to think clearly, and because certain issues in moral philosophy seem to us to be crucial in determining how to live your life. It’s a weaker all-purpose qualification than quantitative subjects, so we’d encourage undergraduates not to single-major in philosophy if they have the option of also majoring in a quantitative subject.

https://80000hours.org/career-guide/top-careers/profiles/philosophy-phd/

i.e. you can get both writing skills and quantitative skills, learn about important topics in the humanities, and get an impressive general purpose qualification.

I think the fame of the university you go to is worth putting some weight on, though it's a tricky issue. So, in general I'd say Trinity.

Finally, don't forget personal fit. Don't take a course you think you'll be bad at or really won't enjoy!

Some more thoughts here: https://80000hours.org/2013/11/summary-of-our-thoughts-on-how-to-pick-a-degree/

Sounds hard to decide. Have you any idea what kind of advocacy or research you'd want to do? Do you think many people go into finance from the ppes degree? I think financial math would be pretty interesting and would give you some cool technical skill. Another Q: what do people who are familiar with the universities day about them?

There are more EA software engineers than data scientists.

Seems pretty person-dependent though. Do you like math? Would you prefer research or industry? If you've done an honours or masters already, that might give you an idea of whether you'd like a PhD. Which skills do you lack in order to be able to work at a CS/data science area like machine learning?