Considerations when planning an impact-centric career
Michelle Hutchinson's insights on career planning combined with my unsolicited takes.
This is a summary of Michelle Hutchinson on what people most often ask 80,000 Hours. A few notes:
The podcast episode is more than two hours long, so this summary won’t cover everything that was discussed. That said, I have tried to capture and expand upon points I thought would be most insightful to a wide-enough audience.
I have grouped different points under common themes, so the order of this summary is different than that of the podcast.
Some of the sections below contain my opinions/reflections (and I have used the Personal commentary tag for these). I think these may be helpful to those who are early in their career. If you have any questions or follow-ups, feel free to comment or reach out!
I recommend giving the entire episode a listen, but if you are pressed for time, I hope this summary helps!
Table of Contents
I. Practical to-dos for early-career folks II. On common career planning heuristics and their pitfalls III. To Persist or to Pivot? IV. On managing risk V. On 80,000 Hours advising
Reading time: 12 minutes
Practical to-dos for early-career folks
Generally, apply widely. This is especially important for college seniors because once you get a job, it is hard to motivate yourself to apply to other options. Apply to various positions and organizations. If you end up accepting your backup option, then continue thinking carefully about other opportunities and apply/switch when possible.
Consider the full spectrum of options that may be good before narrowing down career paths and jobs.
Undergrads are especially keen to narrow down options too early.
Sometimes, people rule out options based on stereotypical impressions.
As a senior in college, you are juggling end-of-semester tasks and applying for jobs, so thinking deeply about the latter may be challenging.
Personal commentary: I think there are other reasons why this makes sense —
Post-undergrad, some may look just for job/financial stability, so choosing and sticking with whichever opportunity you can successfully land makes sense. But this prevents us from thinking about our track, let's say, ten years down the line.
It may be psychologically easier to deal with fewer options.
I think the inverse is also true: People choose options based on stereotypical impressions (some discussion about this under the first point in the To Persist or to Pivot? section).
Quickly ruling out options is bad if the cause you are considering is important and neglected. Your surroundings could affect prioritization; if everyone around you cares about X, you will likely value working on X.
Personal commentary: I am guilty of this.
If you are in college and active in socially aware circles, it is possible that you think —
P1: Climate Change is the most pressing problem in the world, and that
P2: It is better to work on more pressing problems than less pressing ones.
If this is the case, you could then ask yourself: “Why am I not working on the problem I consider to be more important than anything else in the world?”Now, there are reasonable reasons — everything ranging from sheer disinterest to higher marginal impact working on a different cause — why someone might believe P1 and P2 but still choose a different career path. This wasn’t the case for me, however. At the time, I couldn’t come up with a reason why I shouldn’t pursue Climate Change, and the inconsistency between my beliefs and actions was troubling. There is more of a story there, but I will skip that for now.
In retrospect, I think the question I asked myself was the correct one, but my reasoning was lackluster. Some mistakes I made:I didn’t consider any other causes; after all, climate change isn’t the only issue in the world. The answer to the question “What’s the most pressing global priority?” seemed settled, so I started looking into potential ways I could shift my research focus, and I didn’t explore other important causes I could potentially contribute to.
Lack of considerations such as opportunity costs, counterfactual and marginal impact, and comparative advantage, and so on. To give a more concrete example, I didn’t consider that my contribution would be higher in a field with, let’s say, only ten working professionals, instead of a field where there are a thousand working professionals.
I was needlessly restrictive about future career roles. I undermined the versatility of my degree and skills, and had other inaccurate preferences/beliefs:
“I have to work on something that is related to astronomy, because I am doing a bachelor’s in astronomy, and this has been my childhood dream…”
“I have work on something related to my degree, otherwise my degree will be wasted.”
“My job needs to involve programming and data analysis because it is cool and, somehow, tied to my identity.”
Looking back, it seems obvious that 40 years of my working life shouldn’t hinge on 4 years of my degree. But identifying that this was happening and overcoming these beliefs was a time-taking process.
Before applying to a job in or pursuing cause X, do “cheap tests” to gauge if you would enjoy that position or career path.
Personal commentary: Cheap test here means anything that helps you determine whether you should rule out an option and takes the least amount of time, money, and effort feasibly possible. Few examples: having a conversation with someone working in that field, reading a book on the topic, (for jobs that require it) completing the work trial and observing how you feel about it, working part-time in that position, if possible, or doing an internship.
Reach out to others for help and guidance.
Early career folks are reluctant to have 1-on-1s because they may think they need specialized experiences/tips to share.
One way to help is by red-teaming each other's plans; for this, you don’t need unique insights. Simply pointing out potential weak points in someone's career plan could be valuable.
Talking to others in a different field might help decide what working on that cause feels like.
Personal commentary: I can imagine why this may be hard to do because, for some, this may be an emotionally charged topic, and sharing and receiving feedback requires being open and vulnerable. But —
People underestimate that career-related anxieties and questions might be shared and that getting support would be helpful.
For many, it will be costlier to brood and plan in silence instead of sharing their plans and getting feedback.
Assess differences in impact of various career paths as scrupulously as possible.
Personal commentary: Rigorous, personal cause-prioritization is underrated but crucial for impact-oriented career planning, and this is true within and across causes.
I am not paraphrasing exactly, but a roughly correct quote from my advisor that I really like: "We are just looking at asteroids, not solving cancer."
Prioritization isn't a crazy new idea. Researchers prioritize when choosing their next project, and entrepreneurs prioritize when starting a new company. If you have ever planned your day or budget, then you are familiar with the necessity and benefits of prioritization. See related: The Hamming question.
I think some folks have this idea that impactful jobs are all equally impactful, which is not true. Or that any good job is, well, good and equally worth pursuing. There are clearly jobs that address more pressing and neglected problems than others (bio-risk prevention, for instance). Within comparatively less neglected problems, there are still opportunities for outsized impact; for example, if you are convinced that you want to work on climate change, then something like climate change migration policy might be more impactful on the margin than paleoclimatology (moderately uncertain about this example). There is often a third, more impactful thing that more folks should be working on (for example, moral circle expansion).
That said, Cause Prioritization is situation and personal-fit dependent, so determining what “the most impactful job” is likely not that useful. Instead, a better (and more challenging) question to ask yourself: “What is the highest impact career that I can pursue?”
On common career planning heuristics and their pitfalls
Choosing roles that seem most natural for your background or following a pre-defined pipeline may not always be the best strategy.
Instead, choose the most impactful jobs that fit your background best.
For some highly impactful roles, there won't be pre-defined pipelines.
Example of a pre-defined pipeline: Bachelor's to Ph.D. to Postdoc to (another Postdoc to) Professorship.
Personal commentary: I definitely followed the pre-defined pipeline because it seemed like "what I was supposed to do" and "the safe and obvious choice." In hindsight, I shouldn’t have defaulted to such ideas. If I had all the experience and information I have now, I would have been more open to non-traditional career paths and would have experimented far more early on.
Introspection alone is not a good way to test how well-suited you are for a role.
For example, Michelle initially thought she was shy and didn't enjoy public interaction, so she chose a research-based position; her current role comprises of lots of 1-on-1 interaction, and she enjoys this job the most.
Personal commentary: Initially, I thought only positions involving quantitative research would be best suited for me (I am unsure how I made up my mind about this in high school since I didn't have any research experience myself). I started doing research mid-college and greatly enjoyed aspects of it; if I stopped there, I would have always believed that only research roles were the right fit for me. Now, having been involved in a few different independent projects, I think I can also be successful at roles that require organization building and running.
“Study the thing you find most interesting” may not be an optimal way to choose a major.
The careers advice I got in school was very much, “Study the things that you think are interesting” and so I studied physics and philosophy as my undergraduate without really ever planning to be a physicist or a philosopher.
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I think maybe coming out having learned some useful skills and learned more about yourself seems more valuable and this is the reason that I actually feel that American degrees are much better than British ones because in the UK we have to choose one specific subject to study for university and physics and philosophy is actually unusually broad for the UK. Whereas in the US, you take a while to choose your major, and that seems much better. You get a proper time to try out different courses, see which ones you’re good at, which ones you seem to enjoy and only then do you pick your major.
People often think only about the next steps or jobs instead of their long-term career trajectory. Instead of asking, "What's the natural next step that seems decent?" it is better to ask: "What's the best long-term path for me, and how does my next position fit into that picture?"
To Persist or to Pivot?
There are things you could do if you tried harder vs. things you could do if you were a different person. If the latter is the case, then you shouldn't feel bad about being the person you are.
Personal commentary: I found this point unique, and I struggle with it quite a bit.
Sometimes, the idea of pursuing a path is much more exciting than actually doing the thing. I am reflecting on my initial choice to study physics, which was driven by idealized notions of "what doing physics research must feel like," thanks to popular media and YouTube. By the time I was taking sophomore year physics, it was becoming increasingly clear that I didn't enjoy these courses (so-so pedagogy also played a role here) and that research topics in the area didn’t seem that appealing.
But this gets tricky because there is definitely a phenomenon where people give up on an option too quickly. For example, I took my first programming course freshman year and felt overwhelmed. I took another programming class later that year and felt slightly better about it. But then, I didn't do any programming for a year until I started working on a research project. It took me about a year from that point to get a better handle on the concepts and enjoy it. So, all in all, it took me >2.5 years to realize that I truly enjoyed several aspects of programming. This time frame would have been much shorter if I made different choices, but that is besides the main point. If I had given up after the first semester, I wouldn't be in the position I am in now and would have thought I was simply incapable of programming.
So, there's a fine line to traverse here, and it can get tricky to realize when something doesn't suit you vs. when you are giving up early. I don't know how to precisely differentiate between the two, except by being observant and updating your beliefs regularly.
It can be more challenging to change or consider alternate career paths and jobs if you enjoy your current position.
Personal commentary: I am guilty of this as well. There are a host of factors that make me like my current position a lot, so leaving it for something else has always been a challenging idea. If you are in this position, it is very easy to fall for motivated reasoning and find reasons that justify the status quo. I am counteracting this by:
Identifying my future goals as best as possible (I am still working on this)
Talking to others in my position and much further in their career
Mapping out what alternate paths and pivots would look like if I wanted to make a switch now
Assessing if it is reasonably highly likely to reach my current long-term goals by sticking with my current plans (or making adjustments to my current plan)
Based on this, I think it still makes sense for me to continue on and try to excel at my current position albeit with some modifications (i.e., which skills to pick up along the way, which projects to focus on, et cetera).
On managing risk
Michelle is generally sympathetic to risk aversion, but —
Sometimes people don't imagine how good things could be if the other, less-considered options went well.
It is common to underestimate fallback options.
Path dependence might make you feel like you'll have to return to square one if your plan doesn't work out. This is usually untrue, and there are faster ways to switch to other options.
People don't ask themselves, "How bad is taking a step back in your career?"
Personal Commentary: This was an eye-opening question for me. I seldom sincerely imagined what taking a step back would mean for me. It seemed binary — either I would keep climbing up to some ideal state in my career or catastrophe! And consequently, I would discard any option that seemed like a step back. But such quick dismissal isn’t reasonable. Maybe I would have to take a more junior role for a few years before getting to a more preferable position, but would this matter if I was ultimately able to drive meaningful change?
Okay, my example above is not that bad, and some setbacks can be calamitous, so you should tune your appetite for risks accordingly. That said, it is also easy to be too risk-averse and not carefully consider what fallback options would look like for you.
On 80,000 Hours advising
According to Michelle, 80K's advising is suitable for:
People who aren't that connected to EA-minded folks
People who broadly share 80K Hours' worldview (to see if you roughly agree with their worldview, read this article).
People who are less locationally constrained
Misconceptions:
That 80K is solely interested in their priority paths; there are more niche paths that their advisors are happy to explore.
That advisees will get career prescriptions (i.e., something like, "You should do A or B") during the call. Instead, advisors usually explore your options and ask you pointed questions about why you think those options make sense to you.
Having been through 80K’s career call, I can attest this is true.
One thing that surprised Michelle: people are willing to make big switches.
"I talked to someone recently who had been working on improving the criminal justice system in the US for quite a long while, and they had been aiming to do good for many years. They deliberately had gone to a university where they could finish their undergraduate early because they felt that was just messing around before they were actually helping people. Then they had worked in criminal justice and then gone to law school. And when I was talking to them they were really very happy to think through, "Is this actually the most impactful cause that I could work on? How should I weigh up the fact that I already have a lot of capital in this area compared to switching area"? That kind of thing. Which I just feel it's so nice to talk to people who are that flexible and happy and are so much interested in figuring out dispassionately what's the best thing for them to do."
This recent post on the EA Forum further describes “What happens on an 80,000 Hours call?”