80,000 Hours is a London-based
nonprofit organisation
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
that conducts research on which careers have the largest positive social impact and provides career advice based on that research. It provides this advice on their website and podcast, and through one-on-one advice sessions. The organisation is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, affiliated with the
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
The Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford was founded in 2001. It is part of Oxford's Humanities Division. The faculty is located next to Somerville College on Woodstock Road. As of 2020, it is ranked 1st in the UK and 2nd in the English-s ...
.
The organisation's name refers to the typical amount of time someone spends working over a lifetime.
Principles
According to 80,000 Hours, some careers aimed at doing good are far more effective than others. They evaluate problems people can focus on solving in terms of their "scale", "neglectedness", and "solvability", while career paths are rated on their potential for immediate social impact, on how well they set someone up to have an impact later on, and on personal fit with the reader.
The group emphasises that the positive impact of choosing a certain occupation should be measured by the amount of additional good that is created as a result of that choice, not by the amount of good done directly.
It considers indirect ways of making a difference, such as
earning to give (earning a high salary in a conventional career and donating a large portion of it), as well as more direct ways, such as scientific research or shaping government policy.
The moral philosopher
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher, currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a Secularit ...
mentions the example of banking and finance as a potentially high impact career through such donations in his TED Talk, "The why and how of effective altruism," where he discusses the work of 80,000 Hours.
Focus areas
80,000 Hours' primary focus is on advising talented graduates between the ages of 20 and 40.
It advocates
longtermism
Longtermism is an ethical stance which gives priority to improving the long-term future. It is an important concept in effective altruism and serves as a primary motivation for efforts that claim to reduce existential risks to humanity.
Sigal S ...
, the view that improving the long-term future is a moral priority, due to the large number of people who will or could exist in the future. Accordingly, the organisation spends significant resources considering interventions perceived to have persisting effects over time, such as preventing
nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear ...
or a particularly severe
pandemic
A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...
, improving
relations between China and the United States, or enhancing
decision-making
In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...
in large organisations.
Reception
80,000 Hours has recommended
earning to give, the practice of pursuing a high-earning career and donating a significant portion of the income to cost-effective charities. This recommendation has been received with some skepticism. Pete Mills argued in the ''Oxford Left Review'' that because the likelihood of bringing about social change is difficult to quantify, 80,000 Hours is
biased toward quantifiable methods of doing good, such as earning to give.
Over time, 80,000 Hours has deemphasised "earning to give", in favour of alternative paths like research, advocacy or policy reform, and begun recommending work on problems that are less easily quantified.
Funding
The largest funder of 80,000 Hours has been
Open Philanthropy
Open Philanthropy is a research and grantmaking foundation that makes grants based on the doctrine of effective altruism. It was founded as a partnership between GiveWell and Good Ventures. Its current co-chief executive officers are Holden ...
backed by husband and wife
Dustin Moskovitz
Dustin Aaron Moskovitz (; born May 22, 1984) is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Facebook, Inc. (now known as Meta) with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum and Chris Hughes. In 2008, he left Facebook to co-found ...
and
Cari Tuna with $10m of cumulative donations up to 2019.
Other significant individual donors include
Ben Delo
Ben Delo (, born 24 February 1984) is a British entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and former executive of BitMEX. In 2022, Delo pled guilty to breaking United States Bank Secrecy Act violations and received a 30 month probation sentence and $10m ...
, Luke Ding,
Sam Bankman-Fried
Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried (born March 6, 1992), also known by the initialism SBF, is an American suspected fraudster, entrepreneur, investor, and former billionaire. Bankman-Fried was the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX ...
, Alex Gordon-Brown, Denise Melchin and
Jaan Tallinn
Jaan Tallinn (born 14 February 1972) is an Estonian billionaire computer programmer and investor known for his participation in the development of Skype and file-sharing application FastTrack/ Kazaa. Jaan Tallinn is a leading figure in the field ...
. Organisational funders have included the
Frederick Mulder Foundation and the Effective Altruism Meta Fund. It received $50,000 from
Y Combinator
Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...
in 2015.
See also
*
Applied ethics
Applied ethics refers to the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in the areas of private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadersh ...
*
Effective altruism
*
GiveWell
GiveWell is an American non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentag ...
References
Further reading
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External links
*
{{Effective altruism
Centre for Effective Altruism
2011 establishments in the United Kingdom
Altruism
Career advice services
Organisations based in London
Organizations established in 2011
Y Combinator nonprofit organizations