What should I read if I’m new?
Are you new to 80,000 Hours, and wondering where to start?
Here’s a quick summary of our most popular blog posts from over the past year to make it much easier to get a quick overview of our key content and ideas. Even if you’ve been around the site for a while, you might might find something here you’ve missed or forgotten about!
Our core ideas
What is effective altruism? And what does it really mean to be an effective altruist?
What does it really mean to make a difference? How the common sense view often gets it wrong
Why do we need an evidence-based approach? It’s not always obvious what works, and the impact of different career paths can vary massively.
It’s hard to tell which careers make the most difference, but estimation and quantification are the best tools we have.
Types of high impact career
Could you make more difference in the corporate sector than working for a charity?
How to create the world’s most effective charity
How hard is it to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
The power of effective activism
A career in charity evaluation?
Salary or startup? How do-gooders can gain more from risky careers
Career planning
Our research on how to find a job you’ll love
Making better career decisions: common biases and how to overcome them, and two questions you won’t want to ask yourself but should.
The best existing resources for planning your career
Interviews with high impact people
How to make a difference in research: An interview with Nick Bostrom
Interview with Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell
How to choose a research topic: An interview with Anders Sandberg
Advice on going into a research career: An interview with Richard Thaler
Trading, donating and charter cities: An interview with Ben Gilbert
Other resources
Effective Altruists on Facebook
A blog on Effective Altruism curated by William MacAskill, 80,000 Hours founder.
The Giving What We Can blog, our sister organisation