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Career guide
Career guide
The 80,000 Hours Career Guide
Introduction: Why read this guide?
Part 1: What makes for a dream job?
Part 2: Can one person make a difference?
Part 3: Three ways anyone can have an impact
Part 4: Scale, neglectedness, and solvability
Part 5: The world's most pressing problems
Part 6: Which jobs help people the most?
Part 7: Career capital
Part 8: Personal fit
Part 9: How to be successful
Part 10: How to make your career plan
Part 11: How to get a job
Part 12: Community
Summary: Just the bottom lines
Research
Problem profiles
Find out about the world's biggest and most neglected problems.
See all →
Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear war
Great power war
Climate change
Capacity building
Building effective altruism
Global priorities research
Improving decision making
Other promising areas
Civilisation resilience
Artificial sentience
Promoting positive values
Space governance
Risks of stable totalitarianism
Factory farming
Easily preventable or treatable illness
Wild animal suffering
See all problem profiles →
Skills
The most useful skills for making a difference.
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Top skills to build early in your career
Policy and politics
Organisation-building
Research
Communicating ideas
Software and tech
Engineering
Experience with an emerging power
Expertise relevant to a top problem
See all our skills pages →
Career reviews
Learn about high-impact career paths.
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Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI safety technical research
AI governance and coordination
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
Helping build the effective altruism community
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
See more →
How to build great career capital
See our top recommendations →
See all career reviews →
Advanced series
Our most important research findings.
Read the full series →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
Harmful jobs
Global priorities
Problem selection
Existential risks
Top problems list
Contribution
How to think about your contribution
Effective solutions
List of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Gut instinct
Differences in productivity
Comparative advantage
Strategy
Ambition
Coordination
Exploration
Impact and satisfaction
Accidental harm
Read the full series →
Browse all our content
Pick a topic to explore or check out our most popular pieces.
Career planning and decision making
How to make your career plan
All our other planning resources
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Career capital
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
Advocacy
Existential risk
Top-recommended careers
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
All articles →
See all →
Top areas to work on
Preventing an AI-related catastrophe
Catastrophic pandemics
Nuclear war
Great power war
Climate change
Capacity building
Building effective altruism
Global priorities research
Improving decision making
Other promising areas
Civilisation resilience
Artificial sentience
Promoting positive values
Space governance
Risks of stable totalitarianism
Factory farming
Easily preventable or treatable illness
Wild animal suffering
See all problem profiles →
See all →
Top skills to build early in your career
Policy and politics
Organisation-building
Research
Communicating ideas
Software and tech
Engineering
Experience with an emerging power
Expertise relevant to a top problem
See all our skills pages →
See all →
Our list of top high-impact career paths
AI safety technical research
AI governance and coordination
Biorisk research, strategy, and policy
Information security in high-impact areas
Expert in AI hardware
Helping build the effective altruism community
China-related AI safety and governance
Grantmaker
Operations in high-impact organisations
Research into global priorities
More promising paths
Be a founder
Software engineering
Journalism
See more →
How to build great career capital
See our top recommendations →
See all career reviews →
Read the full series →
Introduction
Your most important decision
Foundations
A definition of impact
Longtermism
Harmful jobs
Global priorities
Problem selection
Existential risks
Top problems list
Contribution
How to think about your contribution
Effective solutions
List of high-impact careers
Personal fit
Gut instinct
Differences in productivity
Comparative advantage
Strategy
Ambition
Coordination
Exploration
Impact and satisfaction
Accidental harm
Read the full series →
Career planning and decision making
How to make your career plan
All our other planning resources
Selected topics
Moral philosophy
Career capital
Job satisfaction
Anonymous advice
Unconventional advice
Advocacy
Existential risk
Top-recommended careers
See all topics →
Top articles from outside our guides
Best charities to donate to
Misconceptions about effective altruism
High-impact research questions
What are your chances of getting elected to Congress, if you try?
How many lives does a doctor save?
What's the impact of voting?
Advice for undergraduates
All articles →
Job board
Podcasts
Our podcasts
The 80,000 Hours Podcast
80k After Hours
Curated series
The 80,000 Hours Career Guide
Effective Altruism: An Introduction
Effective Altruism: Ten Global Problems
On Artificial Intelligence
Get 1-1 advice
Newsletter
New releases
All articles
About
About us
Introduction
Meet the team
Our donors
Community
Contact us
Support us
Take our survey
Donate to 80,000 Hours
Stay updated
Acknowledgements
Work with us
Our impact & credibility
Evaluations
Our mistakes
Research process and principles
What others say about us
Translations of our content
Home
Authors
Alex Lawsen
Search for:
New releases
All articles
About
About us
Introduction
Meet the team
Our donors
Community
Contact us
Support us
Take our survey
Donate to 80,000 Hours
Stay updated
Acknowledgements
Work with us
Our impact & credibility
Evaluations
Our mistakes
Research process and principles
What others say about us
Translations of our content
Author archive:
Alex Lawsen
2023
September
Alex Lawsen on avoiding 10 mistakes people make when pursuing a high-impact career
Podcast (80k After Hours)
February
Expression of interest: headhunting lead
Blog post
2022
June
Know what you’re optimising for
Blog post
February
Alex Lawsen on his advice for students
Podcast (80k After Hours)
