We care a lot about reducing extinction risks and think doing so is one of the best ways you can have a positive impact with your career. But even before considering career impact, it can be natural to worry about these risks — and as it turns out, many people do!

In April 2023, the US firm YouGov polled 1,000 American adults on how worried they were about nine different potential extinction threats. It found the following percentages of respondents were either “concerned” or “very concerned” about extinction from each threat:

We’re particularly interested in this poll now because we have recently updated our page on the world’s most pressing problems, which includes several of these extinction risks at the top.

Knowing how the public feels about these kinds of threats can impact how we communicate about them.

For example, if we take the results at face value, 46% of the poll’s respondents are concerned about human extinction caused by artificial intelligence. Maybe this surprisingly high figure means we don’t need to worry as much as we have over the last 10 years about sounding like ‘sci fi’ when we talk about existential risks from AI, since it’s quickly becoming a common concern!

How does our view of the world’s most pressing problems compare? Well, our top two problems, existential risks from AI and catastrophic pandemics, rank lower in the poll than some of the other threats, but many people do seem to have serious concerns about them. (Though we wonder if people are aware that engineered pandemics seem especially dangerous compared to natural ones.)

We shouldn’t be that surprised that our list doesn’ quite match the poll’s rankings. In our view, one of the factors that makes problems particularly pressing is when they’re relatively neglected — not getting the level of attention they warrant.

Some concerns among the respondents are, in our judgement, off base. While we do list climate change among our top problems, and is causing tremendous harm, we don’t think it’s very likely to cause human extinction — a conclusion we argue for in-depth in our problem profile. Though it may be a risk factor for other extinction threats.

Human extinction from asteroid impacts is even more unlikely. Objects in space smash into Earth all the time, but collisions with something big enough to cause a mass extinction are exceedingly rare. Toby Ord, an advisor to 80,000 Hours, has estimated that the chance that an asteroid causes human extinction is about one in a million.

Let’s put aside an “act of God” — it’s hard to know if respondents meant that figuratively or literally, and if it’s literally, we’re pretty stumped on how to assess its likelihood. Extinction from infertility or alien invasion also seems quite unlikely to us.

Overall, the American public seems to have a mix of more plausible and less plausible concerns, at least by our lights. But we’d guess most people will agree that avoiding human extinction from any source should be a top priority, which is why we want to help many of our readers use their careers to address these threats.

Learn more:

• The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord
• Article: How to use your career to help reduce existential risk
• Article: Longtermism: a call to protect future generations
• Article: How to compare global problems for yourself

The post The public is more concerned about AI causing extinction than we thought appeared first on 80,000 Hours.

Your career is really ethically important, but it’s not a single, discrete choice. To build a high-impact career you need to make thousands of smaller choices over many years — to take on this particular project, to apply for that internship, to give this person a positive reference, and so on.

How do you make all those little decisions?

If you want to have an impact, you hope to make the decisions that help you have a bigger impact rather than a smaller one. But you can’t go around explicitly estimating the consequences of all the different possible actions you could take — not only would that take too long, you’d probably get it wrong most of the time.

This is where the idea of virtues — lived moral traits like courage, honesty, and kindness — can really come in handy. Instead of calculating out the consequences of all your different possible actions, try asking yourself, “What’s the honest thing to do? What’s the kind thing to do?”

A few places I find ‘virtues thinking’ motivating and useful:

• When I am facing a difficult work situation, I sometimes ask myself, “What virtue is this an opportunity to practise?” For example, maybe now is a great opportunity to practise being honest — even when it’s difficult or embarrassing.
• Sometimes I get socially anxious. When that happens I often find it helpful to ask what virtues I can bring to a conversation — how would a kind, gracious, and curious person act?

(Some people think that acting in line with virtues is just what it is to live a moral life, but even if you don’t think that, they are still useful mental shortcuts.)

Honesty and kindness are very commonly thought of as virtues. But it’s also worth asking whether there are other, non-standard virtues you might want to cultivate to help you accomplish what you think is most important.

In my case, I think ‘scope sensitivity‘ — caring much more about something that affects many more individuals or affects them to a much greater degree — is a virtue. Everyone has to prioritise in their work, and I think scope sensitivity helps people prioritise in ways that make the world better.

For example, becoming a doctor lets you help a lot of people. But if you’re also well-suited to a career that could help prevent the next catastrophic pandemic, you might be able to help even more people than you would in other areas of medicine. If you’re scope sensitive, you may notice this opportunity, and working to prevent or mitigate pandemics might become very appealing. I think that’s an admirable quality.

The main questions virtues bring up are:

1. How do you decide which character traits are virtues?
2. What do you do when two virtues conflict? For example, should you tell someone the brutal truth (honesty) or spare their feelings (kindness) by obscuring it?

I think to answer the first question it makes sense to look at the long-term consequences of acting in a certain way. If you act honestly as a general rule throughout your life, is that likely to make things go better or worse? I think there’s a good case that it will go much better; people will trust you, because you’ll be trustworthy — and this can be a big help in many areas of life.

You can also look at role models — what kinds of lived moral traits do the people who seem to have had a big positive impact have? One answer is courage: for example, Benjamin Lay stood up over and over for the idea that slavery was wrong, even when he faced severe social sanctions for it. To do a lot of good you might have to face down tough situations with courage.

And you can put plausible-sounding virtues to the test by asking what would happen if you applied them consistently over time. For example, you might think that agreeableness is a virtue because it makes people feel comfortable and supported. But if you’re practically always agreeable, people might not trust you to tell them what you really think, and you might go along with others’ plans even when they are bad. So it seems like a mixed bag.

Of course you can also go overboard with honesty; most people probably agree it’s a bad idea to tell the truth if a murderer asks for your friend’s location. But what makes honesty a virtue in my book is that it’s much better to go through life erring on the side of being too honest than not honest enough — so it’s a good general guide for behaviour. I think that’s less true of agreeableness.

Deciding what to do when virtues are in conflict is tough. But here are a few strategies:

• Is there something about the situation that makes one of the virtues more important? If the context makes trust especially important, you might have extra reason to lean into honesty in this case even at the expense of other virtues.

• Is there a commonly thought of hard and fast ethical rule that says what you should do? Even if you don’t philosophically believe in absolute rules, they usually point to very important considerations.

• Look at the consequences: in cases where heuristics fail us, it can be worth it to think explicitly about the consequences of each action — especially if the consequences are dramatically better or worse depending on what you choose.

The web team at 80,000 Hours has a few ‘virtues for 2023’ to help us navigate unexpected situations:

• Openness: be curious, transparent, and open to changing our minds.
• Patience: go for what’s best in the long-run, and don’t get unduly distracted by what’s salient now.
• Boldness: don’t be afraid to prioritise what we think is most important and push for it.

Learn more:

• Scope-sensitive ethics
• Why it’s a bad idea to break the rules, even if it’s for a good cause
• What is social impact? A definition

The post Why you should think about virtues — even if you’re a consequentialist appeared first on 80,000 Hours.

Over human history, there have been many times where dominant groups have given less consideration to the interests of others, often minorities in the society or those with less power.

But in the last 300 years, campaigns for equal consideration for people of different genders, sexualities, races, ethnicities, faiths, and abilities have made significant progress.

Though such campaigns are still works in progress, these examples of ‘moral circle expansion‘ suggest that positively shaping people’s values is possible and can have big impacts, and that there could be promising opportunities to continue this progress.

It seems likely that, if positive values were more widespread, this would help with a range of issues. These values include altruism and concern for those whose interests are often under-considered — including members of the abovementioned groups as well as people from different countries, future generations, nonhuman animals, or potential machine intelligences.

If it were possible to do effectively, promoting these values might improve the lives of many people suffering today and also be one way of reducing the chances of future moral catastrophes like continued factory farming or suffering of future potentially sentient machines. In general, this might be one of the broadest ways of helping with future problems that we’re not even aware of yet.

A recent book from our cofounder Professor William MacAskill, What We Owe the Future, presents the case that throughout human history, values change may have been radically contingent — meaning that a change in values is not likely to get ‘washed out’ by future developments and could instead persist for thousands of years. For example, Will discusses evidence that slavery might not have been abolished until much later, or perhaps would never have been abolished, if not for the moral advocacy of abolitionists.

If this is right (and we’re genuinely unsure), persistent values change might represent a very promising way to improve the long-run future.

Even if values change isn’t radically contingent in general, there could also be ways that the values held by society today or in the near future get ‘locked in’ for a long time — for example, in constitutions or in some plausible scenarios involving advanced AI systems — making it more important that positive values are widespread before such a point.

We’re unsure about the range of things an impactful career aimed at promoting positive values could involve, but one strategy would be to pursue a position that gives you a platform for advocacy (e.g. journalist, blogger, podcaster, academic, or even public intellectual) and then using that position to speak and write about these ideas.

Learn more about broadly promoting positive values

• A popular article explaining the idea of an expanding moral circle.
• The Sentience Institute offers a number of resources on moral circle expansion, with a focus on spreading concern to nonhuman animals.
• In the context of cause prioritisation within the effective altruism community, some have argued for the importance of spreading positive values through working to improve the welfare of farmed animals (comparing it to AI safety research). Others have pushed back against this view.
• An argument against moral advocacy being desirable in general.

Read next:  Explore other pressing world problems

Want to learn more about global issues we think are especially pressing? See our list of issues that are large in scale, solvable, and neglected, according to our research.

Continue →

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An essay by David Althaus and Tobias Baumann argues that when people with some or all of the so-called ‘dark tetrad’ traits — narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism — are in positions of power or influence, this plausibly increases the risk of catastrophes that could harm many people alive today or even influence the long-term future.

Developing better measures of these traits, they suggest — as well as good tests of these measures — could help us make our institutions less liable to be influenced by such actors. We could, for instance, make ‘non-malevolence’ a condition of holding political office or having sway over powerful new technologies.

While it’s not clear how large of a problem malevolent individuals in society are compared to other issues, there is historical precedent for malevolent actors coming to power — for example, Hitler and Stalin plausibly had strong dark tetrad traits — and perhaps this wouldn’t have happened if there had been better precautions in place. If so, this suggests that careful measures could prevent future bad events of a similar scale (or worse) from taking place.

There has been very little work on this topic that we know of.

Learn more

• David Althaus and Tobias Baumann’s essay
• Topic hub for risks from malevolent actors on the Effective Altruism Forum
• Podcast: Kevin Esvelt on cults that want to kill everyone, stealth vs wildfire pandemics, and how he felt inventing gene drives
• Podcast: Jaime Yassif on safeguarding bioscience to prevent catastrophic lab accidents and bioweapons development

Read next:  Explore other pressing world problems

Want to learn more about global issues we think are especially pressing? See our list of issues that are large in scale, solvable, and neglected, according to our research.

Continue →

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Liberal democracies seem more conducive to intellectual progress and economic growth than other forms of governance that have been tried so far, and perhaps also to peace and cooperation (at least with other democracies). Political developments that threaten to shift liberal democracies toward authoritarianism therefore may be risk factors for a variety of disasters (like great power conflicts), stagnation, or for society generally going in a more negative direction.

More speculatively, it might be especially pressing to maintain liberal democratic norms in countries like the US, where the ideals have an established history, and there are important technological developments happening (like advanced artificial intelligence) that could impact the long-run future.

For example, science and technology seem to be less thoroughgoingly tied to government and military operations in liberal democracies than in authoritarian regimes (though it’s a matter of degree). If scientists and other civilian actors are more likely to prioritise AI safety vs military operations, e.g. because they are less influenced by national interests, this could be helpful.

There are counterarguments to this: e.g. an authoritarian regime is also less subject to commercial incentives and might have more ability to shut down dangerous projects vs a liberal government working with private companies and scientists.

But in general, because AI safety is in the public interest (and could become a widely supported cause), developing it under a regime that is, by definition, less accountable to its people seems worse.

Moreover, the goals and uses of AI seem likely to be shaped to some extent by its political and moral context. If liberal democracies are more conducive to values like impartiality, peace, and human rights (which we take to be good), supporting liberal democracy could mean the future of this transformative technology will be more influenced by these values.

Again, the argument here involves a lot of uncertainty. But it still seems to us to be more likely than not that shoring up liberal democratic norms will be good for both people alive today as well as the long-run future.

A great deal of effort — from political scientists, policymakers and politicians, historians, and others — already goes into understanding this situation and protecting and promoting liberal democracies, and we’re not sure how to improve upon this.

However, it seems like there could be some promising interventions in this area that are currently relatively neglected, such as voting reform or improving election security in order to increase the efficacy and stability of democratic processes. A variety of other work, like good journalism or broadly promoting positive values, also likely indirectly contributes to this area.

In general, we’re not sure what would be most useful here, or if individuals can contribute as much as they can in other areas we highlight, but it seems similarly promising to some other areas like economic growth, which are also less neglected but possibly underexplored from the perspectives of effective altruism and longtermism.

Listen to our podcast episode with Mike Berkowitz, Executive Director of the Democracy Funders Network, to learn more.

Learn more about safeguarding liberal democracy

• Podcast: Audrey Tang on what we can learn from Taiwan’s experiments with how to do democracy
• Podcast: Tantum Collins on what he’s learned as an AI policy insider
• Podcast: Mike Berkowitz on keeping the U.S. a liberal democratic country
• Podcast: Glen Weyl on uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society

Read next:  Explore other pressing world problems

Want to learn more about global issues we think are especially pressing? See our list of issues that are large in scale, solvable, and neglected, according to our research.

Continue →

The post Safeguarding liberal democracy appeared first on 80,000 Hours.

If a catastrophe happens, we might be able to take action to significantly increase the chance that civilisation survives or gets rebuilt — allowing us the possibility of a long and flourishing future.

However, measures in this space receive very little attention today.

A recent investigation by Luisa Rodriguez suggests that recovery from even the worst catastrophes — if they fall short of killing everyone — is relatively likely.

For example, even if a nuclear disaster and resulting nuclear winter caused the deaths of 90–99.99% of people, she estimates we’d still be ~90–97% likely to recover eventually. In short, this is because:

• Different populations would be spread out geographically and some would be less affected than others. There would be numerous groups, and as time went on, some groups would likely find the means to survive even if others died out. (That is, groups would be separated and thus their fates ‘decorrelated.’)
• It seems like survivors would be able to subsist long enough to get back on their feet, given that humanity survived for thousands years without technology or society, and survivors would have access to supplies and memories left over from civilisation (which early humans didn’t).
• Non-traditional agriculture (e.g. cultivating and eating algae) would likely be feasible, helping humanity survive the nuclear winter.
• The minimal viable population for genetic diversity (and even the survival of basic technological and social knowledge) is very small compared to the population of Earth.

(Read the full report.)

That said, there has been very little research on this topic, so this could all be mistaken. And there does seem to be a lot we could do to increase our chances of survival after a collapse — e.g. developing alternative foods, or refuges to shield some people from the catastrophic event — so we think this is a promising area for more work.

Learn more about civilisation resilience

• Podcast: Luisa Rodriguez on why global catastrophes seem unlikely to kill us all
• Podcast: We could feed all eight billion people through a nuclear winter. Dr David Denkenberger is working to make it practical
• How much could refuges help us recover from a global
  catastrophe? by Nick Beckstead
• Podcast: Lewis Dartnell on getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
• Podcast: David Denkenberger on using paper mills and seaweed to feed everyone in a catastrophe, ft Sahil Shah

Read next:  Explore other pressing world problems

Want to learn more about global issues we think are especially pressing? See our list of issues that are large in scale, solvable, and neglected, according to our research.

Continue →

The post Civilisation resilience appeared first on 80,000 Hours.

Applications to this position are now closed.

About the 80,000 Hours web team

80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems.

We’ve had over 8 million visitors to our website (with over 100,000 hours of reading time per year), and more than 3,000 people have told us that they’ve significantly changed their career plans due to our work. We’re also the largest single source of people getting involved in the effective altruism community, according to the most recent EA Community Survey.

Our articles are read by thousands, and are among the most important ways we help people shift their careers towards higher-impact options.

The role

As a writer, you would:

• Research, outline, and write new articles for the 80,000 Hours website — e.g. new career reviews.
• Rewrite or update older articles with information and resources — e.g. about rapidly evolving global problems.
• Generate ideas for new pieces.
• Talk to experts and readers to help prioritise our new articles and updates.
• Generally help grow the impact of the site.

Some of the types of pieces you could work on include:

• Research articles — e.g. How replaceable are the top candidates in large hiring rounds? Why the answer flips depending on the distribution of applicant ability.
• Career reviews — e.g. for software engineering.
• Problem profiles — e.g. for extreme risks from climate change.

Which of these you’ll focus on will depend to some extent on your strengths and interests, as well as the needs of our audience. But as some indication of what success in the role might look like, over the next year, you might do things like:

• Research and write the most comprehensive and widely read assessment of an under-explored problem area — e.g. whole brain emulation, global surveillance, or potential existential risks from totalitarianism.
• Revamp our career planning course into a MOOC or interactive guide.
• Write a popular overview of high-impact career advice by major for undergraduates.

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for someone who has:

• Strong knowledge of and commitment to the ideals, philosophical arguments, and values of effective altruism and longtermism.
• Great communication skills.
• An aptitude for research and writing.
• The ability to learn quickly and independently.
• Excitement to work on whatever kinds of projects are highest priority.
• A good fit with our cultural values.
• Ideally, a track record of producing high-quality writing. This can include things like blog posts, articles, reports, and substantive Facebook posts — especially for broad audiences, and especially on topics related to effective altruism and longtermism. But even if you don’t already have a track record, we’d still encourage you to apply if you think you might be a good fit for this role.

We’re aware that factors like gender, race, and socioeconomic background can affect people’s willingness to apply for roles for which they meet many but not all the suggested attributes. We’d especially like to encourage people from underrepresented backgrounds to apply!

Details of the role

This is a full-time role. The salary will vary based on experience, but to give a rough sense, the starting salary for someone with one year of relevant experience would be approximately £61,000 per year.

We strongly prefer people to work in-person in our London office if possible, but are open to remote work in some cases. We can sponsor visas.

The start date of the role is flexible, but we would expect you to start during 2022 and prefer you to start as soon as you’re available.

Our benefits include:

• The option to use 10% of your time for self development
• 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays
• Standard UK pension with 3% contribution from employer
• Private medical insurance
• Generous parental leave
• Long-term disability insurance
• Flexible working hours
• Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office

Check out other positions at 80,000 Hours

• 

  Popular writing consultant

  Give us advice and feedback on our writing to make it more compelling, and thereby expand our reach.

  Read more

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We’re looking for a Head of Marketing to help us expand our readership and be the founding member of our marketing team.

We’re hoping to find someone who could take on the Head of Marketing position immediately. However, we’re also open to hiring a candidate with less experience who we could support to take on the responsibilities of a Head of Marketing over time. To apply for the more junior position instead, please see our Marketer job description.

80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems.

We’ve had over 8 million visitors to our website, and more than 3,000 people have told us that they’ve significantly changed their career plans due to our work. We’re also the largest single source of people getting involved in the effective altruism community, according to the most recent EA Survey.

Even so, about 90% of U.S. college graduates have never heard of effective altruism, and just 0.5% of students at top colleges seem highly engaged in EA. As Head of Marketing, your aim would be to help us reach all students and recent graduates who might be interested in our work. We anticipate this could increase our readership up to five times, and lead to hundreds more people pursuing high-impact careers.

We’re looking for a senior marketing generalist who will:

• Develop our marketing strategy. For example, you’d generate ideas for major marketing initiatives, decide which to pursue, and figure out which metrics we should optimise to most effectively achieve our goals.

• Run experiments in new ways to reach users. For example, you could set up a referral campaign with a book giveaway, coordinate a media campaign to launch the second version of our ‘key ideas’ series, or test other marketing ideas that you come up with.

• Own and improve our current approach to reaching users. For example, you might promote our work on social media and other platforms, write newsletters, and run A/B tests to maximise engagement.

• Build and manage a marketing team to execute on the above.

Which of these you’ll focus on will depend on your strengths and interests, as well as what you decide to prioritise. But as some indication of what success in the role might look like, over the next three years you might have:

• Doubled our newsletter subscriptions from 150,000 to 300,000
• Doubled our reach, increasing our unique website visitors from 1.5 to 3 million per year
• Increased engagement with our job board by 5x, taking the number of times users click through to a job ad they find on our job board from 10,000 to 50,000 per month
• Found effective ways to spend a six-figure (or even seven-figure) marketing budget
• Launched one or more major new marketing initiatives

We’re looking for someone who has:

• A strong interest in effective altruism and longtermism, ideally with experience in EA strategy
• Previous experience in any area of marketing, or a related field (This might be — but isn’t limited to — product management, software engineering, data science or communication; or maybe you’ve worked on a side project that attracted a large number of users)
• Experience building and managing a team
• An interest in thinking carefully about what will drive engagement with our work from people who might make especially high-impact career changes, and what this means for our marketing strategy
• An ambitious approach to the role, with enthusiasm for generating new ideas for how we might appeal to our audience
• Excellent written communication (In particular, you’re comfortable discussing decisions and uncertainties with the rest of the team in writing)

Ideally, you’d also have the ability to write engaging marketing copy that both appeals to our target audience and communicates the nature and promise of 80,000 Hours’ programmes.

This is a full-time, in-person role, based in London. You can work remotely for up to three months of the year if needed.

The salary will vary based on your skills and experience, but to give a rough sense, the starting salary for someone with five years of relevant experience would be approximately £81,000 per year.

Our benefits include:

• The option to use 10% of your time for self development
• 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays
• Standard U.K. pension with 3% contribution from employer
• Private medical insurance
• Long-term disability insurance
• Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office

To apply, please fill in this application form. If you have any problems submitting the form, please send your CV to sashika@80000hours.org.

The post Open position: Head of Marketing appeared first on 80,000 Hours.

We’re looking for a Marketer to help us expand our readership and be the founding member of our marketing team.

We’d like to support the person in this role to take on more responsibility over time and eventually become our Head of Marketing.

We’re also open to hiring someone more senior, who could take on the Head of Marketing role immediately. To apply for the Head of Marketing position instead, please see the job description here.

80,000 Hours provides free research and support to help people find careers tackling the world’s most pressing problems.

We’ve had over 8 million visitors to our website, and more than 3,000 people have told us that they’ve significantly changed their career plans due to our work. We’re also the largest single source of people getting involved in the effective altruism community, according to the most recent EA Survey.

Even so, about 90% of U.S. college graduates have never heard of effective altruism, and just 0.5% of students at top colleges seem highly engaged in EA. As 80,000 Hours’ Marketer, your aim would be to help us reach all students and recent graduates who might be interested in our work. We anticipate this could increase our readership up to five times, and lead to hundreds more people pursuing high-impact careers.

We’re looking for a marketing generalist who will:

• Run experiments in new ways to reach readers. For example, you could set up a referral campaign with a book giveaway, coordinate a media campaign to launch the second version of our ‘key ideas’ series, or test other marketing ideas that you come up with.

• Own and improve our current approach to reaching users. For example, you might promote our work on social media and other platforms, write newsletters, and run A/B tests to maximise engagement.

We would also be excited to support you towards eventually:

• Developing our marketing strategy. For example, generating ideas for major marketing initiatives, deciding which to pursue, and figuring out which metrics we should optimise to most effectively achieve our goals.

• Building and managing a marketing team to execute on the above.

We have some in-house marketing expertise you could learn from, and we’d also be open to you working with an agency or coach to develop your skills.

Your focus in this role will depend on your strengths and interests, as well as what you decide to prioritise. But as some indication of what success in the role might look like, over the next three years you might have:

• Doubled our newsletter subscriptions from 150,000 to 300,000
• Doubled our reach, increasing our unique website visitors from 1.5 to 3 million per year
• Increased engagement with our job board by 5x, taking the number of times users click through to a job ad they find on our job board from 10,000 to 50,000 per month
• Found effective ways to spend a six-figure (or even seven-figure) marketing budget
• Launched one or more major new marketing initiatives

We’re looking for someone who has:

• A strong interest in effective altruism and longtermism, ideally with experience in EA strategy
• An ambitious approach to the role, with enthusiasm for generating new ideas for how we might appeal to our audience
• Excellent written communication (In particular, you’re comfortable discussing decisions and uncertainties with the rest of the team in writing)
• An interest in thinking carefully about what will drive engagement with our work from people who might make especially high-impact career changes, and what this means for our marketing strategy

Ideally, you’d also have the following traits, but we encourage you to apply even if they don’t describe you:

• Previous experience in any area of marketing, or a related field (This might be — but isn’t limited to — product management, software engineering, data science, or communication; or maybe you’ve worked on a side project that attracted a large number of users)
• The ability to write engaging marketing copy that both appeals to our target audience and communicates the nature and promise of 80,000 Hours’ programmes

This is a full-time, in-person role, based in London. You can work remotely for up to three months of the year if needed.

The salary will vary based on your skills and experience, but to give a rough sense, the starting salary for someone with one year of relevant experience would be approximately £60,000 per year.

Our benefits include:

• The option to use 10% of your time for self development
• 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays
• Standard U.K. pension, with 3% contribution from employer
• Private medical insurance
• Long-term disability insurance
• Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office

To apply, please fill in this application form. If you have any problems submitting the form, please send your CV to sashika@80000hours.org.

The post Open position: Marketer appeared first on 80,000 Hours.

This announcement is an expression of interest, rather than a role we have formally opened. Because of this, we have a high bar for responding to enquiries (see below), and typically won’t be able to respond.

If we don’t respond, please don’t take it as a rejection! You should feel very welcome to respond to future ads for 80,000 Hours positions.

80,000 Hours provides research and support to help people switch into careers that effectively tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

The 80,000 Hours website gets 1-2 million unique visitors and sees over 100,000 hours of reading time per year. We are also one of the top sources of new members of the effective altruism community.

If you join us as a writer, you’d likely be one of the most widely-read writers in effective altruism.

Writers at 80,000 Hours produce pieces that communicate important ideas and arguments, inform readers about pressing global problems, and give advice to help readers pursue high impact career paths.

Some examples:

• Research pieces — e.g. How replaceable are the top candidates in large hiring rounds? Why the answer flips depending on the distribution of applicant ability
• Key advice articles — e.g. Ways people trying to do good accidentally make things worse, and how to avoid them
• Career reviews — e.g. for being a congressional staffer
• Problem Profiles — e.g. for extreme risks from climate change

The work would involve framing, researching, outlining, and writing articles, as well as generating ideas for additional articles, helping with others’ writing by providing comments, and generally helping grow the impact of the site.

If you’re a writer with a track record of publishing pieces for a popular audience and an interest in 80,000 Hours’ mission, please email arden@80000hours.org with

• 300-500 words explaining your interest in joining 80,000 Hours’ mission and the problem areas we prioritise most highly
• Four published writing samples, written for a popular audience

Thank you for your interest in 80,000 Hours! We’ll reach out to discuss a potential role if we think you’re a particularly great fit.

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