Insider insights from people reviewing their own careers
The people who know the most about a career path are usually the people following that path themselves.
Luckily, some members of the effective altruism community have written about their jobs, including insider tips on how to get into similar positions, and how to have an impact once you’re there.
Here are a few we think are especially exciting.
This anonymous congressional staffer gave a fascinating overview of how they managed to land their role just after graduating college. We think that working in governments in an area directly related to a top global problem is a crucial category of high-impact career. If you’re in the UK, check out this career review of working in the UK Parliament.
Kyle Fish was studying for a PhD in biomedical engineering when 80,000 Hours introduced him to his future cofounder, Grigory Khimulya. In this blog post, Kyle — now CTO of Telis Bioscience — writes about his startup’s work accelerating drug development to reduce global catastrophic biological risks. Check out our review of founding projects that tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
The Future of Humanity Institute (FHI) at the University of Oxford does some of the world’s best research into existential risks and the ways we can impact future generations. In this blog post, Robert Long writes about how he ended up as a researcher at FHI, and everything he’s learned along the way. This kind of research into global priorities is one of our highest-priority career paths.
Being a software engineer can be a great way to have an impact. In this article, David Shepherd writes about his work for Wave building affordable financial infrastructure for sub-Saharan Africa. David’s advice would likely also apply to many other software engineering roles.
The anonymous author of Applied Divinity Studies — which has posts like why people should try to become billionaires and how long you should take to decide on a career — writes about how they spend their time. It’s an unusual but potentially effective career path that could also lead to a career in research, journalism, or if things go especially well, becoming a public intellectual.
If you’ve ever considered entering academia, you might be interested in the thoughts of Kevin Kuruc, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Oklahoma. He focuses on economic aspects of research into global priorities and is also a Research Affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute at the University of Oxford.
Read next: Learn about other high-impact careers
Want to consider more paths? See our list of the highest-impact career paths according to our research.