Lecture, Tutorial
How to find the right career for you | The 80,000 Hours career guide (2023 edition)
- Abilities are largely built through decades of practice rather than discovered, meaning early predictions of career success are highly unreliable and intuitive decision-making is poor for long-term outcomes like job performance or business growth.
- Career outcomes exhibit extreme skew where the top 10% of contributors generate 50% of domain output, the most prolific individual is roughly 100 times more productive than the least, and the top 0.1% of papers receive 1,000 times more citations than the median.
- Personal fit acts as a multiplier for career capital, impact, and supportive conditions, with research showing it is likely more critical than other factors in the formula for a perfect job.
- Holland type matches show only weak correlations (0.1 to 0.3) with performance and satisfaction, whereas interviews, job tryout procedures, work samples, and speaking to experienced recruiters are identified as stronger predictors of future success.
- The optimal strategy for career planning involves a step-by-step exploration process starting early, utilizing a "ladder of tests" ranging from reading reviews (1-2 hours) and speaking to peers (2 hours) to internships, work placements, or 2-24 month commitments.
- Exploration is most valuable and least costly for individuals aged 25 and under, with specific advice to test alternatives before committing to a PhD, attempt business roles before non-profits, and utilize university holidays for internships to gather data on fit.
- A strategy of ranking options by upside potential suggests trying paths with high uncertainty and high rewards first, provided backup options exist, as the potential gain from succeeding in research or high-impact fields far outweighs the risk of switching to "earning to give" later.
- Decision-making should prioritize testing options before making high-stakes, irreversible commitments, as the cost of accidentally ruling out a great option early is greater than the cost of further investigation, and people often underestimate the number of viable career paths available.
- Empirical data indicates a massive gap between perceived and actual success rates, such as 75% of Division 1 basketball players believing they will play professionally compared to only 2% who do, suggesting individuals often overestimate their chances of success in specialized fields.
- The "sunk cost" bias may lead to staying in unsuitable roles, but a randomized study suggests people who make changes regarding important career questions gain an average of 2.2 points of happiness, supporting the view that quitting is often preferable to remaining on the fence.
- Even with extensive research, individuals cannot be certain about the best option or feel fully confident in their best guess, requiring a willingness to stop research when the best guess stabilizes and to accept that career decisions influence decades of life.
- Many successful figures, including Steve Jobs, Tony Blair, and Maya Angelou, explored multiple paths early in their careers, supporting the view that specialization early is not the norm and that changing jobs every three years for ages 25 to 34 is standard.