Which jobs put you in the best long-term position? | The 80,000 Hours career guide (2023 edition)
- Most individuals reach peak productivity, income, and expertise between ages 40 and 60, typically requiring 10 to 30 years of focused practice to achieve expert-level performance.
- Peak output ages vary by field: ~30 for theoretical physics, poetry, and pure mathematics; ~40 for psychology and chemistry; ~50 for novel writing, history, philosophy, and medicine.
- The average age of S&P 500 CEOs and first-term US Presidents is 55.
- Research by K. Anders Ericsson indicates no convincing cases of extraordinary ability developing without intense, extended practice starting from a young age.
- While genetic factors (e.g., height for basketball) influence ease of entry, the research suggests anyone can improve most skills with focused practice over decades.
- Early career priorities should focus on building "career capital" rather than immediate high-impact contributions, as early roles rarely offer significant leverage for long-term change.
- Delaying meaningful impact to gain skills and training often results in far greater total impact later, given that productivity at peak influence (age 40–50) vastly exceeds that of a fresh graduate.
- Example: A program manager who felt unimpactful and burned out after joining a non-profit directly found better long-term prospects and skills by attending graduate school first.
- Career capital is defined by five specific components used to evaluate career options:
- Skills and knowledge: The rate of learning, utility of new skills, and availability of mentorship/feedback.
- Connections: Potential for meeting future collaborators, mentors, and influential figures.
- Credentials: Achievements, reputation, and signals to future employers (e.g., degrees, GitHub repos, blog quality).
- Character: Cultivation of virtues like integrity and judgment, and the influence of working alongside people of good character.
- Runway: Financial savings allowing for a 6-month minimum of security, with 12–18 months recommended for flexibility; high-interest debt should be paid before donating >1% of income or taking major pay cuts.
- The primary strategy for gaining career capital is to "get good at something useful," meaning acquiring abilities valued in the job market that are also relevant to global problems.
- This requires choosing valuable skills, finding a good personal fit, practicing over years, and positioning oneself in growing fields or scenes with momentum.
- Activities like networking or building credentials are effective only after one possesses useful skills to offer.
- Automation and AI trends suggest that the labor market will shift away from routine administrative tasks and creativity generation toward decision-making, social intelligence, and high-level expertise.
- Tasks hardest to automate include complex decision-making, relationship building, difficult motor skills, and high-level expertise where human judgment is legally or practically required.
- Jobs in the 70th to 99th income percentiles (e.g., chemical engineers, optometrists) face higher risk from AI than top-tier performers or low-skill social/manual jobs (e.g., entertainment, food prep).
- Future workers who excel will likely be those who can use AI to augment their productivity rather than compete against it.
- Specific recommended routes for gaining career capital include:
- Working at high-performance, growing organizations: Prioritize teams with strong mentoring, integrity, and reputation; tech startups and top AI labs are highlighted for combining these factors.
- Private sector roles often offer faster feedback loops on productivity and higher pay for runway compared to conventional non-profits.
- Smaller organizations allow broader skill acquisition; larger organizations offer better credentials and structured training.
- Graduate school: Focus on subjects with high flexibility and backup options, such as Economics and Machine Learning PhDs, which offer diverse career paths and high earning potential.
- Other useful fields include quantitative sciences (physics, CS), policy/law, biology subfields (virology, synthetic biology), and regional expertise (China, India, Russia).
- Philosophy or literature PhDs are noted as having lower backup options and higher competition.
- Policy careers: Entry routes include executive fellowships (e.g., Presidential Management Fellowship), working for politicians or campaigns, think tank research, and entry-level federal civil service roles.
- Skill development: Focus on transferable, high-demand skills such as software engineering, machine learning, management, information security, data science, marketing, sales, and expertise in emerging economies like China.
- Impressive achievements: Success in unconventional paths (e.g., founding a startup, becoming a top performer in a niche field like magic or bodybuilding) builds reputation and connections faster than formal credentials alone.
- Direct contribution: Working immediately on high-impact projects can generate superior career capital through learning by doing, motivation, and relevant connections, provided the project has a reasonable chance of success.
- Working at high-performance, growing organizations: Prioritize teams with strong mentoring, integrity, and reputation; tech startups and top AI labs are highlighted for combining these factors.
- A strategic trade-off exists between transferable career capital (skills applicable across many paths, e.g., management, communication) and specialist career capital (skills for narrow paths, e.g., malaria research).
- Early in a career, transferable capital is preferred due to uncertainty about long-term goals.
- Specialist capital becomes necessary later for entering high-impact niche roles but requires earlier commitment.
- The decision to delay impact for career capital (e.g., pursuing a PhD) must be weighed against the urgency of solving pressing global problems.
- Experts agree it is generally better to fix urgent problems sooner rather than later; the career capital gained from delay must substantially outweigh the lost immediate impact.
- There is a risk that delaying impact leads to abandoning the goal entirely.
- The guide concludes that career capital is the primary lever for long-term impact, built through diligent practice, strategic job selection, and skill acquisition, enabling individuals to become significantly more productive over their lifetimes.