80,000 Hours

80,000 Hours is a San Francisco-based organisation that conducts research on the careers with positive social impact and provides career advice. It provides this advice online, through one-on-one advice sessions and through a community of like-minded individuals. The organisation is part of the Centre for Effective Altruism, affiliated with the University of Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.^[1] The organisation's name refers to the typical amount of time someone spends working over a lifetime.^[2] It was one of the nonprofits funded by startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2015.^[3]

Principles

According to 80,000 Hours, some careers aimed at doing good are far more effective than others. On their framework for assessing different career options, the value of a career is regarded as depending on both its potential for impact and on the degree to which it gives the individual better opportunities to have an impact in the future.^[4]

The group emphasises that the positive impact of choosing a certain occupation should be measured by the amount of additional good that is done as a result of this choice, not by the amount of good directly done.^[5] It considers indirect ways of making a difference, such as earning a high salary in a conventional career and donating a portion of it, as well as direct ways, such as scientific research. The moral philosopher Peter Singer mentions the example of banking and finance as a potentially high impact career through such donations in his TED Talk, "The why and how of effective altruism," where he discusses the work of 80,000 Hours.^[6]

William MacAskill is the Founder and President of 80,000 Hours,^[7] the Co-founder and Vice-President of Giving What We Can,^[8] and a Research Associate at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University.^[9]

Criticism

80,000 Hours has promoted the idea that pursuing a high-earning career and donating a significant portion of the income to cost-effective charities can be an effective philanthropic strategy for some people. John Humphrys criticised this idea on the BBC Today programme, saying that people interested in becoming wealthy tend to be selfish and that idealistic young people will become cynical as they age.^[10]

This idea was also criticised in the Oxford Left Review, where Pete Mills wrote that lucrative careers perpetuate an unjust system.^[11] In addition, he argues that because the likelihood of bringing about social change is difficult to quantify, 80,000 Hours is biased toward quantifiable methods of doing good.

Over time 80,000 Hours has deemphasised 'earning to give', in favour of alternative paths like research, advocacy or policy reform, and begun recommending work on problems that are less easily quantified.^{[12] [13]}

David Brooks of The New York Times has criticised the organisation for its consequentialist approach to altruism and has argued that cultivating altruism is not purely a matter of maximising one's positive social impact.^[14]

The effective altruism movement, of which 80,000 Hours is a part, has been criticised by Ken Berger, the founder of Charity Navigator for its efforts to objectively compare and prioritise charitable causes, which he believes to be a subjective process that is the responsibility of individual donors.^[15] William MacAskill responded to this article justifying the need to figure out which charities do the most good.^[16]

See also

• Earning to give
• Room for more funding
• Applied ethics
• GiveWell

References