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Comment by dundarious | Hacker News Reader

> Ord and MacAskill co-founded an organization, 80,000 Hours[1], which advocates mostly not for effective giving (which the author derides as a "consumer hero" approach) but rather for spending your career working on one of the world's most pressing problems; notably including for instance several types of policy change.

That’s not a universally true statement about 80,000 hours. I took their career choice questionnaire and was told to work as a well paid Software Engineer and to donate a percentage of my income (which is what I was already doing — I’m fond of some of Effective Altruism). You could argue that is classic Consumer Hero advice.

I know you qualified your statement but I just want to emphasize it as I think it leaves room for criticism.

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For more concrete data: If you look at their current "key ideas" page,[1] they go over 4 categories of high-impact careers (notably including government/policy) and then say "if you think none of the categories above are a great fit for you, we’d encourage you to consider earning to give. It’s also worth considering this option if you have an unusually good fit for a very high-earning career."

This post[2] suggests 80k's key researchers think about 15% of people interested in EA would be the best fit for earning to give, while 10% of people attending an EA-themed conference were perfectly planning to.

I don't think criticizing effective altruism based on the assertion that it's mostly about earning-to-give is reasonable given those numbers or the framing in 80k's "key ideas" post.

[1]: https://80000hours.org/key-ideas/#career-categories [2]: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LrKFNQxjETPvzXQcv/...

> I took their career choice questionnaire and was told to work as a well paid Software Engineer and to donate a percentage of my income

The good thing about earning to give is it works no matter how niche your skill sets are.

What's an efficient way to deploy an expert microchip designer, when so few global poverty NGOs need microchips designed?

I got that same advice circa 2015. However I'm under the impression they started moving away from "earning-to-give" recommendations around 2015-2016.

It's still there mind you, but research and policy are prioritized higher. I'm not sure what else they would recommend to someone who is ill suited for these other careers.

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