robertwiblin

Hey Devishard - keep in mind this is only one of four suggested approaches. We also say if you think your work to make money is going to do harm you shouldn't do it and link to a list of jobs you shouldn't take because they are harmful.

I don't personally agree with you that Microsoft has done much harm - maybe not even any harm at all on balance, given the positive inventions they made.

Certainly I don't think Microsoft was so bad that saving 10 million people's lives wouldn't go a long way to making up for it.

But if I did think Microsoft was very harmful, like you, I would agree you shouldn't earn to give there.

Fortunately, none of the paths we suggest are necessarily boring! And as we point out, personal fit and interest are really important.

If there's one thing I've learned on the internet, it's that it's hard to please everyone. ;)

I've turned off the university page redirect for now until we can evaluate whether it's overall a positive.

Hey Tom, we have that second step because we often deliver free workshops to people at their universities. Just this week I was emailing people who told us they are at universities in London to let them know about date we will be available to meet them personally.

If you just click anywhere else on the page, the popup will close and you can get back to reading the page! :)

I understand pop-ups are annoying, but without them I don't think 80,000 Hours' model would be sustainable (we couldn't show much impact and so donors wouldn't fund us).

Thanks! We're on it.

Hey fiatjaf, because it's part of a larger product that includes several interactive elements, the mods thought it should be a Show HN. :)

I'm another creator of the guide, look forward to fielding your questions and improving it with your feedback! :)

Hey thenobsta, that's a good point about it redirecting you to another page. I'll discuss it with our tech guy tomorrow.

Hey tbirdz, sorry if this was unclear but you can read the whole thing whenever you like by starting here and just going through: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/

Or you can watch the whole thing starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VRL-ByuQuo&list=PL-BRtcBm4Y...

Most people don't have time all at once and report wanting to do it in a few sessions.

Where on the site wasn't sufficiently direct about that? :)

"Will my email GoF##k@yourself.com be counted as a success or failure for your popup?"

I did see that one come through. I guess we just aren't right for one another.

I do hope you find another website that will treat you the way you deserve some day. ;)

We hate pop-ups too, but it's the only way we can make ends meet and keep the site running. :)

Hah that was me actually! :D

Glad it brought a smile to your face.

Thanks for the suggestion. We have tested whether people who sign up to the newsletter from appeals read it or click on link, and they do at the same rate as everyone else. :)

I reworded the bit on retirement to help deal with this.

Yeah you are right, we may be over-doing it. Think we should drop the all-screen one from the first page view when we add a special appeal because of a HN spike? I'll bring that up with the team. :)

No pop-ups --> 10% as many people join our newsletter --> we can't track whether we are having any impact --> no donations --> website disappears.

I don't find the results that surprising, but many people do.

OK I think I've fixed this now!

Don't blame the tech guy - I'm a writer and I set that up suddenly when I saw we were getting traffic from HN. Our coder would have done a vastly better job but it's 3am where he is! :)

Hey Ethbro, it's a good point that maybe retirement saving isn't fully dealt with in our article. I'll add a sentence about that tomorrow. Basically I would just aim to stay about $40-60k both while you're working and in retirement. So it's more a consumption target than income target. :)

It doesn't necessarily provide those things certainly. But inasmuch as it makes people fulfilled, it will mostly be because working for yourself is providing those things. :)

Working for yourself will often be fulfilling, because it can provide many of the six things we list that matter:

* Work you’re good at * Work that helps others * Engaging work that lets you enter a state of flow (freedom, variety, clear tasks, feedback) * Supportive colleagues * A job that meets your basic needs, like fair pay, short commute and reasonable hours * A job that fits your personal life.

Hey Ethbro, I read dozens of studies on income and happiness. What I found is summarised here: https://80000hours.org/articles/money-and-happiness/.

Some took a longer term view, in particular the ones on lottery winners.

Saving for retirement is obviously sensible. But I think the result will be the same - you won't be much happier retiring on $120,000 a year than $60,000 a year. What will matter at that point is having social connections and feeling that your work is/was meaningful.

I spent weeks doing a full review of the literature which is outlined in detail here: https://80000hours.org/articles/money-and-happiness/. I largely agree with Stevenson and Wolfers and this article does too. One of their co-authors on this research endorsed our bottom line.

Money does make you a bit happier, but most readers of HN are among the top 5% of income earners in the world, so it's not the top priority for them, on the margin. You can get more mileage by focussing on other things. I also think affective measures of welfare are more reliable than evaluative ones. But it's a huge issue that I had to write many thousands of words to cover properly, so check out the full article and see what you think.

I'm one of the authors of this piece, which was produced by a YC-backed non-profit trying to revolutionise careers advice (80,000 Hours). AMA!

"more money is usually correlated with more effort or more opportunity cost."

Both of these are discussed.

I think it's the failure to do interpersonal utility comparisons that were a huge ridiculous diversion in economics and I'm glad that mistake is falling out of fashion in favour of pragmatism.

It fits into our recommender that customises your suggested career based on information about you: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/career-recommender/

Let us know if this is, or would have, been useful to you, and how it could be better.

We'll be discussing actively in the comments (here or on the page) for the next few hours.

If people stop eating meat we would have more food for each person rather than less. See:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10062999.

It's completely wrong to say that anyone would go hungry because we stopped farming meat. The market would easily adjust and provide other foods at a lower cost.

Do you think you suffer when you click on an ad you think is relevant to you? I don't think internet ads do me much harm, especially well targeted ones I want to click on.

Only factory farming of animals is on there, and given the suffering of the animals involved I think it's a complete no-brainer that it overall does harm.