How to find a fulfilling career that does good
You have 80,000 hours in your career. It's your biggest opportunity to have a positive impact on the world.
How can you best spend those hours?
Problem area
Focus on the most pressing social problems — those that are big in scale, neglected and solvable — rather than those that are popular or you just happen to stumble into. Examples of pressing problems are: alleviating global poverty, improving animal welfare, and reducing existential risk.
Career path
Think broadly about all the ways you might contribute to solving those problems to identify those where you can make the biggest contribution. Consider earning to give, research, communication, community-building, charity entrepreneurship, and government and policy careers.
Personal fit
Focus on paths that have the best personal fit, and that best meet your other personal criteria. To find your best fit, think like a scientist: make some best guesses at the most promising paths and jobs, identify key uncertainties, and do cheap tests to resolve them. Keep updating your plan every 1–3 years.
Resources and opportunities
Career guidance resources
80,000 Hours
Has spent more than 10 years researching how you can best use your career to solve the world's most pressing problems. Includes a career guide, podcast and job board.
Probably Good
Is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to helping people find careers that are good for them and good for the world. They provide personal career advising, career profiles and other resources to empower more people to make a positive impact through their work.
High Impact Professionals
Helps working professionals to have the biggest impact possible. They run career workshops, support workplace groups and help run corporate fundraising campaigns.
Successif
Helps mid-career and senior professionals leverage their expertise to shape the future of AI. They offer career mentoring, opportunity matching and professional training.
Magnifying Mentoring
Supports, inspires, and connects a global community of women, non-binary, and trans people of all genders who are motivated to have a positive impact with their careers and lives.
School for Moral Ambition
School for Moral Ambition aims to stop the waste of talent. They provide fellowships, a global community and online resources to start your moral ambition circle and plan your career.
Effective Environmentalism
Researching impactful climate career advice, and help people find impactful careers through coaching and workshops.
Animal Advocacy Careers
Speeds up the end of unnecessary animal suffering by matching people to roles that help animals most. They have an online course, a job board and a careers advising service.
Job boards and talent directories
80,000 Hours vacaturebank
Is the go-to place for high-impact jobs. Especially for people who are willing to move abroad or are open to working remotely.
Opportunity Board
Helps aspiring effective altruists skill-build and find impactful positions. They feature everything short of permanent positions. This opportunity board features opportunities that require less time or experience.
High Impact Professional's talent directory
Hiring managers at high-impact organisations interested in your profile will contact you and encourage you to apply for open roles. Various directories are available, including for volunteering and finding co-founders.
Probably Good Job Board
Job Board with global impact jobs for many cause areas.
Animal Projection Jobs
Speeds up the end of unnecessary animal suffering by matching people to roles that help animals most. They have an online course, a job board and a careers advising service.
Alternative protein career portal
Good Food Institute's overview of job boards and a list of roles in the alternative protein scene.
List of job boards
List of impact-focused job boards, curated by Probably Good.
Training and Fellowship Programmes
AIM Ambitious Impact
AIM is an incubator for good and talent. Current programs are: Charity Entrepreneurship, Profit for Good and a Research program.
BlueDot Impact
Runs courses that support you to develop the knowledge, community and network needed to pursue a high-impact career. E.g. AI Safety fundamentals and Biosecurity fundamentals.
MATS program
Apply for the MATS program to fast-track your career in AI safety. Gain skills, financial support, and a network committed to reducing global risks. Apply now to make an impact.
School for Moral Ambition Fellowships
School for Moral Ambition aims to stop the waste of talent. Their fellowships are highly competitive and focused on attracting talent for a certain cause.
GFI's online course about alternative proteins
Good Food Institute provides this course about the science behind alternative proteins. It's free, self-paced and consists of 5 weeks.
Community & networking
EA groups in NL
There are effective altruism groups all over the Netherlands. Their purpose is to help their members maximise their social impact.
Effective Altruism Forum
Research, discussion, and updates on the world's most pressing problems. Including global health and development, animal welfare, AI safety, etc.
School for Moral Ambition's online community
SMA maintains a global online platform to connect with impact makers all over the world. They publish their online and physical events here as well.
10% club (Dutch)
The 10% club is a Dutch community of people who want to improve the world by making effective donations mainstream.
Consultants for impact
Consultants for Impact has been dedicated to supporting and connecting consultants passionate about improving the world since 2019.
High impact medicine
A global non-profit organisation helping medical students and doctors do the most good they can with their careers and donations.
High impact engineers
A global community created to communicate research on the highest-impact engineering problems and provide coordination and resources for engineers to tackle these problems.
Podcasts, video's & boeken
The 80,000 Hours Podcast
In-depth conversations about the world's most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.
80,000 Hours' career book (free)
Get a free paperback or PDF copy of the book when you join the 80,000 Hours newsletter. A free guide based on 10+ years of research on how to find a fulfilling career that does good.
Effective altruism videos
This YouTube channel contains videos that help you explore how to do the most good. Most are recordings of talks from Effective Altruism Global conferences (eaglobal.org), which are run by the Centre for Effective Altruism.
Nicoll Peracha
I've seen the horrors of war and famine, which humanity aims to prevent. In contrast, factory farming is growing, subsidised by governments, and nonprofits receive far less funding. I realised animal suffering is even more neglected than human suffering.
Céline Kamsteeg
I think it is a valuable flow-through effect of starting a charity that more people can get the opportunity to work on something impactful.
Jesse Hoogland
AI safety researcher
"The huge network I've gotten in contact with through EA has been amazing. I've made this pivot much, much faster than I think I could have accomplished in other comparable fields."