80,000 Hours – Marketing (2025) is sponsored by Open Philanthropy. Supports marketing and advertising efforts for 80,000 Hours, an organization aiding impactful careers.

80,000 Hours: How to make a difference with your career Our new book, a ridiculously in-depth guide to a fulfilling career, is out May 2026. Preorder now We’ll help you find a role that shapes the future We’ll help you find a role that shapes the future We help people find fulfilling careers that make a big positive impact.

Our career guide, 1-1 advising, and other resources can help you: Decide what problems to focus on Find and compare jobs that tackle those problems Our resources are based on over 10 years of research, plus advising thousands of people 1-1 on their careers. We’re a nonprofit, and you can access all our advice for free.

This May, we’re releasing a new edition of our career guide with Penguin Random House, revised and updated for the age of AI. It covers why “follow your passion” gets things backwards, why many “safe” careers are among those most exposed to automation, and why the world’s most pressing problems are the ones almost nobody is working on. It’s also full of practical tips and tools.

You’ll come away with a plan to use your 80,000 hours in a way that’s rewarding and fulfils your potential to make a difference. Every college grad should read this. — Tim Urban creator of Wait But Why If you're worried about wasting your life, read this book.

— Rutger Bregman author of Humankind If this had been published a decade earlier, it'd have saved me many restless nights. — Hannah Ritchie author of Not the End of the World Every college grad should read this. — Tim Urban creator of Wait But Why Every college grad should read this.

— Tim Urban creator of Wait But Why If this had been published a decade earlier, it'd have saved me many restless nights. — Hannah Ritchie author of Not the End of the World This May, we’re releasing a new edition of our career guide with Penguin Random House, revised and updated for the age of AI.

It covers why “follow your passion” gets things backwards, why many “safe” careers are among those most exposed to automation, and why the world’s most pressing problems are the ones almost nobody is working on. It’s also full of practical tips and tools. You’ll come away with a plan to use your 80,000 hours in a way that’s rewarding and fulfils your potential to make a difference.

What are the world’s most pressing problems? The problem you work on is probably the largest factor in how big a difference you can make. It helps to focus on issues that are large in scale, tractable, and unduly neglected by the rest of society.

Some of these issues may even threaten humanity’s future — making them especially high priority. Here’s our (uncertain!) ranking of global problems where additional people can have the most impact: What are the world’s most pressing problems?

The problem you work on is probably the largest factor in how big a difference you can make. It helps to focus on issues that are large in scale, tractable, and unduly neglected by the rest of society. Some of these issues may even threaten humanity’s future — making them especially high priority.

Here’s our (uncertain!) ranking of global problems where additional people can have the most impact: Power-seeking AI systems Power-seeking AI systems Extreme power concentration Extreme power concentration Engineered pandemics Engineered pandemics Great power conflict Great power conflict Factory farming Factory farming We may develop very powerful AI systems before we've built adequate control mechanisms.

If such systems accumulate power while misaligned with human values, the result could be catastrophic. Extreme power concentration AI could turbocharge people's efforts to seize and hold power. Surveillance, persuasion, and control technologies could let small groups or authoritarian leaders entrench their rule — potentially with little chance of recovery.

Pandemics are among the deadliest events in human history. Developments in biotechnology and AI may lower barriers for creating devastating biological weapons, and make future pandemics even worse. Beyond killing billions in worst-case scenarios, great power rivalry accelerates dangerous arms races that could spiral out of control.

There are trillions of farmed animals, and the vast majority are on factory farms. The conditions in these farms are far worse than most people realise. Other emerging priorities: Moral status of digital minds AI-enhanced decision making High-impact careers in the age of AI There’s a real possibility that within the next 10 years , we’ll develop AI systems so advanced that they can do most of what humans can.

This would cause enormous change and pose extreme risks . So, if you want to have a high-impact career, we think you should urgently consider working on making AI go well. Many people, with both technical and non-technical backgrounds, are needed.

See why we think this, and what you can do to help: If you’re interested in working on helping advanced AI go well, apply for a free 1-1 career advice call with our team. Help you decide whether to shift your focus Introduce you to experts at the forefront of technical research, policy, and other fields Review your options and suggest opportunities You don’t need a technical background to make a big difference.

We also need policymakers, managers, communicators, and specialists of all kinds to prepare for advanced AI and improve its trajectory. The advising team is incredibly well-researched and connected in AI safety. Their advice is far more insightful, personalized, and impact-focused than most of what I got from Google, self-reflection, or the peers or mentors I would typically go to.

80,000 Hours advising showed me that I could pursue a career that was both ethically and personally rewarding. They showed me that my job horizons — and therefore opportunities to do good — were broader than I had thought, even with my heavy involvement in effective altruism. The advising team is incredibly well-researched and connected in AI safety.

Their advice is far more insightful, personalized, and impact-focused than most of what I got from Google, self-reflection, or the peers or mentors I would typically go to. 80,000 Hours advising showed me that I could pursue a career that was both ethically and personally rewarding.

They showed me that my job horizons — and therefore opportunities to do good — were broader than I had thought, even with my heavy involvement in effective altruism. You don’t need a technical background to make a big difference. We also need policymakers, managers, communicators, and specialists of all kinds to prepare for advanced AI and improve its trajectory.

Our advisees now work at: In-depth conversations about the impacts AI will have on the world Early in your career, it’s usually best to focus on building useful skills. But which skills are most useful for solving top global problems?

Policy and political skills Experience with an emerging power Expertise in a top problem area Highest impact career paths The highest-impact careers are ones that position you to tackle the most pressing problems. To help you get ideas, assess your fit, and get started, we’ve reviewed many top paths — including some pretty unconventional options.

Technical AI safety research Biorisk research, strategy, & policy Building the field of AI safety China-related AI safety and governance Building the effective altruism community Operations at high-impact orgs Yoshua Bengio thinks he knows how to build safe superintelligence Open position: Web Product Lead Open position: Product and Growth Manager We curate job listings that help you work on pressing global problems.

On our job board, you’ll find: 800+ open roles related to pressing world problems 300+ other skill development opportunities Promising organisations in AI safety After earning his maths degree at Cambridge, Neel saw finance and further study as his main options. He'd long been concerned about AI risks , but wasn't sure how to help. A call with our 1-1 team helped him see AI safety research as a viable option.

We connected him to key researchers and helped him secure an internship at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, followed by internships at DeepMind and UC Berkeley. These experiences set him on a path to becoming a leading AI safety technical researcher . Neel has since published influential work on mechanistic interpretability and is now a researcher at DeepMind, working to make advanced AI systems more transparent.

Rashida started her career as a nurse in cardiovascular and intensive care units. While she found her work deeply rewarding, she wanted to help more people in a more sustainable way. After discovering our career guide , she realised she could make a bigger impact by transitioning to biosecurity policy .

With support from our 1-1 advising team , Rashida retooled her healthcare experience for a policy role. She now works as a Congressional Fellow with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, helping reduce biological risks .

Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Katie was working at a bank, but she had a feeling that she wanted to use her career to help others — she just wasn't sure exactly how. She spoke to an 80,000 Hours advisor who helped her realise she could have an impact by helping to improve the long-term future and connected her to a network of people working in this area.

After exploring her options, Katie realised she had a strong personal fit for operations work and accepted a role in operations at Longview Philanthropy , an organisation aimed at reducing the risks of a major global catastrophe. Katie was promoted to head of operations a year later. After earning his maths degree at Cambridge, Neel saw finance and further study as his main options.

He'd long been concerned about AI risks , but wasn't sure how to help. A call with our 1-1 team helped him see AI safety research as a viable option. We connected him to key researchers and helped him secure an internship at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, followed by internships at DeepMind and UC Berkeley.

These experiences set him on a path to becoming a leading AI safety technical researcher . Neel has since published influential work on mechanistic interpretability and is now a researcher at DeepMind, working to make advanced AI systems more transparent. Rashida started her career as a nurse in cardiovascular and intensive care units.

While she found her work deeply rewarding, she wanted to help more people in a more sustainable way. After discovering our career guide , she realised she could make a bigger impact by transitioning to biosecurity policy . With support from our 1-1 advising team , Rashida retooled her healthcare experience for a policy role.

She now works as a Congressional Fellow with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, helping reduce biological risks . Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Katie was working at a bank, but she had a feeling that she wanted to use her career to help others — she just wasn't sure exactly how.

She spoke to an 80,000 Hours advisor who helped her realise she could have an impact by helping to improve the long-term future and connected her to a network of people working in this area. After exploring her options, Katie realised she had a strong personal fit for operations work and accepted a role in operations at Longview Philanthropy , an organisation aimed at reducing the risks of a major global catastrophe.

Katie was promoted to head of operations a year later. We’re a nonprofit that helps people use their careers to solve the world’s most pressing problems. We’re currently especially focused on helping people positively shape the trajectory of AI, because we think it presents the world’s most serious and urgent challenges .

We provide resources to help people understand the issues, get jobs working on them, and make connections with others doing the same thing. Because we aim to help people use their careers to tackle large-scale issues, particularly around AI, our advice is mostly aimed at people who might want to do that. However, much of our content can be useful for everyone.

We advise people aged 18–45 (mostly), with a variety of skill profiles. We talk to people from around the world, but due to limited capacity, our services mostly cover careers in the US and UK. We're an independent nonprofit funded by individual donors and philanthropic foundations.

They donate to us so that we can help people have a greater positive impact on the world. You can access all our advice for free, and we don't accept any corporate sponsorships or advertising fees. What exactly does 80,000 Hours do?

And how can you help me? We help people — and maybe you — use their careers to solve the world’s most pressing problems. We do that by providing in-depth research and resources on top problems and how you can use your career to address them.

Our online research, which includes: Our career guide , covering our core advice Our profiles of pressing world problems Our reviews of high-impact career paths Our articles on valuable skills Our podcast — in-depth interviews about the world’s most pressing problems, and how you can help solve them Longform documentary-style videos about transformative AI and its risks Our job board — with current opportunities to work on big and neglected problems and build skills, and the opportunity to get matched with particularly promising roles Our 1-1 service — providing individualised career advice for our more engaged readers, helping them make concrete plans and important career connections, and matching some users to key high-impact roles We recommend starting with our career guide , which will help you get ideas, form a plan, and put it into action.

Where should I start? This is a lot. Start with our career guide .

Or if you want something even shorter, we wrote a one-minute summary with the key takeaways. Keep in mind that you don’t need to read everything to make use of our advice! Just pick what you’re most interested in, and go from there.

What do you mean by ‘high-impact career’? Roughly speaking, the positive impact of your career depends on how many people (or other ‘ moral patients ‘) you help, how much you help them, and how long the effects last. If you’d like a more precise answer, see our full article on how to define doing good .

Why should I listen to your career advice? Lots of career advice isn’t based on much more than opinion and personal anecdotes.

We try to do better by drawing on: Our experience from career advising calls with over five thousand people More than a decade of researching, interviewing experts , and writing about high-impact careers The best available research and academic literature — including advice from relevant experts and professionals, such as hiring managers Research on decision making Ultimately, though, you shouldn’t just take our word for it — we’re probably wrong in lots of ways, and have changed our views over time.

That’s why we try to be transparent about our reasoning, so you can make up your own mind. More on our research principles Why do you focus on some global problems more than others? Our list of pressing global problems sets out the problems where we think our readers can have the biggest positive impact by working on them .

We prioritise problems that are unusually large in scale, unduly neglected, and solvable — because that’s where additional people can generally have the most positive impact . Right now, problems that could pose existential risks top our list, because they threaten not just those alive today but also humanity’s entire future, and they remain hugely neglected relative to their scale.

In particular, we think that there’s a realistic possibility of transformative AI in the coming decade. We think addressing risks from this transformative technology may be the most pressing problem in the world. Our ranking is a best guess and a constant work in progress, meaning it’s undoubtedly incomplete and mistaken in many ways.

It also may not align with your worldview. So we encourage you to think through the question of which problems are most pressing for yourself too. Where you focus will also depend on your opportunities to contribute to each issue.

Learn more in our problems FAQ , or read about why we prioritise specific problems and how you can help tackle them by checking out the profiles on each one . Why do you talk about AI so much? We’ve been talking about risks from advanced AI since 2014, and we’ve ranked it as the world’s most pressing problem since 2016.

AI has made enormous progress in recent years and continues to advance , and we’re worried that society isn’t on track to tackle the risks.

We think advanced AI systems could: Worsen great power conflict Empower dangerous actors , like terrorists or dictators Become power-seeking on their own and disempower humanity Otherwise lead to significant harms In short, the harms are potentially catastrophic and approaching quickly — and not enough is being done about them.

We’re not sure exactly how advanced AI will develop, but companies are racing fast to build it, and world governments and individuals can hardly keep up — so the window to influence its trajectory might be closing. We think more people should probably be paying attention and trying to help influence the development of AI for the better while curtailing the worst risks.

We’re a nonprofit, and our work is fully funded by donors, whom we list here . Our goal is to make as much progress on the world’s most pressing problems as possible, and by making our advice free, we can reach more people. We don’t take any corporate sponsorship or run ads in our content, which helps us avoid bias.

We also never sell user data, and don’t have any hidden fees or charges. The only thing that’s not free is the physical version of our new book ! And we’ll publish the advice that’s in it for free online anyway once it’s out.

Is this advice aimed at me? We think lots of our advice — such as our career guide — will be useful for anyone who is interested in doing more good with their career, or even just curious. That said, our aim is to help people tackle the world’s biggest and most neglected problems.

So, our advice is primarily aimed at people who have the good fortune to be able to focus on that, and who have the security to change paths. Due to our limited capacity, our reviews of top career paths are also limited to a more narrow range of paths, which can be competitive and demanding.

If you’re not able to change your career right now, see our advice on how to have a big impact without changing your job , through advocacy, political engagement, and donations. Many people are not in a position to prioritise social impact, let alone make it a central focus, and that’s fine — we also have many priorities in life besides impact. But if you do want to make a big difference, we hope we can help.

Should I apply to speak to you 1-1? Because we have limited capacity to speak to people, we aren’t able to have a call with everyone who applies. But the application form only takes 10 minutes !

So it’s worth filling out for most people — and if we don’t speak to you this time, you can always apply again in six months.

We’re looking to speak with people who: Make social impact one of their main career goals Take an analytical approach to social impact and career choice Are already somewhat familiar with the basic principles presented in our career guide Are interested in working on our pressing problems , especially helping mitigate risks from AI or other pressing problems exacerbated by AI Have the ability to excel in a challenging career We speak to people at all stages of their career, and you don’t need to already know exactly what you want to work on, or have a preexisting career plan.

If that sounds like you, then you should definitely apply ! What career should I choose? How should I decide?

That’s what our whole site is all about! And yes, it’s not an easy question, but we’re here to help you answer it. Start by reading our career guide (or this one-minute summary ).

It will guide you through the rest. Alternatively, if you just want to browse possible high-impact career paths, you can check out our career reviews . What’s your best piece of advice?

Build useful skills , and then use them to tackle pressing global problems . This might sound obvious — but in practice, very few people do this. Many efforts to do good are far less effective than they could be, because they aren’t focused on the problems where additional effort has the biggest impact.

See more in our problem profiles . Have a greater positive impact with your career Join our newsletter to receive weekly high-impact job opportunities and updates on our research.