Benjamin Todd’s ‘80,000 Hours’ Book Examines Career Decisions Using Data
The Story
The newly updated book “80,000 Hours” by Benjamin Todd offers a data-driven examination of career decisions, framed along effective altruism lines. The book argues that a career involves about 80,000 hours of work, yet people often put less thought into career choices than into selecting a mortgage. It includes public policy material on pandemic risks and provides advice on building skills, networking, and job acquisition.
Key Facts
- The book defines a career as about 80,000 hours (40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for 40 years).
- Todd warns against armchair theorizing and recommends a “ladder of tests” starting with the cheapest ways to explore options.
- The book divides career paths into explore, build, and deploy categories, stating that most people under-explore.
- According to the book, the chance of a pandemic killing over 100 million people during the next century seems high, similar to the risk of large-scale nuclear war or climate change above six degrees.
- An engineered pandemic could kill over 90% of the population, suggesting its overall scale is significantly larger.
- Pandemic prevention receives about $1 billion in philanthropic funding, compared to $6–10 billion for climate change and $1.6 trillion in total climate finance.
- Total spending aimed at reducing the chance of worst-case pandemics is probably under $10 billion.
- The article compares “80,000 Hours” to “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” as a book that really matters for career advice.
Conflicting Reports
No conflicting reports identified in the source article.
Still Unclear
No open questions identified in the source article.
Misconceptions
No widespread misconceptions addressed in the source article.
Key Figures
- Benjamin Todd, author of the book “80,000 Hours”
Sources: marginalrevolution.com
