Surviving Life post-CEU: Using Effective Altruism to Find the Right Career
Written by Johanna Maarja Tiik, March 2019
During this recent holiday season, Before coming to CEU, I had a particular image worked out in my mind of how an average CEU student would look like: smart, worldly and determined to change the world for the better, with at least 5 internship experiences under their belt, also career-driven for sure, already having planned the next 10 years of their career. I remember myself dreading the initial name-country-program conversations with people on the banks of Danube in September, afraid of the question “So what do you want to do after you graduate?”, to which I could only answer with a noncommittal sound, afraid to spell out my lack of a fixed career path. After having studied at CEU for more than half a year now, I can confirm that while, in general, I was not too off the mark with my presumptions, I have encountered – to my utter relief – countless other wandering souls, who are also still figuring out their life post-CEU.
A few years ago, when I first stumbled upon the Effective Altruism community, I became enthralled by its main aim: change the way we do good. In order to make the most with our limited resources to help the others, relying upon evidence and careful analysis, Effective Altruism seeks to maximize the positive impact every one of us can make in the world. Its core values – openness, critical thinking and global empathy – are what set it apart from traditional altruism and philanthropy. Even though a big part of its analysis focuses on the non-profit sector, it was actually the debates around how to choose the most meaningful career what got me hooked.
Prioritizing which field to focus on requires coming up with a structured framework, which helps to rank the fields according to some criteria. The three “rules of thumb” for effective altruists are size, solvability and neglectfulness. Issues scoring high in the big-solvable-neglected framework are, for example, global health or eradicating extreme poverty, for which we have lots of well-researched evidence. In the industry of factory farming, one can spare a huge number of animals from suffering in inhumane conditions by investing resources into the area which has been relatively neglected so far.
However, great innovation cannot stick to safe coastlines only, it has to take a leap of faith sometimes to work on issues about which we have less of reliable data, but which have the promise to impact a huge number of people on a large scale. Working on existential risks, such as nuclear ones or those brought up by advanced AI development, has huge potential and is therefore favoured by Effective Altruists.
Assuming that all people who end up at CEU want to make a positive impact on the world, then logically, all of us have two major resources to offer: our time and our money. Ironically enough, figuring out of how to use the latter in an efficient way seems to be a smaller concern to me. After discovering how the Effective Altruism community organizations — such as GiveWell, for example — have developed models to evaluate our giving to charities, by calculating the additional impact that our donations make, spending my money on doing good does not seem that much of a daunting prospect any more.
Yet, figuring out my career path still was daunting. After all, changing the world may not be so straightforward as to make everyone work for the UN or to volunteer at a local soup kitchen. Fortunately, the 80,000 Hours website, closely related to the principles of Effective Altruism, came to my rescue. By cautioning everyone has only around 80,000 hours in their career, it seeks to develop a model for helping individuals make a difference throughout their career. help everyone in making a difference through their career.
The 15-year-old-me would be stunned (confused, even) to realize that out of the four main ways to make a difference with your career — helping indirectly by donating, propagating changing the world for the better, working in research or making a direct impact by working or volunteering for a worthy cause — the latter should not be seen automatically as the superior one, after all. A well-paid Wall Street banker can afford to set a generous part of their monthly income aside and donate it, possibly helping thousands over their lifetime. People with better education (which all of us at CEU can proudly claim to receive alongside with our diploma and global empathy) have to calculate individually for themselves whether they could make much bigger positive impact by finding a well-paid career and giving regularly to effective charities or by working directly for a non-profit or in research.
The final choice for life post-CEU and making a positive impact on the world remains still in my hands and — despite my occasional grumbling in the cafeteria — I would not have it any other way. However, equipped with Effective Altruism big-solvable-neglected network and 80,000 Hours’ career plan, I will feel much better exiting the safe and supportive CEU bubble when the time comes. The most important thing is to act — and do so effectively, relying on evidence and analysis, not simple intuition. Maybe the time to stop Googling “How to find your dream job” has arrived for me, after all.
