80000 Hours 便是一个帮助你做出上述决定的组织。这是一家非营利组织，成员包括当前孵化自 Y Combinator 的一批创业公司，由本·托德（Ben Todd）和威尔·麦克斯基尔（Will MacAskill）创建于 2011 年。托德目前担任 80,000 Hours 的执行董事，而麦克斯基尔则担任总裁。

 

麦克斯基尔是英国牛津大学研究哲学的副教授，他说在遇到托德时，后者还是一个学生，正面临事业上的艰难选择。他俩最终成立了一个讨论组， 讲授有关这个话题的课程 ，直至最终创建 80000 Hours，用以传播他们的想法（这一组织的名称是指一个人职业生涯的全部工作时间）。

 

80000 Hours 的工作涉及一对一职业培训，但重点已转向 80000 Hours 网站上的文章和其他相关内容——毕竟，这样一来，他们可以覆盖更多的受众。托德表示，80000 Hours 的内容更具交互性和个性化，比如包含一些小测验，现在它上面还有 职业规划指导 和 大量相关文章 ，（更新： 这就是 80000 Hours 上面的一个测验 ，最终建议我应该参考智库研究。）80000 Hours 目前还在围绕此类内容打造一个社区。

 

80000 Hours 的目标不是向所有人都推荐相同的职业，而是确保他们拥有做出正确职业决定的理想框架——他们要问自己一些合适的问题。

 

顺便说一句，80000 Hours 的建议有时与我们的直觉完全相反。例如，它明确反对盲目遵从托德所说的“常见的职业规划建议”，即追随你的内心。

 

相反，80,000 Hours 会告诉读者，“ 不要追随内心 ”——这是让人相当吃惊的做法。“追随内心”不会让你变得更具上进心，从而更成功吗？

 

托德反驳说，热情“并不是成功的保证，也不能确保你一定就可以对社会做出积极贡献。”他还指出，大多数人都说他们对体育、艺术等领域充满热情，但这些领域的职业机遇十分有限。

 

托德指出，最为重要的是，研究表明追随内心只会“让事情出现倒退”，相反，你应该把精力放在“熟悉有意义的事情上，然后再慢慢形成对这些事情的兴趣。”

 

麦克斯基尔（他写了一本有关“有效的利他主义”的书）还怀疑另一个看似显而易见的情况——要为非营利机构工作，尤其是将它作为你大学毕业后的第一份工作。他并没有轻视所有这些机构的意思，他说只有少数非营利机构会真正起作用。此外，如果某个非营利机构没有提供帮助你发展专业技能的资源，那么为它服务可能会限制你今后的工作能力。

 

所以，为什么 80000 Hours 本身是一个非营利机构？麦克斯基尔表示，“我们有必要避免利益冲突，有必要避免对‘给出帮我们赚钱的建议’而有压力。”

 

“如果我们认为我们可以克服那个困难，我们就要解放思想，朝着营利性的模式发展，”他补充道。无论如何，关键是“专注于拥有尽可能最大的社会影响，”既为了读者，也为了 80000 Hours 自己。

 

Want To Make An Impact With Your Work? Try Some Advice From 80,000 Hours

 

People in the tech world like to talk about doing great things. But what does that actually mean for your career? If you’re serious about making a positive impact on the world, should you go work for a startup? A nonprofit? Or none of the above?

 

80,000 Hours is an organization aiming to help with those decisions. It’s a nonprofit in the current class of startups incubated by doing great things, but it was founded back in 2011 by Ben Todd (the organization’s executive director) and Will MacAskill (its president).

 

MacAskill is an associate professor of philosophy at Oxford University, and he said that when they met, Todd was a student wrestling with many of these questions. They ended up forming a discussion group and giving lectures on the topic, then eventually creating 80,000 Hours to spread their ideas. (The name refers to the number of hours in your career)

 

Part of their work involves one-on-one career coaching, but the focus has shifted toward articles and other content on the 80,000 Hours site — which, after all, can reach a broader audience. Todd said the content should get more interactive and personalized through things like quizzes, but for now, there’s already a career guide and plenty of articles. (Update: Here’s one of those quizzes, which suggested that I look into think tank research.) 80,000 Hours is also working to build a community around that content.

 

The point isn’t to just direct everyone to the same type of career, but rather to make sure they’ve got the right framework for making their decisions — that they’re asking themselves the right questions.

 

The advice, by the way, can be pretty counter-intuitive. For example, it pushes back against what Todd calls “the paradigm career advice of our time,” namely following your passion.

 

In contrast, 80,000 Hours tells readers, “Don’t follow your passion” — which is pretty surprising. Isn’t following your passion supposed to make you more motivated, and therefore more successful?

 

Todd countered that passion is “not anywhere close to a guarantee of being successful or having an impact.” He also noted that most people say their passion is in areas like sports and the arts, which offer very limited career opportunities.

 

Most importantly, he said that research suggests that following your passion “gets things backwards.” Instead, you should focus on “getting good at something that’s meaningful, and then passion develops from that later on.”

 

MacAskill (who wrote a book about “effective altruism”) was also skeptical of another seemingly obvious track — going to work for a nonprofit, especially as your first job out of college. He didn’t dismiss all such organizations, but he said only a small number of them have a real impact. In addition, working for a nonprofit might limit your ability to do good later on, if the organization doesn’t have the resources to help you develop your professional skills.

 

So why is 80,000 Hours a nonprofit itself? MacAskill said it’s necessary to avoid conflicts of interest and feeling pressured to “give the sorts of recommendations that make us money.”

 

“We’d be open to the idea of moving to a for-profit model if we think we could overcome that difficulty,” he added. Either way, the key is being “laser-focused on having the biggest social impact,” both for individual readers, and for 80,000 Hours itself.