Chief of Staff (Operations Team)

Overview

• 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
• Enter your new role
• 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.
• Get started
• We’ll help you find a role that shapes the future
• We’ll help you find a role that shapes the future
• We’re a nonprofit that helps people build careers that tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
• Our new book pulls together 15+ years of research into a practical guide to finding a fulfilling career that does good.
• And our free online resources, 1-1 career advising, and high impact job board will help you put it into action.
• Signing up will also get you weekly career insights, job listings, and ways to meet other like-minded people.
• Signing up will also get you weekly career insights, job listings, and ways to meet other like-minded people.
• Get the book for free
• Signing up will also get you weekly career insights, job listings, and ways to meet other like-minded people.
• Signing up will also get you weekly career insights, job listings, and ways to meet other like-minded people.
• If you’re worried about wasting your life, read this book.
• —Rutger Bregman
• author of
• *Humankind*
• If you’re worried about wasting your life, read this book.
• —Rutger Bregman
• author of
• *Humankind*
• Our new career guide
• We’ve released 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.
• Read online
• 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*
• Our new career guide
• We’ve released 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.
• Read online
• 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:

Most Pressing Problems

Other Emerging Priorities

Read

Read

Read

Read

Read

Read

We Can

• 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
• Get 1-1 advice
• 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.

Anthropic

Cullen O'Keefe

Institute For Law & Ai

Anthropic

Cullen O'Keefe

Institute For Law & Ai

Our Advisees Now Work At

Research

Engineering

Grantmaking

Jul 8, 2026 New

Jun 18, 2026

Jun 11, 2026

• AI policy in the US government
• Read more
• View all
• Job board
• 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
• View the job board
• Chief of Staff, U.S.
• AI Policy and Public Policy

Today

Today

About 80,000 Hours

1.8M+

7500+

3000+

Faqs

What We Offer

• 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.
• Learn more
• 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.
• Start here
• 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.
• Learn more
• 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
• 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.
• Read more
• 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.
• Read more in our problem profile on risks from advanced artificial intelligence.
• Read more
• 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.
• Read more
• That depends!
• 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.
• Read more
• Yes!
• 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!
• Apply now
• 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.
• Start here
• 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.
• Read more
• More questions?
• Email us
• Have a greater positive impact with your career
• Join our newsletter to receive a free copy of our new career guide, weekly high-impact job opportunities, and updates on our research.
• You’ll be joining our community of over 500,000 people.
• T&Cs here.
• You can unsubscribe in one click.
• Have a greater positive impact with your career
• Join our newsletter to receive a free copy of our new career guide, weekly high-impact job opportunities, and updates on our research.
• You’ll be joining our community of over 500,000 people.
• T&Cs here.
• You can unsubscribe in one click.
• Have a greater positive impact with your career
• Join our newsletter to receive a free copy of our new career guide, weekly high-impact job opportunities, and updates on our research.
• You’ll be joining our community of over 500,000 people.
• T&Cs here.
• You can unsubscribe in one click.