Benjamin Todd

I gained better career capital from working at 80,000 Hours because I learned more, achieved more, and met great people.

Learning by doing is often the most effective way to learn.

Most people can't see a route to having a significant positive impact right at the start of their career.

But if you do, just pursuing that might well be your best option for career capital.

This could look like joining a start-up social impact project you think could succeed over 5-10 years.

Or it could mean directly entering one of the career paths you think are most impactful.

If you succeed, it'll be impressive, benefiting your career capital.

And if you're someone who cares about doing good, you'll probably find it more motivating to work on something meaningful, making you more likely to succeed.

In addition, if you want to tackle pressing global problems, then at some point you need to learn about those problems and meet others who want to work on them too.

This is usually easier to do if you work in those areas than if you, for instance, work in a random corporate job.

And of course, you might have a positive impact.

Although career capital should probably be your top priority early on, any positive impact you can have early in your career matters too.

All these pros can make up for other weaknesses of this path.

For example, often you'll receive less training.

Whether to take the plunge and try to do something impactful early on is a difficult decision.

It'll depend on the chances of success of the project, who you'll be working with, what kind of training you might get, and so on.

But if you can see a way to significantly help with one of the most pressing global problems right away, it's certainly worth considering, even just from the perspective of gaining useful skills, achievements and connections.

As we saw in the chapter on job satisfaction, doing what contributes is a good strategy both for helping others and being personally satisfied.

But also if you try to do what's most important for the world, it can sometimes be the best strategy for career capital too.

Transferable vs. Specialist Career Capital