Week 5: Career Decisions, Impact and Proximity

I was first faced with ambiguity about the macro direction of my life sophomore year of college. Until then, there was a straightforward path set out for me. I would go through my years of education and then attend the best college that wanted me. There was nothing decided about what I would do after college though. During my sophomore year I had to plan out what my summer would look like. I got an internship which forced gave a glimpse of what life after graduating could look like.

Before that internship when I envisioned my life after college, I used my parents as role models. Their lives were the adult lives that I was most familiar with. It was easy to use their experience as a jumping off point. The post schooling life felt completely different than what I had experienced so far. Picturing something I did not have experience with, I used my most known reference point to guide me.

I pictured my career path in purely practical terms since that is the place both my parents have ended up. They each found their current jobs because they needed a stable source of income to support a family. Their jobs provide them with the means to do what they really care about; raise three boys. I assumed that my career would be similar to theirs. My job would not be something I was really passionate about. I would find meaning in my life through my friends and my family. My career would enabled me to do the other things that were what I found the most meaningful.

This framing of a job as purely functional changed after my sophomore summer. I worked an office job at a cyber security firm in Chicago. Each day was mind numbing. The office did not have much work for me so I had to find ways to pass the time, while still looking like I was working. I was spending forty hours a week being bored. I was just hoping time would pass me by. When I would get off work, I would not have energy but instead feel completely drained of life.

Since that summer I have put a lot of thought into what I am doing for work. My job is the way I spend most of my waking hours. I want it to be something that is at least stimulating. Hopefully it is something that gives me energy rather than takes it away. I know that there will be some undesirable parts of every job, but that summer felt like a really bad place to be. I was just hoping time would pass as quickly as possible rather than enjoying what I was doing. Every night I would be unhappy faced with going back into the office the next day and doing the same thing.

After that, I decided that I would put increased effort into finding a career path that at a minimum was stimulating. During my junior year the topic I was most interested in was machine learning and so I put effort into finding work that was related in any way. I spent part of that year and the summer doing ML research for a professor. This time showed me how engaging a job could be. I was excited to work everyday and that left me with even more energy when I left work. It was apparent to me how much better everything was when I was spending my time in a way that felt exciting.

During this transition from education to working, I received very little guidance about how to make career decisions. It was not even immediately clear how important of a decision it could be. Picking how I spend the majority of my time is one of the most important decisions I have to make. It is one of the most important decisions anyone has to make. I am lucky and extremely privileged that I have the opportunity to make this decision so strategically. There are so many people in the world who do not have that opportunity. Since I am privileged to have some say in what type of work I do, it is important that I make a decision that is thoughtful.

When I make a decision that involves ambiguity and uncertainty, I look to reference points as signal about what I should do. Unfortunately with careers the most tangible reference point is salary. It is easy to fall into the mindset that a higher paying job is a more desirable one. The other reference point I use is seeing what people around me have done. Whether that is my parents, mentors or my peers, I will use others' decisions as guidance. While this can be helpful, it can also lead to bad decisions if others are different from you. It can also cause bad collective outcomes if everyone is basing their decision on each other.

The more career decisions I have made, the more I understand the importance of not relying on those reference points as much. This is not easy though,because those reference points are so strong. As I have gotten older it has become evident that part of the reason I studied computer science is because it is a field that others praise and there exists a well known financial payoff. But for me to find meaning and purpose in my work, I have to do the hard task of deeply investigating what is important to me. Hearing other’s opinions can be helpful, but I probably rely on them too heavily rather than doing the hard internal work to know what is right for me.

Each job is an opportunity to learn more about myself. Some things can only be learned through experience. I have changed jobs in the past because I learned more about what was important to me. I used those learnings to find a situation that where I believed I would be happier. In brief the jumps I have made and what I learned:

• I left Nielsen after a year and three months for Change Research
  • Working at a huge company is quite frustrating. There is an intense amount of bureaucracy meaning change happens so slowly. I wanted to work at a smaller more nimble company.
  • Measuring and improving advertising felt like I was actively causing harm. I was looking for work that felt like it was making a positive impact
• I left Change Research for Whisper after a year and three months
  • I never want to take for granted that what I am doing is beneficial. I should be constantly evaluating the impact of my work.
  • The people you work with on a day to day basis will have the biggest impact on your happiness levels
  • There are so many different problems that it could be stimulating to work on

I recently, hit the one year anniversary at Whisper and have been reflecting on what I have learned. At one year it feels like, most of the evidence I have collected so far has been confirmed. I am quite happy at Whisper. There are a few great people I work with who keep me happy on a day to day basis. My work centers on measuring hearing aid performance and using that understanding to deliver a better product.

After leaving Nielsen, during both my job searches I tried to focus on the impact of the work I was doing. I would talk about how I wanted to be doing work that was impactful. At Change Research, it felt like I was at least theoretically doing the most impactful work I could be. I was helping democrats win elections at a critical junction. At Whisper, I am also doing theoretically impactful work. I am helping people experience better lives by improving their ability to interact with others.

But with both of these jobs, it still feels like there is something off with regards to impact. If impact is something that is important to me in my career, then I want a stronger understanding of what I am looking for.

Impact is the way that our actions change the world. We are all constantly forming the world around us with our actions. Every action I take has an effect on someone else and their life. When I am nice to someone that impacts their emotional state. When I am frustrated or disgruntled that also impacts others. My job is a place where a lot of my actions take place. The impact of my works is how the actions I take at work change the world around me.

Impact has both a magnitude and a direction. When we take an action the change it causes moves us from one state to another. This new state is different from the old state in some discernible way. It is not always clear what the direction or magnitude is, but we are moving from one place to another. Actions where the new state is further away from the current state have a larger magnitude. Knowing what actions to take depends on an clear picture of what state you want to move toward (A piece centered on this coming later).

While the above is not a perfect framework, we can start using it to help us think about impact. Our impact is made up of all the actions we take. Each action moves the world from one state to another state. Having a large impact means moving the state of the world a lot. Having a positive impact means moving the world to a state that we believe is more desirable. We do not always know what the impact of our actions is. We can estimate the impact of our actions before taking them and measure the impact afterwards.

My perception of impact is influenced by how proximate I am to it (this idea of proximate is taken from Bryan Stevenson of EJI). When I am a good partner to Jenny, that impact is incredibly close to me. I am impacting something that touches my day to day life. I definitively know that there is impact happening and can see what that impact causes. When I make a donation to GiveDirectly they give money to someone in need. That impact might be large but it is quite distant. I will probably never see the benefits of that donation and there is no way for me to evaluate that the money I donated was actually impactful. I am trusting GiveDirectly and others' (e.g. Charity Navigator) evaluation of GiveDirectly. While this might be partly selfish, I feel more moved by impact that I am proximate to. I also have a much higher ability to understand what the impact is.

Using the above understanding of impact we can return to how I think about the impact of my own career. It is important for my career to have a positive impact because I believe having a positive impact gives my actions meaning. An important aspect of my impact is my proximity to it. I find it more meaningful to be close to the impact my work is having.

The importance of being proximate has helped me understand the ways I struggle with the 80,000 hours project. The 80,000 hours project is a part of the effective altruism movement. They have put a lot of thought into how to have an impactful career. Reading their resources has changed my own thinking and the people there are quite thoughtful. While I feel connected to their overall direction and mission, I felt a disconnect about the type of projects they suggest to work on. They suggest possible paths as earning to give or working on AGI alignment. While both of these paths might have a large positive impact, you will be quite far away from that impact. When you spend your time earning as much money as you can to donate it, the impact you are having is quite far from the way you spend your time. We are still so far away from AGI,that work on AI alignment is not proximate with our every day experiences.

For my own career, I want to be doing work that has a positive impact but also work that I am proximate to. Being proximate to the impact gives me a better understanding of the impact that I am having. Understanding that impact will help me be better at the work because I can recalibrate my actions as I learn more about what the impact actually is.

To find this type of work, I need to focus on things I am already proximate to or become more proximate to things that will have a positive impact. I am really motivated to work on problems related to creating novel organizations because I have so much first hand experience with how organizational structure impacts what is created. If I believe some type of work could be impactful, then it is important for me to become proximate to it. For example, When I donate money to charities, I mostly focus on giving to organizations that work in developing countries. Developing countries have many more people living in poverty. Improving living conditions for someone who has a more difficult life can often be a larger change. If I truly believe that I can have the largest impact by improving living conditions in developing countries, then it is important for me to become proximate to that issue by moving to a developing country.

Part of the difficulty I am having with impact of my career might be related to being a software engineer. This does not have to be the case, but most software engineers are not proximate to the impact of the work. I spend my time coding and then someone quite distant from me is eventually impacted. Tech companies do try to understand their impact through data, but even that data leaves developers at quite a distance. They are not connected with the people who are being impacted. Understanding the importance of being proximate means that I should find ways at work to get closer to my impact.

This reflection helps me understand what I mean by trying to find work that is impactful. I want to take actions that help move the world to a better state. I want to be proximate to the impact I am having because it allows me to actually see what that impact is. At my current job I should try to become more proximate to the impact of my work.

If I truly believe that the largest impact I can have is by improving living conditions in developing countries, then I should move to a developing country and find work there. Trying to do that type of work from a distance does not make sense.