List of potentially promising career paths

This is a list of potentially promising paths that we haven't written reviews on yet. Treat this as a very rough list of potential ideas to consider, and note that we haven't researched most of these paths in a lot of detail. Bolded are paths that we are comparatively more confident in recommending.

See the careers we have researched and written reviews on.

PhD's

• Anthropology PhD - currently under-represented within the effective altruist community, so we'd mainly suggest it to people who would share their ideas and findings with the effective altruist community.
• Applied Maths PhD - The skills you gain seem to be applicable to a wide range of jobs.
• Bioengineering PhD - potentially transformative area of research, similar to biomedical research.
• Engineering PhD - pay tends to be good, and currently somewhat under-represented within the effective altruist community.
• History PhD - currently under-represented within the effective altruist community, so we'd mainly suggest it to people who would share their ideas and findings with the effective altruist community.
• Statistics PhD - The skills you gain seem to be applicable to a wide range of jobs.

Academia

• Academic grant writer and/or project manager - potential to significantly increase the research output and quality of academic research.
• Anthropology - currently under-represented within the effective altruist community, so we'd mainly suggest it to people who would share their ideas and findings with the effective altruist community.
• Computer science (especially AI) - see our review of Computer Science PhD's.
• Economics, especially development economics - see our review of Economics PhD's.
• History - currently under-represented within the effective altruist community, so we'd mainly suggest it to people who would share their ideas and findings with the effective altruist community.

Entrepreneurship

• Founding or working for for-profit startups focused on serving the global poor - for example Wave, which lets users send Instant, no fee transfers from the US and Canada to Africa.
• Founding or working for startups on animal product alternatives - see examples in this Economist article.
• Founding or working for tech startups focused on emerging markets.

For-profit world (for skill building and earning to give)

• Accountancy
• Corporate management
• Corporate scientist (especially biomed)
• Intellectual property
• Public relations
• Real estate
• Sales

Government and policy

• Foreign policy - an important area for improving global co-ordination and co-operation, currently under-represented within the effective altruist community.
• Government grant making - potential to increase impact of existing budgets.
• Lobbyist for important causes - for example advocacy for improved or increased U.S. foreign aid, international labor mobility, treatment of animals in industrial agriculture, and criminal justice reform.
• US Civil service - policy roles
• US Military
  • • DoD
    • NSA
• US Party politics

Health

• Dentist - for earning to give
• Nurse practitioner
• Work in public health

Non-profit world

• Work at Effective Altruist organisations
• Work at Open Philanthropy Project
• Work at Gates Foundation
• Work at International development charities

Tech

• Web designer - either working at organisations working on important causes, or for skill-building and earning to give.
• Work at DeepMind
• Work at Google - for skill-building and earning to give, and for working on projects with large social benefits.