The unreasonable effectiveness of gifting the 80000 Hours book

Note: I am not associated with 80000 Hours. I just like the book.

TLDR: if any of your friends would benefit from career advice, giving them the newly released 80000 Hours book may be the most effective thing you can do.

The process

I graduated from university just around the time the 80000 Hours book came out, and I bought 4 copies of the book to give to my friends. This went way better than expected, and I’m writing this because I think more people should do the same.

It’s really simple:

1. Find people in your circle who might benefit from career advice. For example, if they aren’t sure about their career plans, are job-hunting or aren’t feeling fulfilled.
2. Schedule a time to meet.
3. Give them the book and tell them how useful it is.

I was a bit hesitant it would be seen as evangelizing, but I’m surprised at how well it went. Most strikingly, I ended up giving a copy to a friend who had accepted a grad job at Jane Street. At first, I was sure that he wouldn’t actually want one - he certainly didn’t seem to need career advice of all people! But it turned out to be on his reading list and he seemed very appreciative. Some of my other friends who actually needed career advice seemed even more grateful.

Why this might be unusually effective

Organisations doing community-building are structurally limited in how personal their outreach can be. They have no access to the thing that most determines whether someone actually engages: a trusted personal relationship. That’s not something an organization can buy or scalably build, but it’s something we have as individuals. Handing the book to a friend is effective because it’s personal -  something that ads, social media campaigns, or $100 to GWWC can’t replicate.

As a Fermi estimate, we can conservatively guess that around 50% of your friends actually read it, 10% of those become EA-aligned as a result, and 20% of those then do as much good as donating 10% over 5 years. That is, the end-to-end conversion rate is 1%. Assuming average salaries are $50k for 5 years, that equals $250k * 10% = $25k of donations. 1% of 25k is $250, which is >10x the cost of the book.

This is a very conservative estimate, and I think that 10x is a lower bound on your impact multiplier. This doesn’t account for how recipient might be more impactful than average; value from reading the book or being EA-aligned; how recipients might give away the book in turn; and how some revenue flows back to 80000 Hours through royalties. Put another way: donating money to another effective cause is less effective by at least an order of magnitude.

There’s also a selfish reason: your friends will appreciate it! Unlike when you donate malaria nets and your kindness disappears silently into the void of the internet, your friends will think you’re being helpful and generous, because this advice is genuinely valuable. Help out your friends!

But can't they get a free book anyways?

Alternatively, you can just direct them to the 80000 Hours signup form where they can request a physical copy. But this just transfers the distribution cost onto 80000 Hours, there’s less of a chance they’ll read it, and they’ll appreciate it a lot less.

I am less sure about the difference betwen signing up and buying. If you’re financially constrained, I think this is the best alternative. But if buying books is 10x as cost-effective, it’s worth buying if you think this alternative is even slightly worse. If the chance that they read the book drops by just 10% in relative terms (say, from 50% to 45%), then that completely cancels the cost of a book in expectation. I’ve pitched the signup form to several acquaintances, but if you’d call them a friend, I’d recommend buying them a book personally. I’ve given away all 4 of my copies and plan to buy several more when I visit friends overseas.

Conclusion

Like a lot of people, I’m wary about coming off as moralizing or proselytizing when I talk about EA and our obligation to improve the world. But 80000 Hours isn’t like The Life You Can Save, the Quran, or the Bible - it’s written less to persuade and more to just be helpful. Giving the book away may be an extremely cost-effective way to both spread the word and do your friends a favour.