Great points. I would love to see more of this too!

The claim that "biosecurity often selects for people who already have a wealth of experience in their respective fields" doesn't seem that obvious to me. Looking at the number of biosecurity roles we've posted on the 80,000 Hours job board in 2025, broken down by experience tag, I see:

• Entry-level: 32
• Entry-level + Junior (1-4 yrs): 12
• Junior (1-4 yrs): 69
• Junior (1-4 yrs) + Mid (5-9 yrs): 31
• Mid (5-9 yrs): 73
• Mid (5-9 yrs) + Senior (10+ yrs): 20
• Senior (10+ yrs): 40
• Multiple experience levels: 10

I agree with you that there aren't a ton of opportunities for junior people, but I think the above data indicates it isn't because of orgs focusing more on people with more experience. This seems like an important part of your claims, though I think some of your recommendations are robustly good (specializing can be the right call, building career capital elsewhere can be the right call).

Obvious caveats apply: We aren't perfect at finding every biosecurity opportunity on the 80,000 Hours org, what we post is shaped by our own values.

What an upgrade, especially the top nav. Nice job!

There are some great replies here from career advisors -- I'm not one, but I want to mention that I got into software engineering without a university degree. I'm hesitant to recommend software engineering as the safe and well-paying career it once was, but I think learning how to code is still a great way to quickly develop useful skills without requiring a four-year degree!

@Sudhanshu Kasewa has enlisted me for this one!

I think earning to give is a really strong option and indeed the best option for many people.

Lack of supply is definitely an issue, though it can be helped by looking for impactful opportunities outside of "EA orgs" per se -- I don't know if this is your scenario, but this is often a problem. Knowing nothing about a person's situation and location, I'd prompt:

• Can you look for roles in government in order to work on impactful policy?
• Are there start-ups or other learning opportunities you could apply to in order to develop career capital?
• Is there a niche in the world you're suited to fill? Could you find a co-founder and start filling it?I say a bit more here.

A clarification: We would not post roles if we thought they were net harmful and were hoping that somebody would counterfactually do less harm. I think that would be too morally fraught to propose to a stranger.

Relatedly, we would not post a job where we thought that to have a positive impact, you'd have to do the job badly.

We might post roles if we thought the average entrant would make the world worse, but a job board user would make the world better (due to the EA context our applicants typically have!). No cases of this come to mind immediately though. We post our jobs because we consider them promising opportunities to have a positive impact in the world, and expect job board users to do even more good than the average person.

Hi Geoffrey,

I'm curious to know which roles we've posted which you consider to be capabilities development -- our policy is to not post capabilities roles at the frontier companies. We do aim to post jobs that are meaningfully able to contribute to safety and aren’t just safety-washing (and our views are discussed much more in depth here). Of course, we're not infallible, so if people see particular jobs they think are safety in name only, we always appreciate that being raised.

I strongly agree with @Bella's comment. I'd like to add:

• I encourage job-seekers to not think of EA jobs as the one way to have impact in one's career. Almost all impactful roles are not at EA orgs. On the 80,000 Hours job board we try to find the most promising ones, but we won't catch everything!
• Our co-worker Laura González Salmerón has a great talk on this topic.
• Even if the movement is not talent-constrained, the problems we're trying to solve are talent-constrained. The world still needs way more people working on catastrophic risks, animal welfare, and global health, whether or not there are EA organisations hiring for roles.
• Earning to give remains a wonderful option.

If your strategy is to just apply to open hiring rounds, such as through job ads that are listed on the 80,000 Hours job boards, you are cutting your chances of landing a role by ~half. It’s hard to know the exact figure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if as many as 30-50% of paid roles in the movement aren’t being recruited through traditional open hiring rounds ...

This is my impression as well, though heavily skewed by experience level. I'd estimate that >80%+ of senior "hires" in the movement occur without a public posting, and something like 20% of junior hires. 

As an aside and as ever though, I'd encourage people to not get attached to finding a role "in the movement" as a marker of impact. 

I really appreciated reading this. It captured a lot of how I feel when I think about having taken the pledge. It's astounding. I think it's worth celebrating, and assuming the numbers add up, I think it's worth grappling with the immensity of having saved a life.