80,000 Hours is looking for a new CEO — or to fill a vacancy left by someone promoted to be CEO

Our CEO Howie Lempel is leaving us to take up a position at Open Philanthropy.

So we’re looking for someone to replace him — or to fill the position of a current staff member should they become CEO. If that interests you, read on.

What does 80,000 Hours do again?

80,000 Hours’ goal is to get talented people working on the world’s most pressing problems — we aim to be the world’s best source of support and advice for them on how to do so.

That means helping people shift their careers to work on solving problems that are more important, neglected, and solvable — and to pick more promising methods for solving those problems.

To that end we operate:

• An online career guide and a growing collection of online research.
• A job board typically listing 500–1,000 opportunities for work and training in particularly impactful areas.
• A podcast on ‘the world’s most pressing problems and how you can help solve them.’
• A free one-on-one career advising service.
• Active marketing to get these resources to more people, including book giveaways and a newly active YouTube channel.

We’re in principle open to encouraging work on any problems and have coverage of dozens of issues. Our current top three areas are preventing negative outcomes from the development of artificial general intelligence, preventing catastrophic pandemics, and reducing the risk of nuclear war.

And what does your CEO do exactly?

Our CEO is ultimately responsible for increasing the positive social impact generated by 80,000 Hours.

In practice, they line-manage five people — the directors of the website, podcast, one-on-one advising, internal systems, and special projects.

The CEO’s key responsibilities include:

• Setting the strategy for 80,000 Hours, including what audiences we should target with what types of recommendations, and which impact metrics to target
• Inspiring the entire organisation to be ambitious in striving to increase our impact
• Hiring, retaining, and firing senior staff
• Ensuring we maintain positive aspects of our team culture, such as curiosity, honesty, and kindness
• Ensuring we remain highly organised and functional
• Managing relationships with our key donors and other stakeholders
• Addressing the most important thorny issues that come up anywhere in the organisation

Under a new CEO there is potential for adjusting the org chart and reallocating some responsibilities.

What do other directors at 80,000 Hours do?

It’s more likely than not that we will hire an internal candidate to fill the CEO role.

That would then create a vacancy in another role within 80,000 Hours, potentially one of:

• Director of Internal Systems
• Website Director
• Director of Special Projects

These roles are crucial to the organisation running smoothly and require many of the same strengths as those required to be CEO, so we thought we would raise them here as well.

The Director of Internal Systems currently has a team of around five and oversees our operations, legal compliance, hiring, and office.

The Website Director manages a team of around eight and is focused on maintaining and building the website, producing written content, improving our career advice and our newsletter, and marketing our services to reach new users.

The Director of Special Projects is a generalist role that involves leading or managing various ad-hoc projects on behalf of the CEO, usually in the strategy and operations space. The projects change quarterly and can include project managing fundraising, the annual review, salary updates, and helping with strategy refreshes for individual teams.

If you could be right for one of those roles, you can also let us know using the form below.

What would make you a good fit for the CEO role?

The sort of person we’re looking for has many or most of these traits:

1. You’re willing to live in or near London and work most days from our (beautiful) offices near the suburb ‘The City of London.’
2. You have substantial experience managing people or projects. For instance you’ve successfully line-managed at least three people simultaneously for at least three years, or alternatively you’ve been in charge of a project with a budget of over £1m per year.
3. You’re able to initiate difficult conversations where appropriate and have them in a sensitive and productive way.
4. You’re able to preserve good relationships among staff, despite inevitable disagreements about what’s best to do.
5. You’re able to identify and focus on the most important uncertainties, identify information that will help resolve them, and often reach correct conclusions in the face of conflicting evidence.
6. You’re able to set the strategy for a big project with an appropriate level of decisiveness and seize opportunities for impact, even in the face of high uncertainty.
7. You have a broad and deep understanding of current advanced thinking about how to make the world a better place in the way 80,000 Hours understands it, and you want to help put this into practice.
8. You can motivate and inspire people to follow your vision — and to come along with you if circumstances change and that vision needs to change.
9. You are resilient to the inevitable setbacks and criticism that come with leading an organisation aspiring to do important work.
10. You have a track record of working hard, are able to keep track of multiple complex projects/tasks, and can prioritise your own time and attention well.
11. You’d be likely to work at 80,000 Hours for at least three years, and ideally five or even longer.
12. You like the sound of our cultural values:
    a. Ambitious long-term impact — will this make us into the world’s best source of impact-focused career advice?
    b. A modest, scientific mindset — why might this be wrong?
    c. Openness and honesty — default to transparency and take the red face test.
    d. Focus — say no to everything that’s not the top priority, then obsess.
    e. Fun and friendliness — say what’s true, kind, necessary (and fun).
    f. Self-care and personal growth — don’t forget about the long term.
    g. Exceptionally well-researched advice — go one step further.

While this is a senior and demanding role, we’re aware some very capable people struggle with imposter syndrome and may struggle to see themselves in the above description, even if others tell them they have what it takes. If in doubt, just express your interest quickly using the form below.

Why might I expect to have a large positive impact by leading 80,000 Hours?

• We think a better CEO could realistically increase the impact of our work by 10–100%, by improving the quality and usefulness of our advice and putting us on a better growth trajectory to reach many more people who could benefit from our products.

• During 2023 we’ll have:

  • 750,000 click-throughs to high-impact jobs on our job board
  • 250,000 new subscribers to our weekly email newsletter
  • 300,000 hours of listening time on our podcast, across 100,000 subscribers
  • Over three million unique visitors to our website
  • Over 1,500 one-on-one conversations with embarrassingly talented people looking to change their careers in order to have more impact
  • Tens of millions of ad impressions across sponsored videos and social media
• In terms of scale, during 2023 we will spend $6 million and have an average of 27 primary staff, plus ~6 FTE worth of contractor-time. We’ve grown around 30% per year over the last two years and aim to maintain or increase that growth. On top of that we’ll spend around $3 million on marketing, a figure we aim to increase in future years.

• Surveys conducted by our primary funder Open Philanthropy show that 80,000 Hours is one of the biggest single drivers of talent moving into work related to reducing global catastrophic risks, especially risks from advances in AI, pandemics, and international conflict. Our package of content and advising appears to attract people into that work more cost effectively than many alternatives people have tried. Those surveys are conducted for Open Philanthropy’s private grantmaking purposes and so not all results are published — but we can discuss their findings with serious candidates as part of the process.

• Due to our large reach, we are one of the main ways people find out about the cluster of ideas known as ‘effective altruism.’

• We are almost unique in the world in providing a breadth of advice and information on ‘how to do as much good as possible with your career.’ Nobody else is trying to do this on the scale we are.

• We have some wonderful, experienced, and highly capable staff, who can do an incredible amount of good with the right leadership.

What are the pay and other benefits?

1. A salary between £110–140,000 depending on experience
2. The option to use 10% of your work time for self-development
3. 25 days of paid holiday, plus bank holidays
4. A standard UK pension, with 3% contribution from employer
5. A £5,000 mental health support allowance
6. Private medical insurance
7. Up to 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave
8. Long-term disability insurance
9. Flexible work hours
10. Gym, shower facilities, and free food provided at our London office.

Our remote work policy also accommodates being away for up to three months of the year, if needed.

We’re able to sponsor visa applications and cover many moving expenses.

I’d like to talk to someone

Generally we’d encourage you to express your interest using the form above, but if you have a specific question get in touch with Rob Wiblin, who is assisting with the CEO search, at [email protected].

What would the rest of the process look like?

The application process will vary depending on the candidate, but before making an offer we would do multiple interviews, conduct a remote work test, collect detailed work history, have a site visit to meet the team, and finally have a multi-day in-person trial.

We offer payment for work samples and trials, conditional on your location and right to work in the UK.