Moving from academia to a think tank (Guest post by Jason Schukraft)

I’m a senior research manager at a small, academically-unaffiliated think tank called Rethink Priorities. I’m paid to conduct original research, much of it philosophical in nature, that helps charities decide how to allocate their resources. It’s not a career I planned for, but it’s a great job, and my doctorate in philosophy turned out to be pretty good training. The demand for the sort of work I do seems to be increasing, and newly minted philosophy PhDs would be a good fit for many comparable positions. I’m writing about my experience so that others might pursue similar opportunities.

My Alt-Ac Journey

When I was accepted to PhD programs in philosophy in the spring of 2010, I naively believed that becoming a professor was more-or-less a given. Over the next several years, I was exposed to a variety of evidence to the contrary, but through a combination of confirmation bias and wilful ignorance, I convinced myself that the base rate of failure I observed on the academic job market didn’t apply to me. Since nobody in the department was talking much about alternatives to academia, I never really investigated my options, and I certainly did not tailor my research interests to appeal to the non-academic market. (My dissertation is in metaphilosophy.)

In my final year of grad school (2016-2017), I applied to 50 academic jobs and was rejected by all of them. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our second child. I could have applied to even more jobs, but I wasn’t willing to move my family across the country for a one-year VAP or adjunct position with uncertain prospects. (I’m not certain I would have received a VAP or adjunct position even if I had tried.) I was pretty despondent and totally unsure what to do with my life.

I assumed I would end up in a boring, entry-level, nine-to-five office job, probably in the tech industry. (There’s a lot of that around here.) I heard about Rethink Priorities through a newsletter I subscribed to. I didn’t think I was well-qualified for the position, but Rethink Priorities is a remote-only organization and thus offered flexible work hours. As the parent of two young children, that really appealed to me, enough so that I decided to write to one of the founders and inquire more. He encouraged me to apply, and I ended up being a good fit.

My Role at Rethink Priorities

Rethink Priorities advises charities on how to get the most out of their resources, chiefly by evaluating the cost-effectiveness of their current programs and by identifying promising new programs and causes. Other organizations perform similar work, but Rethink Priorities is somewhat unique in that  much of our research is philosophically-inclined. For example, we advise many animal welfare organizations. These organizations want to know which animals to target in their campaigns. Humans exploit fish, crustaceans, and molluscs in huge numbers, but it’s not obvious which (if any) of these creatures are capable of feeling pleasure and pain. (The background assumption being that animals that can’t feel pleasure or pain deserve much less moral concern than those that can.) So in 2018-2019 I spent approximately six months working with a team to develop a methodology to assess the probability that various animals are sentient. The research required significant engagement with literature across philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics, neuroscience, psychology, ethology, and many other fields. The project culminated in a giant database covering 53 features relevant to sentience across 18 biological taxa.

My non-philosophical research is also extremely interesting. Rethink Priorities is a small organization, but our target audience cares about a lot of different causes. Thus, although my comparative advantage is in philosophy, I often find myself having to pivot between radically different projects. For instance, I recently wrote a report about how charities can use citizen-sponsored ballot initiatives to effect positive change. Last year, I wrote a ~20,000 word report on the welfare of managed honey bees (tl;dr - turns out honey bees are pretty important). And part of my current work is considering what charities can do in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think this constant pivoting helps explain why a philosophical background makes for good training for my sort of position. Philosophers make for good generalist researchers. Compared to other fields, success in philosophy is less predicated on deep, specialized knowledge and is determined more by general-purpose reasoning skills. Studying philosophy at the doctoral level requires an eye for nuance, the ability to untangle good evidence from bad, and a mentality that prefers to question rather than accept the status quo. Philosophy also encourages creativity: it takes a good deal of imaginative thinking to discover a promising but unoccupied position in logical space or to develop a novel objection to a widely endorsed position. All of these traits are important in my role.

Where to Look for Similar Work

Unfortunately, there is no single place that collects all and only the think tank opportunities for which philosophers would be a good fit. The best place to start is probably 80,000 Hours, a nonprofit career consultancy co-founded by Will MacAskill. 80,000 Hours maintains a job board of high-impact opportunities, some of which would be suitable for philosophers. If you explore the 80,000 Hours site, you can learn about other organizations like Rethink Priorities, many of which have hired philosophers. Examples include: Founders Pledge, Forethought Foundation, Global Priorities Institute, Future of Humanity Institute, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Center on Long-Term Risk, Charity Entrepreneurship, and Open Philanthropy Project.

I’m happy to answer general questions in the comments and specific questions over email. If you’re still an early-stage grad student, I may be able to provide customized advice to help make you more competitive for positions like mine.

Comments

[time to leave?]

Thank you for this really useful information. I have a TT job at a research university—I am not sure if I want to stay. I'm kept here by a kind of inertia: "what else would I do?" ... I don't want to become a programmer or anything like that. I looked at the 80,000 hours website, it's helpful for imagining alternatives.

[job marketer]

Thank you very much for this!

[Polaris Koi]

Thank you for the useful post! It's really helpful to have a solid plan B (and C, and D) in place, and positions like this sound like they could be a plan A for many philosophers. Would you like to tell a little bit about what sorts of qualities would you say are these sorts of think tanks looking for in candidates with backgrounds in Philosophy? What sorts of CV lines are appreciated, what are less necessary?

[Jason Schukraft]

Hi Polaris,

Every think tank is different, so it's hard to say much in general about what they are looking for in a candidate. That disclaimer aside, I'd say the sort of think tanks I discuss in the post are looking for at least two things in a philosopher.

First, they're hoping you're going to bring some specialized knowledge in an area they care about. If you're serious about pursuing this kind of career, I'd recommend finding some organizations that appeal to you, reading as much of their research as you can, then trying to tailor your philosophical research so that it overlaps with the organization's research goals. If you can demonstrate (via, say, a publication) that you are already capable of doing the research that the think tank pursues, you are going to be a more attractive candidate.

Second, since many of these organizations are small, it would be helpful if you could somehow demonstrate that you can be a jack-of-all-trades. Quantitative skills are particularly valuable. If you've got an opportunity to build up competence in, say, economics or statistics, that would probably make you a more attractive candidate. Depending on the organization, competence in other areas would be useful. Examples include biology, government policy, environmental science, law, machine learning, or sociology. So if you have the opportunity to conduct interdisciplinary research in any of these areas, it might be helpful to pursue it.

[Polaris Koi]

Thank you Jason, that's very helpful and will also help candidates already on the job market and draft cover letters that highlight the right sorts of CV lines.