There are few decisions in life more important than one’s choice of career. Typically, one’s
career choice determines how one spends over 80 000 hours—a sizable proportion of one’s
waking life. One’s choice of career can therefore be the determining factor in whether one’s
life is fruitful or worthless; happy or miserable; admirable or contemptible.
This decision is not only important, however. It’s also common. Almost all people living in
rich countries, and certainly those who are lucky enough to be university-educated, are able to
make decisions about how they will earn a living. And, as socioeconomic conditions improve
throughout the world, the number of people worldwide who have a genuine ability to choose
between jobs will only increase.
Remarkably, however, very little philosophical work has been done on the ethics of career
choice. This is something of a disappointment on the part of practical ethics, insofar as we
should expect that discipline to offer advice about one of the most important decisions of our
lives. But it is also unfortunate for normative ethics, because consideration of the ethics of
career choice throws up some interesting and far-reaching theoretical issues.
The small literature which does exist has focused primarily on whether it is permissible to
pursue a non-altruistic rather than an altruistic career.1 I focus on a different question: within the
domain of altruistic career paths, which careers are ethically preferable to which others? This
question is important because, as I shall show, which altruistic career path a person chooses
makes a great deal of difference to the world. But the question is also important simply because
many young graduates care deeply about it.2 For these people, choosing a merely permissible
career is not sufficient: they want to know how best to live their lives.