When considering working for a startup/company with significant positive externalities, would it be far off to estimate your share of impact as (estimate of total impact of the company vs. the world where it did not exist) * (equity share of company)?
This seems easier to estimate than your impact on company as a whole, and matches up with something like the impact certificate model (equity share seems like the best estimate we would have of what impact certificate division might look like). It’s also possible that there are distortions in allocation of money that would lead to an underestimate of true impact.
On the downside, it doesn’t fully account for replaceabilty, and I’m not sure if it meshes with the assessment that “negative externalities don’t matter too much in most cases because someone else would take your job” that seems to be the typical EA position.
I think this is a good starting point for estimating share of externalities in a start-up (particularly the expected externalities that will be caused if the start-up is very successful).
I don’t think it will be all that accurate, for the kind of reasons you mention, but it has the major advantages that it is easy to measure and somewhat robust. I expect that replaceability means that it tends to be an overestimate, but typically by less than an order of magnitude.
A warning, though: replaceability can operate on the level of startups as well as the level of jobs. You should consider that if your start-up weren’t very successful in the niche it’s going for, then someone else might be (even if they’re a bit less good). This will tend to make the externalities of the whole company smaller than they first appear.
When considering working for a startup/company with significant positive externalities, would it be far off to estimate your share of impact as (estimate of total impact of the company vs. the world where it did not exist) * (equity share of company)?
This seems easier to estimate than your impact on company as a whole, and matches up with something like the impact certificate model (equity share seems like the best estimate we would have of what impact certificate division might look like). It’s also possible that there are distortions in allocation of money that would lead to an underestimate of true impact.
On the downside, it doesn’t fully account for replaceabilty, and I’m not sure if it meshes with the assessment that “negative externalities don’t matter too much in most cases because someone else would take your job” that seems to be the typical EA position.
I think this is a good starting point for estimating share of externalities in a start-up (particularly the expected externalities that will be caused if the start-up is very successful).
I don’t think it will be all that accurate, for the kind of reasons you mention, but it has the major advantages that it is easy to measure and somewhat robust. I expect that replaceability means that it tends to be an overestimate, but typically by less than an order of magnitude.
A warning, though: replaceability can operate on the level of startups as well as the level of jobs. You should consider that if your start-up weren’t very successful in the niche it’s going for, then someone else might be (even if they’re a bit less good). This will tend to make the externalities of the whole company smaller than they first appear.