I definitely still stand by the overall thrust of this post, which I’d summarize as:
”The default Recommended EA Action should include saving up runway. It’s more important to be able to easily switch jobs, or pivot into a new career, or absorb shocks while you try risky endeavors, than to donate 10%, especially early in your career. This seems true to me regardless of whether you’re primarily earning to give, or hoping to do direct work, or aren’t sure.”
I’m not particularly attached to my numbers here. I think people need more runway than they think, and I think 6 months of runway isn’t enough for most people. But I’m not sure if it’s more like 12 months or 36.
...
The world is shaped a bit differently than in 2018 though. There’s more cryptorich people around. This has some impact on the strategically landscape but I’m not sure exactly how it shakes out.
I think it mostly points towards earning to save being more important. We are bottlenecked more on agency, and good ideas, than we are on money. There’s even more money now, so the main value of your money is in giving you flexibility to pursue really high value career paths.
(This might depend somewhat on how longtermist you are. Longtermism is sort of defined as ‘you think the the most important things are the things with the worst feedback loops’, and are most bottlenecked on knowledge.
...
One question is whether, if you got to pick one article to summarize this argument, you should go with my article here, or 80k’s similar article. It looks lik they’ve updated their post to say “save enough for 6 − 24 months of runway.” (The comments on this post suggest Ben Todd originally wrote “6 − 12″. I think 6-12 is clearly too little, but 6-24 seems plausible.”)
I haven’t read the 80k article in detail, but suspect it is more thorough than my post here. I do also suspect it could use a better headline/catchphrase to distill the advice down.
I couldn’t easily find that post on the EA Forum and am not sure how to crosspost it for the Decade Review, but it seems worth considering.
I definitely still stand by the overall thrust of this post, which I’d summarize as:
”The default Recommended EA Action should include saving up runway. It’s more important to be able to easily switch jobs, or pivot into a new career, or absorb shocks while you try risky endeavors, than to donate 10%, especially early in your career. This seems true to me regardless of whether you’re primarily earning to give, or hoping to do direct work, or aren’t sure.”
I’m not particularly attached to my numbers here. I think people need more runway than they think, and I think 6 months of runway isn’t enough for most people. But I’m not sure if it’s more like 12 months or 36.
...
The world is shaped a bit differently than in 2018 though. There’s more cryptorich people around. This has some impact on the strategically landscape but I’m not sure exactly how it shakes out.
I think it mostly points towards earning to save being more important. We are bottlenecked more on agency, and good ideas, than we are on money. There’s even more money now, so the main value of your money is in giving you flexibility to pursue really high value career paths.
(This might depend somewhat on how longtermist you are. Longtermism is sort of defined as ‘you think the the most important things are the things with the worst feedback loops’, and are most bottlenecked on knowledge.
...
One question is whether, if you got to pick one article to summarize this argument, you should go with my article here, or 80k’s similar article. It looks lik they’ve updated their post to say “save enough for 6 − 24 months of runway.” (The comments on this post suggest Ben Todd originally wrote “6 − 12″. I think 6-12 is clearly too little, but 6-24 seems plausible.”)
I haven’t read the 80k article in detail, but suspect it is more thorough than my post here. I do also suspect it could use a better headline/catchphrase to distill the advice down.
I couldn’t easily find that post on the EA Forum and am not sure how to crosspost it for the Decade Review, but it seems worth considering.