So I think this conversation might be more productive if we clarified some terminology/dove into the specifics. There are a lot of different ways to set salaries in general.
Needs of the employee
Resources the organization has
Market rate including benefits (how desirable the job is—e.g. hedge funds pay loads but are stressful so need to pay more to make up for that)
Amount for the employee to be psychologically content
Amount that creates the best incentives for the organization/EA movement
Market rate replacement (if someone left, what you’d have to pay to get someone equally talented)
Pure market-rate earnings (what would be the highest salary job rate- not taking into account non-salary benefits—e.g. a hedge fund salary)
Value in impact to the organization
These varying ways cause a pretty dramatically wide spectrum of possible salaries. There is a case for using basically any of them. Ballpark numbers might range from 40k-400k depending on which system you use.
I think a lot of people are conflating the conversation a bit, there seem to be two central questions; 1) which of the systems (or index of systems) that’s best to use, and 2) pragmatically, what do these systems look like when cashed out?
For example, Josh’s comment is getting at number 1; maybe we should be using “pure market rate earnings” or “value in impact to the organization” instead of “amount that creates best incentives”.
Ryan’s comment on the other hand is basically “the ideal incentives” might in fact correlate quite a lot to the resources the organization has.
I think splitting these out can make it easier to discuss each possibility.
So I think this conversation might be more productive if we clarified some terminology/dove into the specifics. There are a lot of different ways to set salaries in general.
Needs of the employee
Resources the organization has
Market rate including benefits (how desirable the job is—e.g. hedge funds pay loads but are stressful so need to pay more to make up for that)
Amount for the employee to be psychologically content
Amount that creates the best incentives for the organization/EA movement
Market rate replacement (if someone left, what you’d have to pay to get someone equally talented)
Pure market-rate earnings (what would be the highest salary job rate- not taking into account non-salary benefits—e.g. a hedge fund salary)
Value in impact to the organization
These varying ways cause a pretty dramatically wide spectrum of possible salaries. There is a case for using basically any of them. Ballpark numbers might range from 40k-400k depending on which system you use.
I think a lot of people are conflating the conversation a bit, there seem to be two central questions; 1) which of the systems (or index of systems) that’s best to use, and 2) pragmatically, what do these systems look like when cashed out?
For example, Josh’s comment is getting at number 1; maybe we should be using “pure market rate earnings” or “value in impact to the organization” instead of “amount that creates best incentives”.
Ryan’s comment on the other hand is basically “the ideal incentives” might in fact correlate quite a lot to the resources the organization has.
I think splitting these out can make it easier to discuss each possibility.