To clarify, I don’t think salaries are anywhere near $1M. I do think there are a lot of people at EA organizations who make $150-200k per year or so. When you add benefits, lunches, office space, expense policies, PTO, full Healthcare packages/benefits, staff retreats, events, unnecessary software packages, taxes etc. a typical organization might be spending 1/3rd of their budget on salaries so something like $5-6M, not $10M. I wasn’t being exact with numbers and I should have been.
I think many EA organizations could reduce their budgets by ~50%, drastically turn up the frugality and creativity and remain approximately as effective.
I’m not sure the effects this would have. I suspect less “exodus from EA” than people think.
I’m also just speaking to what happened as to why we don’t have a robust earning to give ecosystem. It’s much different having 50 people fund a 100-500k org than a 5M org.
Minor downvoted because this comment seems to take Marcus’s comment out of context / misread it:
Catered lunches, generous expense policies, large benefits packages and ample + flexible + paid time off become a pot luck once a week, basic healthcare coverage and 2 weeks of vacation. All of a sudden, running a 10 person organization takes $1M instead of $10M and it becomes much more feasible to get 30 x $10-30k with a couple of 50-100k donations to cover the cost of the organization.
I don’t think the numbers are likely exactly right, but I think the broad point is correct. I think that likely an organization starting with say 70% market rate salaries in the longtermist space could, if it pursued fairly aggressive cost savings, reduce their budget by much more than 30%.
As an example, I was once quoted on office space in the community that cost around $14k USD / month for a four person office, including lunch every day. For a 10 person organization, that is around $420k/year for office and food. Switching to a $300/person/mo office, and not offering the same perks, which is fairly easily findable, including in large cities (though it won’t be Class A office space) would save $384k, which is like, 4 additional staff at $70k/year, if that’s our benchmark.
FWIW, I feel uncertain about frugality of this sort being desirable — but I definitely believe there are major cost savings on the table.
Downvoted because this comment seems to take Marcus’s comment out of context / misread it … I don’t think the numbers are likely exactly right, but I think the broad point is correct.
I think it depends a lot on whether you think the difference between 10x ($10M vs $1M) and 1.4x (30% savings) is a big deal? (I think it is)
The main out of context bit is that Elizabeth’s comment seemed to interpret Marcus as only referring to salary, when the full comment makes it very clear that it wasn’t just about that, which seemed like a strong misreading to me, even if the 10x factor was incorrect.
I suspect the actual “theoretically maximally frugal core EA organization with the same number of staff” is something like 2x-3x cheaper than current costs, if salaries moved to the $50k-$70k range.
Elizabeth’s comment seemed to interpret Marcus as only referring to salary
I see Elizabeth as saying “all expenses are staff expenses”, which is broader than salary and includes things like office and food?
I think why Elizabeth was pointing out that the calculation implies only staff costs contribute to the overall budget because if you have expenses for things other than staff (ex: in my current org we spend money on lab reagents and genetic sequencing, which don’t go down if we decide to compensate more frugally) then your overall costs will drop less than your staff costs.
I’m not just talking about salaries when I talk about the costs of orgs (as i said, my original comment is a diagnosis, not a prescription). To use the example of lab reagents and genetic sequencing, I’ve worked in several chemistry labs and they operate very differently depending on how much money is available. When money is abundant (and frugality is not a concern), things like buying expensive laptops/computers (vs. thinking about what is actually necessary) to run equipment, buying more expensive chemicals, re-use of certain equipment (vs. discarding on single use), celebrations of accomplishments, etc. all are different.
The way I see it, from 2016 to 2022, EA (and maybe specifically longtermism) got a bunch of billionaire money that grew the movements “money” resource faster than the other resource like talent and time etc. and so money could be used more liberally, especially when trading it off vs. time, talent, ingenuity, creativity, etc.
Do you mean these numbers literally? You think people are being paid $1m a year, and all expenses are staff expenses?
To clarify, I don’t think salaries are anywhere near $1M. I do think there are a lot of people at EA organizations who make $150-200k per year or so. When you add benefits, lunches, office space, expense policies, PTO, full Healthcare packages/benefits, staff retreats, events, unnecessary software packages, taxes etc. a typical organization might be spending 1/3rd of their budget on salaries so something like $5-6M, not $10M. I wasn’t being exact with numbers and I should have been.
I think many EA organizations could reduce their budgets by ~50%, drastically turn up the frugality and creativity and remain approximately as effective.
I’m not sure the effects this would have. I suspect less “exodus from EA” than people think.
I’m also just speaking to what happened as to why we don’t have a robust earning to give ecosystem. It’s much different having 50 people fund a 100-500k org than a 5M org.
Minor downvoted because this comment seems to take Marcus’s comment out of context / misread it:
I don’t think the numbers are likely exactly right, but I think the broad point is correct. I think that likely an organization starting with say 70% market rate salaries in the longtermist space could, if it pursued fairly aggressive cost savings, reduce their budget by much more than 30%.
As an example, I was once quoted on office space in the community that cost around $14k USD / month for a four person office, including lunch every day. For a 10 person organization, that is around $420k/year for office and food. Switching to a $300/person/mo office, and not offering the same perks, which is fairly easily findable, including in large cities (though it won’t be Class A office space) would save $384k, which is like, 4 additional staff at $70k/year, if that’s our benchmark.
FWIW, I feel uncertain about frugality of this sort being desirable — but I definitely believe there are major cost savings on the table.
I think it depends a lot on whether you think the difference between 10x ($10M vs $1M) and 1.4x (30% savings) is a big deal? (I think it is)
The main out of context bit is that Elizabeth’s comment seemed to interpret Marcus as only referring to salary, when the full comment makes it very clear that it wasn’t just about that, which seemed like a strong misreading to me, even if the 10x factor was incorrect.
I suspect the actual “theoretically maximally frugal core EA organization with the same number of staff” is something like 2x-3x cheaper than current costs, if salaries moved to the $50k-$70k range.
I see Elizabeth as saying “all expenses are staff expenses”, which is broader than salary and includes things like office and food?
I think why Elizabeth was pointing out that the calculation implies only staff costs contribute to the overall budget because if you have expenses for things other than staff (ex: in my current org we spend money on lab reagents and genetic sequencing, which don’t go down if we decide to compensate more frugally) then your overall costs will drop less than your staff costs.
I’m not just talking about salaries when I talk about the costs of orgs (as i said, my original comment is a diagnosis, not a prescription). To use the example of lab reagents and genetic sequencing, I’ve worked in several chemistry labs and they operate very differently depending on how much money is available. When money is abundant (and frugality is not a concern), things like buying expensive laptops/computers (vs. thinking about what is actually necessary) to run equipment, buying more expensive chemicals, re-use of certain equipment (vs. discarding on single use), celebrations of accomplishments, etc. all are different.
The way I see it, from 2016 to 2022, EA (and maybe specifically longtermism) got a bunch of billionaire money that grew the movements “money” resource faster than the other resource like talent and time etc. and so money could be used more liberally, especially when trading it off vs. time, talent, ingenuity, creativity, etc.