I don’t get compensated, though I also don’t think compensation would make much of a difference for me or anyone else on the fund (except maybe Alex).
Everyone on the fund is basically dedicating all of their resources towards EA stuff, and is generally giving up most of their salary potential for working in EA. I don’t think it would make super much sense for us to get more money, given that we are already de-facto donating everything above a certain threshold (either literally in the case of the two Matts, or indirectly by taking a paycut and working in EA).
I think if people give more money to the fund because they come to trust the decisions of the fund more, then that seems like it would incentivize more things like this. Also if people bring up strong arguments against any of the reasoning I explained above, then that is a great win, since I care a lot about our fund distributions getting better.
The reason compensation seems good is that it formalizes the duty of engaging with the community’s discourse, which probably pushes us further towards the above regime.
Right now, the community is basically banking on you & other fund managers caring a lot about engaging with the community. This is great, and it’s great that you do.
Layering on compensation seems like a way of bolstering this engagement. If someone is compensated to do this engagement, then there’s increased incentive for them to do it. (Though there’s probably some weirdness around Goodhart-ing here.)
Compensation is also good in case you ever retire and someone else with different financial needs takes over (but it doesn’t seem super important—there are other things you could solve first).
I think that makes sense but in practice is something that makes more sense to handle through their day jobs. (If they went the route of hiring someone for whom managing the fund was their actual day job I’d agree that generally higher salaries would be good, for mostly the same reason they’d be good across the board in EA)
Relatedly, is Oli getting compensated for the work he’s putting in to the Longterm Future Fund?
Seems good to move towards a regime wherein:
The norm is to write up detailed, public grant reports
Community members ask a bunch of questions about the grant decisions
The norm is that a representative of the grant-making staff fields all of these questions, and is compensated for doing so
I don’t get compensated, though I also don’t think compensation would make much of a difference for me or anyone else on the fund (except maybe Alex).
Everyone on the fund is basically dedicating all of their resources towards EA stuff, and is generally giving up most of their salary potential for working in EA. I don’t think it would make super much sense for us to get more money, given that we are already de-facto donating everything above a certain threshold (either literally in the case of the two Matts, or indirectly by taking a paycut and working in EA).
I think if people give more money to the fund because they come to trust the decisions of the fund more, then that seems like it would incentivize more things like this. Also if people bring up strong arguments against any of the reasoning I explained above, then that is a great win, since I care a lot about our fund distributions getting better.
Got it.
The reason compensation seems good is that it formalizes the duty of engaging with the community’s discourse, which probably pushes us further towards the above regime.
Right now, the community is basically banking on you & other fund managers caring a lot about engaging with the community. This is great, and it’s great that you do.
Layering on compensation seems like a way of bolstering this engagement. If someone is compensated to do this engagement, then there’s increased incentive for them to do it. (Though there’s probably some weirdness around Goodhart-ing here.)
cf. Role of ombudsperson in public governance
Compensation is also good in case you ever retire and someone else with different financial needs takes over (but it doesn’t seem super important—there are other things you could solve first).
I think that makes sense but in practice is something that makes more sense to handle through their day jobs. (If they went the route of hiring someone for whom managing the fund was their actual day job I’d agree that generally higher salaries would be good, for mostly the same reason they’d be good across the board in EA)