there’s an adverse selection worry: low salaries may filter for dedication, but also lower-performers without better ‘exit options’.
Hadn’t thought about this before, but agree it’s worrisome. Great point!
A lot has been written on trying to explain why EA orgs (including ones with a lot of resources) say they struggle to find the right people, whilst a lot of EA people say they really struggle find work for an EA org. What I think may explain this mismatch the EA community can ‘supply’ lots of generally able and motivated people, whilst EA org demand skews more to those with particular specialised skills. Thus jobs looking for able generalists have lots of applicants yet the ‘person spec’ for other desired positions have few or zero appointable candidates.
Agree with this explanation, and I think both demographics and low salaries contribute. One might frame the problem as: EA needs diverse skillsets, but the EA community is not diverse enough to have all those skillsets and the low pay filters out mission aligned people from outside the community.
Re: the relative glut of generalists, I came across an amazing stat when researching this post. In 2017 and 2018, surveys asked orgs to list up to 6 skills the EA community needs more of. Across both years, not a single person said EA as a whole needs more “People extremely enthusiastic about effective altruism” or more “People extremely enthusiastic about working on x-risk.”
I agree with you that “if you have low/suppressed pay, you harm your recruitment”. I think we disagree on how prevalent the antecedent is: I think the 80k stat you cite elsewhere is out of date—although I think some orgs still are paying in a fairly flat band around ‘entry level graduate salary’, I think others do pay more (whether enough to match market isn’t clear, but I think the shortfall is less stark than it used to be).
Thanks for these thoughtful comments Gregory!
Hadn’t thought about this before, but agree it’s worrisome. Great point!
Agree with this explanation, and I think both demographics and low salaries contribute. One might frame the problem as: EA needs diverse skillsets, but the EA community is not diverse enough to have all those skillsets and the low pay filters out mission aligned people from outside the community.
Re: the relative glut of generalists, I came across an amazing stat when researching this post. In 2017 and 2018, surveys asked orgs to list up to 6 skills the EA community needs more of. Across both years, not a single person said EA as a whole needs more “People extremely enthusiastic about effective altruism” or more “People extremely enthusiastic about working on x-risk.”
Hello Jon,
I agree with you that “if you have low/suppressed pay, you harm your recruitment”. I think we disagree on how prevalent the antecedent is: I think the 80k stat you cite elsewhere is out of date—although I think some orgs still are paying in a fairly flat band around ‘entry level graduate salary’, I think others do pay more (whether enough to match market isn’t clear, but I think the shortfall is less stark than it used to be).
Greg is right that the stat is out of date. I elaborate here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/CkYq5vRaJqPkpfQEt/a-framework-for-thinking-about-the-ea-labor-market#osRTvpjHJHNCGWa3Q