For those who don’t know, I work as a data scientist / software engineer, have more than two years experience, identify as an EA, and donate a considerable portion of my income (right now living on ~$40K and donating ~$50K).
This post resonates with me because I often get annoyed that my earning to give job has little to none direct social impact and takes a lot of time away from my volunteering that I would otherwise like to do. However, when considering these direct work jobs, I usually end up not applying for some of the following reasons, in order from most feared to least feared:
(a) For personal reasons, I need to work in Chicago right now, but none of the other organizations are in Chicago. I would definitely consider remote work, but that sounds like it would make me really lonely as I have few friends outside of work and my girlfriend is long distance. My thought is that someone else who can live in the Bay would be a better fit.
(b) I’m concerned the jobs won’t be technically challenging enough. My perception is that these jobs often involve maintaining WordPress sites or chaining Google Sheets together and don’t involve making great technology. This motivation of mine exists alongside my EA motivations and is what keeps me interested in my for-profit job, but I’m afraid I’d lose it in a direct work job and I wouldn’t be fulfilled from EA drive alone. My thought is that someone else who is less experienced or not motivated by technical challenge would be a better fit. I’d definitely be interested in any EA org that had a strong need for data science though, whether it be in generating predictions, creating product recommendations, classifying objects, etc.
(c) I’m concerned I don’t have the relevant skills. These jobs seem very front-end focused or focused on making mobile apps, and my experience is in data science and back-end engineering. I’m not good at designing apps and would think that someone else more skilled at front-end design would be a better fit.
(d) I’m concerned these jobs don’t offer sufficient salary. While I definitely identify with EA and want to donate a lot of money, I’m not super into sacrifice and would like to do things that, in Chicago, require $40K or more. I’d also like to save to eventually raise a family, buy a house, send kids to college, etc. My thought is that someone who can take a lower salary would be a better fit.
(e) I think that doing for-profit work will build better career capital that could launch an even more impactful career in the future, perhaps in tech entrepreneurship.
I don’t know if (a)-(e) are actually true, but they’re fears that keep me from exploring much further. I also think (a)-(e) is also based in the thought that there are many other EA software engineers who could easily be a better fit because of these limitations, but maybe that’s not true? I didn’t know any EA org other than 80K was struggling to hire software engineers, so that definitely updates me in that direction.
These concerns seem similar to other EA engineers we talked to about working at 80k. In particular, lots are more back-end focused rather than front-end, and many were worried about career capital.
It might be one of those cases where lots of people think they’re not ideally suited to the role for reasons like this, but actually everyone else is reasoning in the same way. In reality, someone who doesn’t seem well suited in absolute terms is relatively best positioned to do it.
http://www.benkuhn.net/advantage
I think all these roles pay more than $40k, several more like $70, and Wave pays market rates.
I think some of the roles will be technically interesting. 80k isn’t “building new technology” and mainly uses wordpress, but there’s a lot of design challenges, and, based on our trials, it still seems very challenging to do everything quickly to a high level.
Additional reason that applies to me and probably other EA engineers: Earning to Give lets your impact be more liquid and therefore better directed.
E2G lets you donate money to whichever organization in whichever cause area you think is best. Signing on to work at CEA means you think (impact at CEA) + (donating ?5-15k to Best Charity) is better than (donating 30-60k to Best Charity).
If you think CEA (or New Incentives, or Wave or whatever) is The Most Optimal Charity, easy decision. But it’s not clear why the math would work out if you think X-risk, animal charities, or basic science is the right cause area… or even if you’re into global health/poverty but think GiveWell is better at charity evaluation than you are.
This by the way is what certificates of impact are for, although it’s not a practical suggestion right now because it’s only been implemented at the toy level.
The idea is to create a system where your comparative advantage, in terms of knowledge and skills, is decoupled from your value system. Two people can be working for whichever org best needs their skills, even though the other best matches their values, and agree to swap impact with each other. (As well as the much more complex versions of that setup that would occur in real life).
In response to b, I think that’s true for the 80k job. I decided not to apply for the 80k job because it was WordPress, which is horrible to work with and bad for career capital as a developer. Other developers I spoke to about it felt similarly.
But this isn’t true of all of the jobs.
For example, the GiveDirectly advert says “GiveDirectly is looking for a full-stack developer who is ready to own, develop, and refine a broad portfolio of products, ranging from mobile and web applications to backend data integrations. As GiveDirectly’s only full-time technologist they will be responsible for developing solutions to the organization’s most challenging technical problems, and owning the resolution from end to end.”
When I unsuccessfully applied to Wave it similarly sounded like a standard backend web development job, not WordPress or tying together google sheets.
Just to clarify to future 80k engineers who are reading this—the current site is in WordPress so the job would involve some WordPress work, but we expect much work in the future won’t be in Wordpress e.g. our career quiz has an angular JS front-end; if we build our own career tool then it would likely be in ruby on rails on a sub-domain.
For those who don’t know, I work as a data scientist / software engineer, have more than two years experience, identify as an EA, and donate a considerable portion of my income (right now living on ~$40K and donating ~$50K).
This post resonates with me because I often get annoyed that my earning to give job has little to none direct social impact and takes a lot of time away from my volunteering that I would otherwise like to do. However, when considering these direct work jobs, I usually end up not applying for some of the following reasons, in order from most feared to least feared:
(a) For personal reasons, I need to work in Chicago right now, but none of the other organizations are in Chicago. I would definitely consider remote work, but that sounds like it would make me really lonely as I have few friends outside of work and my girlfriend is long distance. My thought is that someone else who can live in the Bay would be a better fit.
(b) I’m concerned the jobs won’t be technically challenging enough. My perception is that these jobs often involve maintaining WordPress sites or chaining Google Sheets together and don’t involve making great technology. This motivation of mine exists alongside my EA motivations and is what keeps me interested in my for-profit job, but I’m afraid I’d lose it in a direct work job and I wouldn’t be fulfilled from EA drive alone. My thought is that someone else who is less experienced or not motivated by technical challenge would be a better fit. I’d definitely be interested in any EA org that had a strong need for data science though, whether it be in generating predictions, creating product recommendations, classifying objects, etc.
(c) I’m concerned I don’t have the relevant skills. These jobs seem very front-end focused or focused on making mobile apps, and my experience is in data science and back-end engineering. I’m not good at designing apps and would think that someone else more skilled at front-end design would be a better fit.
(d) I’m concerned these jobs don’t offer sufficient salary. While I definitely identify with EA and want to donate a lot of money, I’m not super into sacrifice and would like to do things that, in Chicago, require $40K or more. I’d also like to save to eventually raise a family, buy a house, send kids to college, etc. My thought is that someone who can take a lower salary would be a better fit.
(e) I think that doing for-profit work will build better career capital that could launch an even more impactful career in the future, perhaps in tech entrepreneurship.
I don’t know if (a)-(e) are actually true, but they’re fears that keep me from exploring much further. I also think (a)-(e) is also based in the thought that there are many other EA software engineers who could easily be a better fit because of these limitations, but maybe that’s not true? I didn’t know any EA org other than 80K was struggling to hire software engineers, so that definitely updates me in that direction.
These concerns seem similar to other EA engineers we talked to about working at 80k. In particular, lots are more back-end focused rather than front-end, and many were worried about career capital.
It might be one of those cases where lots of people think they’re not ideally suited to the role for reasons like this, but actually everyone else is reasoning in the same way. In reality, someone who doesn’t seem well suited in absolute terms is relatively best positioned to do it. http://www.benkuhn.net/advantage
I think all these roles pay more than $40k, several more like $70, and Wave pays market rates.
I think some of the roles will be technically interesting. 80k isn’t “building new technology” and mainly uses wordpress, but there’s a lot of design challenges, and, based on our trials, it still seems very challenging to do everything quickly to a high level.
I think the career capital concerns might be overblown as I’ve written about before. https://80000hours.org/2015/11/working-at-effective-altruist-organisations-good-or-bad-for-career-capital/
Additional reason that applies to me and probably other EA engineers: Earning to Give lets your impact be more liquid and therefore better directed.
E2G lets you donate money to whichever organization in whichever cause area you think is best. Signing on to work at CEA means you think (impact at CEA) + (donating ?5-15k to Best Charity) is better than (donating 30-60k to Best Charity).
If you think CEA (or New Incentives, or Wave or whatever) is The Most Optimal Charity, easy decision. But it’s not clear why the math would work out if you think X-risk, animal charities, or basic science is the right cause area… or even if you’re into global health/poverty but think GiveWell is better at charity evaluation than you are.
This by the way is what certificates of impact are for, although it’s not a practical suggestion right now because it’s only been implemented at the toy level.
The idea is to create a system where your comparative advantage, in terms of knowledge and skills, is decoupled from your value system. Two people can be working for whichever org best needs their skills, even though the other best matches their values, and agree to swap impact with each other. (As well as the much more complex versions of that setup that would occur in real life).
Of course, see here: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/high-impact-jobs/
But then also see here: https://80000hours.org/2015/11/why-you-should-focus-more-on-talent-gaps-not-funding-gaps/
In response to b, I think that’s true for the 80k job. I decided not to apply for the 80k job because it was WordPress, which is horrible to work with and bad for career capital as a developer. Other developers I spoke to about it felt similarly.
But this isn’t true of all of the jobs.
For example, the GiveDirectly advert says “GiveDirectly is looking for a full-stack developer who is ready to own, develop, and refine a broad portfolio of products, ranging from mobile and web applications to backend data integrations. As GiveDirectly’s only full-time technologist they will be responsible for developing solutions to the organization’s most challenging technical problems, and owning the resolution from end to end.”
When I unsuccessfully applied to Wave it similarly sounded like a standard backend web development job, not WordPress or tying together google sheets.
Just to clarify to future 80k engineers who are reading this—the current site is in WordPress so the job would involve some WordPress work, but we expect much work in the future won’t be in Wordpress e.g. our career quiz has an angular JS front-end; if we build our own career tool then it would likely be in ruby on rails on a sub-domain.
I suppose (c) is a more valid concern than (b) then.