If I had to guess the optimal medium-term proportion of EAs earning to give, I might go for 10%.
Hm, this seems quite low. What would you have the other 90% be doing? Intuitively I’m thinking I’d want at least enough EAs earning to give so as to fund the rest of the EA movement working at EA organizations full-time, but that’s just a thought off the top of my head. (The issue is complicated by the fact that many career paths are “earning to give plus”—they both have a decent associated salary and give you the opportunity to do other EA activities. For example, being an influencer college professor.)
The highest-earning 10% of EAs may have expected earnings of ~$1m per year in the long-run, so they’d be able to fund ~10 people doing direct work at current EA org salaries.
Also, young EAs who want to do direct work should be able to pull in funds from elsewhere e.g. Good Ventures and other large donors. (or even broader, there’s already $300bn given to charity each year; $140bn spent on international dev).
Also, generally, having more EAs in different areas of the labour market appears on the face of it very useful as long as they are in collaborative communication with the rest of the community. A larger skill set and set of perspectives to draw on. More communal learning value. Better ability to spot opportunitites. Wider networks. What do you think of this perspective Ben?
Interesting. I assume you also considered the inverse strategy of hiring non-EAs to work at EA orgs? Let’s say I’m an EA org hiring a personal assistant… if I hire an EA as my personal assistant, that EA no longer has the opportunity to draw a salary from a non-EA organization and funnel that money in to an EA organization via earning to give. (On the other hand, hiring EAs is useful for dealing with principle-agent problems.)
At CEA, we haven’t had much luck hiring non-EAs, though it can work for relatively mechanical or well standardised tasks e.g. book keeping and some assistant work; and we try to do that as much as possible.
Hm, this seems quite low. What would you have the other 90% be doing? Intuitively I’m thinking I’d want at least enough EAs earning to give so as to fund the rest of the EA movement working at EA organizations full-time, but that’s just a thought off the top of my head. (The issue is complicated by the fact that many career paths are “earning to give plus”—they both have a decent associated salary and give you the opportunity to do other EA activities. For example, being an influencer college professor.)
The highest-earning 10% of EAs may have expected earnings of ~$1m per year in the long-run, so they’d be able to fund ~10 people doing direct work at current EA org salaries.
Also, young EAs who want to do direct work should be able to pull in funds from elsewhere e.g. Good Ventures and other large donors. (or even broader, there’s already $300bn given to charity each year; $140bn spent on international dev).
Also, generally, having more EAs in different areas of the labour market appears on the face of it very useful as long as they are in collaborative communication with the rest of the community. A larger skill set and set of perspectives to draw on. More communal learning value. Better ability to spot opportunitites. Wider networks. What do you think of this perspective Ben?
Interesting. I assume you also considered the inverse strategy of hiring non-EAs to work at EA orgs? Let’s say I’m an EA org hiring a personal assistant… if I hire an EA as my personal assistant, that EA no longer has the opportunity to draw a salary from a non-EA organization and funnel that money in to an EA organization via earning to give. (On the other hand, hiring EAs is useful for dealing with principle-agent problems.)
At CEA, we haven’t had much luck hiring non-EAs, though it can work for relatively mechanical or well standardised tasks e.g. book keeping and some assistant work; and we try to do that as much as possible.