Like I say in the comments, I broadly agree. I’m not so excited about more people optimising around earnings at the margin, unless they especially want to go into a high-earning career or have an especially strong advantage for earning money. If I had to guess the optimal medium-term proportion of EAs earning to give, I might go for 10%. Note the balance depends quite a bit on your views of which causes are most important.
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.
From people who have made significant plan changes, about a third are (in part) earning to give (though usually they’re also going for career capital too). But this could overestimate the proportion. [this was also partly the figure I had in mind, though it’s a bit different].
Thinking through EA groups, often a significant fraction (like over 30%) of ppl are software engineers or similar and donating income.
GiveWell users and GWWC members also make up a big fraction of “dedicated EAs”, and if you count them as mainly contributing through their donations, then it could be a majority. There’s thousands of them compared to hundreds changing plans due to 80k (excluding etg).
What do you think of “How Important is Marginal Earning to Give?”?
Like I say in the comments, I broadly agree. I’m not so excited about more people optimising around earnings at the margin, unless they especially want to go into a high-earning career or have an especially strong advantage for earning money. If I had to guess the optimal medium-term proportion of EAs earning to give, I might go for 10%. Note the balance depends quite a bit on your views of which causes are most important.
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.
How many EAs are currently earning to give?
Good point, it’s very hard to tell.
From people who have made significant plan changes, about a third are (in part) earning to give (though usually they’re also going for career capital too). But this could overestimate the proportion. [this was also partly the figure I had in mind, though it’s a bit different].
Thinking through EA groups, often a significant fraction (like over 30%) of ppl are software engineers or similar and donating income.
GiveWell users and GWWC members also make up a big fraction of “dedicated EAs”, and if you count them as mainly contributing through their donations, then it could be a majority. There’s thousands of them compared to hundreds changing plans due to 80k (excluding etg).