Hi Kat, sorry if my short comment came across as aggressive or inaccurate.
Thanks! And Iâm also sorry if I come across that way. Iâm trying to be as unemotional as possible, but as Iâm sure you can imagine, itâs been challenging, and I certainly havenât succeeded as much as I would like.
most people in Alice or Chloeâs shoes wouldâve preferred to be paid the equivalent cash amount
Alice did, and then when she asked she got it. Chloe never requested this.
Itâs really important that they signed up for this. If we had promised them $75,000 cash salary and then instead gave them this compensation package, I think that is indeed unethical and unfair. However if they knew what they were signing up for and it was clearly communicated and they said yes, then that is totally fine and an informed choice they made.
I donât see an alternative. I canât read minds. I couldnât change their comp package if I didnât know they wanted to. And when I did know, I said yes.
If they chose this compensation package when they could have applied for other jobs with a more standard package or could have asked for a standard package, then they did indeed choose this compensation package.
Additionally, we need to be able to distinguish between âthis was what they choseâ and âthis was what they would have preferred if they could have had anything in the world right away without having to askâ.
Like, imagine I applied the same standards to funders. âI asked for $50,000 and they gave me $50,000, but I would have preferred $75,000. Yes, I didnât ask for $75,000, but most people in my shoes would prefer $75,000 over $50,000.â (Or replace with whatever numbers make most sense to you)
This follows the same structure of the argument âAlice and Chloe signed up for a all-expenses-paid + stipend compensation package and they got that, but they would have preferred a cash salary of a similar value to the comp package. Yes, they didnât ask for that, but most people in their shoes would prefer a cash salary over the other comp package.â
Or maybe a better analogy is a charity applying for funding and the grantmaker donates but with earmarked funds. All orgs would prefer unearmarked funds (flexible funds are more useful than earmarked ones), but that doesnât mean itâs unethical for a donor to earmark their donations.
Is rent a travel expense?
Counting rent while traveling if this was a part-time travel experience seems reasonable. For example, if they usually live in the Bay area and theyâre expected to travel to London for EAG, the cost of the Airbnb in London is clearly a travel expense.
However, if they are always traveling and they do not have a permanent place anywhere, that does not seem like a travel expense but rather just regular rent. Neither of them had a permanent place. Alice had been nomadic before she even met us. Counting that as a travel expense in this context doesnât make sense and will lead to people getting the wrong idea.
Think about it. Otherwise then, for the last 4 years I have paid zero rent? Clearly, if you are a full-time nomad then airbnbs are just rent, not travel.
How to calculate total compensation
I quickly googled âwhen people describe a compensation package do they usually include medicalâ and the first result said:
âHealth Insurance Benefits are a huge piece of your overall compensation package. This can include Medical, Dental, Vision, as well as HSA/âFSA accounts. When calculating how much your benefits are worth, think about what percentage your employer is going to be covering. Is your employer covering 100% of the cost? 80%? Does that change if you were to include a spouse or dependents in the coverage? These are all important questions to ask when evaluating an offer package and figuring out how much your health benefits are worth.â
Since Google knows my history, I thought maybe itâs giving me a biased result. So I tried searching in incognito mode so it wasnât taking into account my recent posting, and it gave the same results.
Now, I do think that a compensation package is clearly different from cash salary. We say that right away at the almost the very beginning of our post. But we did not describe it to them or to anybody as a $75,000 salary cash. We described it as a compensation package that we estimated to be worth around $70,000.
Once, off hand, in a recorded interview. Every single other communication was just saying all expenses paid plus stipend.
They were informed about this beforehand and they signed up for it. If they had wanted something different, all they had to do was ask. Or they could have applied to a different job. When Alice did, she got it.
If people come away from reading this thinking that we said that we paid them both a cash salary of $75,000 or that itâs the same as a $75,000 cash salary, then they made the same mistake that Chloe seems to have made. Chloe kept on saying that we offered to pay her something equivalent to a $75,000 cash salary. We were saying that this was worth around $70,000. I think her interpreting it this way led to a lot of suffering. We tried to explain it to her a bunch of times that that was not what we were saying but she did not seem to be able to update. I do think people seem to struggle with this a lot.
I think the main thing though, and the way I think about it at least, is as a consequentialist. I donât think in terms of how much money is it worth etc. I tend to think of it as are you getting your needs met? What about your preferences? And I think the key is that she was living an exceptionally comfortable lifestyle. She was living the almost exactly the same lifestyle as myself.
She also had plenty of freedom and options. She publicly says she had savings and we covered everything so well that, as far as we can tell, all of her stipend went into savings as well. She got her dream job 2 and 1â2 months after she quit. And she could have gotten a regular dev job far faster if she wanted.
I donât know how she would have spent the money otherwise, But that seems irrelevant. It seems like if somebody got a scholarship that included room and board, and then they get upset, because they would have spent it on a different house. If they accept the scholarship, then that is how they would spend it. They would spend it on that house and that food, because that is what they chose. They could have just tried to get a different scholarship or a job. In fact, if you accept that scholarship, and then speak to the people who gave you it and say that you would prefer cash instead and they say yes, that is exceptionally generous and way outside the norm of what is expected.
If a scholarship/âfellowship/âjob offered you room and board and you accepted and then later asked for cash instead I suspect that 98% of them would say no.
She is trying to make it sound like a hardship and us being unreasonable when it is incredibly unreasonable to ask for your compensation package to be changed so quickly after you accepted it.
Most people do not ask for changes in compensation until theyâve been working for at least a year.
Most people if theyâre offered room and board + stipend never get the option of switching to cash only.
Most people donât accept a compensation package and then later say they would have preferred a different compensation package and therefore they were financially controlled.
Most people donât go to the EA Hotel and say that theyâre being financially controlled because they got room and board and a stipend and couldnât choose to spend the money on something else.
Most people donât say that a scholarship offering to pay for room and board is somehow bad because the student could have used that money to spend less on a room or paid for a different room.
Sure, everybody would prefer that. But they are not entitled to that.
Sure, some people might misinterpret a compensation package being estimated to be worth $X as being the same as a cash salary of $X. But as long as you clearly communicate what theyâre signing up for and they have other options and they choose the compensation package, then nothing wrong was done. If they later change their mind and want something different, they have to ask or quit and find a job that meets their criteria. They canât make a choice, later want to make a different choice, then try to pillory an person for not reading their mind and giving them everything they ask for right away.
People canât say âThey told me Iâd get paid $X and I got paid $X but I think $Y would be better, therefore we have to warn the community about the âpredatorâ in our midst, âchewing up and spitting outâ the youth of the community.â
They can say âThey offered me $X and I got paid $X, and I would have preferred $Y, and when I asked for $Y, I got $Y.â
They can say âThey offered me $X and I got paid $X. I would have preferred $Y, but I never asked for $Y and that made me sad. I guess I should learn from this and get better at asking people for things instead of expecting mind-reading and getting everything that I want immediately without asking.â
First of all, sympathies again. Having hundreds of comments piled on (twice) must be an exceedingly unpleasant experience, and I hope you find some time to practice self-care and enjoy the holidays.
I want to be respectful of your time and the very difficult emotional spot youâre going through, but it seems like your comment is rather afield of the original point I was making. Recall that Roko summarized the situation as:
Nonlinear leadership responded that actually they were getting paid enough (seems to amount to something liked $100k/âyr all in)...
Since nobody else tried to correct Roko in 4 days, I tried to explain that he was off on two fronts with that line: a) Nobody said $100k/âyr, the highest claimed number was ~$75k/âyear and b) saying someone is âgetting paidâ $75k/âyear will predictably give a misleading impression when said payment includes flights and lodging with your employer at expensive places.
That was it. I did not say anything about consent or agreement until you brought it up (and then only to deny that I took the contrary position). I didnât say anything about whether the deal was net good or bad. Note also that my original comment was exactly one sentence.
Iâm not sure how to say this politely, but you write rather long paragraphs arguing against a position I do not hold, and I clearly never did. I donât appreciate you reframing my language imprecisely[1] and strongly implying things I didnât say.
To be honest, your comments triggered âsomeone is wrong on the internetâ feelings from me, and I have to actively resist my natural instincts to fight back line-by-line. Like dude if you want to win a fight by writing overly long and nitpicky EA forum comments you sure picked the wrong person to mess with.
I understand that youâre in an emotionally tough spot right now, and I want to be respectful of your time, so Iâll refrain from commenting further in this thread.
Additionally, we need to be able to distinguish between âthis was what they choseâ and âthis was what they would have preferred if they could have had anything in the world right away without having to askâ.
I never at any point said that they didnât choose this.
Like, imagine I applied the same standards to funders. âI asked for $50,000 and they gave me $50,000, but I would have preferred $75,000. Yes, I didnât ask for $75,000, but most people in my shoes would prefer $75,000 over $50,000.â (Or replace with whatever numbers make most sense to you)
(speaking for myself) No, I think itâs more like if I did active grantmaking, saw Alex who might be a good independent researcher, but was worried that they were doing too much theory and not enough computational work, and also think theyâd benefit more from working in Berkeley, and also that theyâd be more productive if they exercised more (no offense to them of course). So I arranged for them to be paid $10k in stipend, $15k in housing subsidies for Berkeley, and bought $25k in compute credits for them, and arranged $15k worth of office space in Berkeley, and bought an expensive gym membership from FAR for $10k/âyear.
And then afterwards I go around telling people that Alex was paid $75k/âyear. People might reasonably object on whether (e.g.) just because I somehow managed to be deluded enough to pay $10k/âyear in overpriced gym memberships to a third party on behalf of a grantee who doesnât exercise, that itâs actually equivalent to paying the grantee $10k/âyear.
This follows the same structure of the argument âAlice and Chloe signed up for a all-expenses-paid + stipend compensation package and they got that, but they would have preferred a cash salary of a similar value to the comp package. Yes, they didnât ask for that, but most people in their shoes would prefer a cash salary over the other comp package.â
The whole point is that it wasnât the same value. Cost does not equal value! Also I note that you are putting quote marks around things I didnât say. Instead of block quotes, would you prefer if instead (mis)quoted you as saying âI think approving a grant should have the exact same responsibilities and norms as employing someone under your direct care and instruction. Also I hate Taylor Swift and I like pineapple on pizza[2]â?
Or maybe a better analogy is a charity applying for funding and the grantmaker donates but with earmarked funds. All orgs would prefer unearmarked funds (flexible funds are more useful than earmarked ones), but that doesnât mean itâs unethical for a donor to earmark their donations.
In this comment chain, I never said anything about whether an action is ethical or not.
Thanks! And Iâm also sorry if I come across that way. Iâm trying to be as unemotional as possible, but as Iâm sure you can imagine, itâs been challenging, and I certainly havenât succeeded as much as I would like.
Alice did, and then when she asked she got it. Chloe never requested this.
Itâs really important that they signed up for this. If we had promised them $75,000 cash salary and then instead gave them this compensation package, I think that is indeed unethical and unfair. However if they knew what they were signing up for and it was clearly communicated and they said yes, then that is totally fine and an informed choice they made.
I donât see an alternative. I canât read minds. I couldnât change their comp package if I didnât know they wanted to. And when I did know, I said yes.
If they chose this compensation package when they could have applied for other jobs with a more standard package or could have asked for a standard package, then they did indeed choose this compensation package.
Additionally, we need to be able to distinguish between âthis was what they choseâ and âthis was what they would have preferred if they could have had anything in the world right away without having to askâ.
Like, imagine I applied the same standards to funders. âI asked for $50,000 and they gave me $50,000, but I would have preferred $75,000. Yes, I didnât ask for $75,000, but most people in my shoes would prefer $75,000 over $50,000.â (Or replace with whatever numbers make most sense to you)
This follows the same structure of the argument âAlice and Chloe signed up for a all-expenses-paid + stipend compensation package and they got that, but they would have preferred a cash salary of a similar value to the comp package. Yes, they didnât ask for that, but most people in their shoes would prefer a cash salary over the other comp package.â
Or maybe a better analogy is a charity applying for funding and the grantmaker donates but with earmarked funds. All orgs would prefer unearmarked funds (flexible funds are more useful than earmarked ones), but that doesnât mean itâs unethical for a donor to earmark their donations.
Is rent a travel expense?
Counting rent while traveling if this was a part-time travel experience seems reasonable. For example, if they usually live in the Bay area and theyâre expected to travel to London for EAG, the cost of the Airbnb in London is clearly a travel expense.
However, if they are always traveling and they do not have a permanent place anywhere, that does not seem like a travel expense but rather just regular rent. Neither of them had a permanent place. Alice had been nomadic before she even met us. Counting that as a travel expense in this context doesnât make sense and will lead to people getting the wrong idea.
Think about it. Otherwise then, for the last 4 years I have paid zero rent? Clearly, if you are a full-time nomad then airbnbs are just rent, not travel.
How to calculate total compensation
I quickly googled âwhen people describe a compensation package do they usually include medicalâ and the first result said:
âHealth Insurance Benefits are a huge piece of your overall compensation package. This can include Medical, Dental, Vision, as well as HSA/âFSA accounts. When calculating how much your benefits are worth, think about what percentage your employer is going to be covering. Is your employer covering 100% of the cost? 80%? Does that change if you were to include a spouse or dependents in the coverage? These are all important questions to ask when evaluating an offer package and figuring out how much your health benefits are worth.â
âA total compensation package goes beyond your new hiresâ base pay rate. It also includes items like health insurance, bonuses, and paid time offâ
When I Google âhow to calculate the value of your compensation packageâ these are the first results:
âTo calculate total compensation for an employee, take the sum of their base salary and the dollar value of all additional benefits. Additional benefits include insurance benefits, commissions and bonuses, time-off benefits, and perks.â
âTotal compensation is the combined value of your salary, bonuses, a 401(k) match, free office coffee, and more. All those freebies or conveniences that feel like work perksâincluding your PTOâare actually parts of your total compensation package, and they can have just as much value as your salary.â
Since Google knows my history, I thought maybe itâs giving me a biased result. So I tried searching in incognito mode so it wasnât taking into account my recent posting, and it gave the same results.
Now, I do think that a compensation package is clearly different from cash salary. We say that right away at the almost the very beginning of our post. But we did not describe it to them or to anybody as a $75,000 salary cash. We described it as a compensation package that we estimated to be worth around $70,000.
Once, off hand, in a recorded interview. Every single other communication was just saying all expenses paid plus stipend.
They were informed about this beforehand and they signed up for it. If they had wanted something different, all they had to do was ask. Or they could have applied to a different job. When Alice did, she got it.
If people come away from reading this thinking that we said that we paid them both a cash salary of $75,000 or that itâs the same as a $75,000 cash salary, then they made the same mistake that Chloe seems to have made. Chloe kept on saying that we offered to pay her something equivalent to a $75,000 cash salary. We were saying that this was worth around $70,000. I think her interpreting it this way led to a lot of suffering. We tried to explain it to her a bunch of times that that was not what we were saying but she did not seem to be able to update. I do think people seem to struggle with this a lot.
I think the main thing though, and the way I think about it at least, is as a consequentialist. I donât think in terms of how much money is it worth etc. I tend to think of it as are you getting your needs met? What about your preferences? And I think the key is that she was living an exceptionally comfortable lifestyle. She was living the almost exactly the same lifestyle as myself.
She also had plenty of freedom and options. She publicly says she had savings and we covered everything so well that, as far as we can tell, all of her stipend went into savings as well. She got her dream job 2 and 1â2 months after she quit. And she could have gotten a regular dev job far faster if she wanted.
I donât know how she would have spent the money otherwise, But that seems irrelevant. It seems like if somebody got a scholarship that included room and board, and then they get upset, because they would have spent it on a different house. If they accept the scholarship, then that is how they would spend it. They would spend it on that house and that food, because that is what they chose. They could have just tried to get a different scholarship or a job. In fact, if you accept that scholarship, and then speak to the people who gave you it and say that you would prefer cash instead and they say yes, that is exceptionally generous and way outside the norm of what is expected.
If a scholarship/âfellowship/âjob offered you room and board and you accepted and then later asked for cash instead I suspect that 98% of them would say no.
She is trying to make it sound like a hardship and us being unreasonable when it is incredibly unreasonable to ask for your compensation package to be changed so quickly after you accepted it.
Most people do not ask for changes in compensation until theyâve been working for at least a year.
Most people if theyâre offered room and board + stipend never get the option of switching to cash only.
Most people donât accept a compensation package and then later say they would have preferred a different compensation package and therefore they were financially controlled.
Most people donât go to the EA Hotel and say that theyâre being financially controlled because they got room and board and a stipend and couldnât choose to spend the money on something else.
Most people donât say that a scholarship offering to pay for room and board is somehow bad because the student could have used that money to spend less on a room or paid for a different room.
Sure, everybody would prefer that. But they are not entitled to that.
Sure, some people might misinterpret a compensation package being estimated to be worth $X as being the same as a cash salary of $X. But as long as you clearly communicate what theyâre signing up for and they have other options and they choose the compensation package, then nothing wrong was done. If they later change their mind and want something different, they have to ask or quit and find a job that meets their criteria. They canât make a choice, later want to make a different choice, then try to pillory an person for not reading their mind and giving them everything they ask for right away.
People canât say âThey told me Iâd get paid $X and I got paid $X but I think $Y would be better, therefore we have to warn the community about the âpredatorâ in our midst, âchewing up and spitting outâ the youth of the community.â
They can say âThey offered me $X and I got paid $X, and I would have preferred $Y, and when I asked for $Y, I got $Y.â
They can say âThey offered me $X and I got paid $X. I would have preferred $Y, but I never asked for $Y and that made me sad. I guess I should learn from this and get better at asking people for things instead of expecting mind-reading and getting everything that I want immediately without asking.â
First of all, sympathies again. Having hundreds of comments piled on (twice) must be an exceedingly unpleasant experience, and I hope you find some time to practice self-care and enjoy the holidays.
I want to be respectful of your time and the very difficult emotional spot youâre going through, but it seems like your comment is rather afield of the original point I was making. Recall that Roko summarized the situation as:
Since nobody else tried to correct Roko in 4 days, I tried to explain that he was off on two fronts with that line: a) Nobody said $100k/âyr, the highest claimed number was ~$75k/âyear and b) saying someone is âgetting paidâ $75k/âyear will predictably give a misleading impression when said payment includes flights and lodging with your employer at expensive places.
That was it. I did not say anything about consent or agreement until you brought it up (and then only to deny that I took the contrary position). I didnât say anything about whether the deal was net good or bad. Note also that my original comment was exactly one sentence.
Iâm not sure how to say this politely, but you write rather long paragraphs arguing against a position I do not hold, and I clearly never did. I donât appreciate you reframing my language imprecisely[1] and strongly implying things I didnât say.
To be honest, your comments triggered âsomeone is wrong on the internetâ feelings from me, and I have to actively resist my natural instincts to fight back line-by-line. Like dude if you want to win a fight by writing overly long and nitpicky EA forum comments you sure picked the wrong person to mess with.
I understand that youâre in an emotionally tough spot right now, and I want to be respectful of your time, so Iâll refrain from commenting further in this thread.
I never at any point said that they didnât choose this.
(speaking for myself) No, I think itâs more like if I did active grantmaking, saw Alex who might be a good independent researcher, but was worried that they were doing too much theory and not enough computational work, and also think theyâd benefit more from working in Berkeley, and also that theyâd be more productive if they exercised more (no offense to them of course). So I arranged for them to be paid $10k in stipend, $15k in housing subsidies for Berkeley, and bought $25k in compute credits for them, and arranged $15k worth of office space in Berkeley, and bought an expensive gym membership from FAR for $10k/âyear.
And then afterwards I go around telling people that Alex was paid $75k/âyear. People might reasonably object on whether (e.g.) just because I somehow managed to be deluded enough to pay $10k/âyear in overpriced gym memberships to a third party on behalf of a grantee who doesnât exercise, that itâs actually equivalent to paying the grantee $10k/âyear.
The whole point is that it wasnât the same value. Cost does not equal value! Also I note that you are putting quote marks around things I didnât say. Instead of block quotes, would you prefer if instead (mis)quoted you as saying âI think approving a grant should have the exact same responsibilities and norms as employing someone under your direct care and instruction. Also I hate Taylor Swift and I like pineapple on pizza[2]â?
In this comment chain, I never said anything about whether an action is ethical or not.
As the saying goes âanything is possible if you lie.â