I didn’t neglect it—I specifically raised the question of in what conditions EAs occupying roles within orgs vs non-EAs adds substantial value. You assume that having EAs in (all?) roles is critical to having a “focused” org. I think this assumption warrants scrutiny, and there may be many roles in orgs for which “identifying as an EA” may not be important and that using it as a requirement could result in neglecting a valuable talent pool.
Additionally, a much wider pool of people could align with the specific mission of an org that don’t identify as EA.
I just reread your comment. Here’s my thoughts, but let me know if I missed anything.
You may have been aware of this concern, but as far as I can tell, your comment didn’t address it. For example, I would have included an additional point:
3. They are in a role where value alignment is important, likely because the role requires significant autonomy and where it is hard to provide effective oversight.
Now it’s reasonable for you to not have mentioned this because no one can cover every possible condition, but I think this breaks your argument that earn-to-give should be the strong default.
I agree that people may identify with the mission without being EA, but for many opportunities EA’s will be a large percentage of the accessible pool (ie. even if only 1% of sufficiently mission-aligned folks in the world are EA, half of the mission-aligned folks who actually see your job advertisement might be EA due to being in your network). People who could do the job well, but who you have no way of accessing are irrelevant to you.
For what it’s worth, the assumption at the start of EA was that you could just earn to give and pay other people to do the job instead. And this is true if the job is just handing out bednets, but it ended up turning out that for a lot of jobs, it’s much more complicated than this. Maybe EA has overcorrected, but it’s worth understanding why the community updated the way that it did.
Also, apologies if my previous comment came off as more critical than I intended. One downside with leaving a short comment is that they often end up sounding quite negative.
I think I considered it prior to the enumerated portion, where I’d said
“it would be valuable to see an analysis—perhaps there’s something like this on 80,000 Hours—of the types of roles where having an EA as opposed to a non-EA would significantly increase counterfactual impact.”
I agree that the “high autonomy and lack of ability to oversee or otherwise measure achievement of objectives” would be a reason that having EAs in the role might be better. The scope of jobs in this category is not clear.
There may have been an overcorrection and I still think ETG is a good default option—the scarcity of “EA jobs” and frequent posts lamenting the difficulty of getting jobs at EA orgs as an EA suggests that there is no shortage of EAs looking to fill roles for which close alignment is critical. Especially in the animal welfare EA space—everyone wants to be doing direct work and so little funding to enable excellent work. There may be more of an “aligned talent constraint” problem in AI Safety.
The scarcity of “EA jobs” and frequent posts lamenting the difficulty of getting jobs at EA orgs as an EA suggests that there is no shortage of EAs looking to fill roles for which close alignment is critical
I think this argument would be stronger if people were better at gauging their potential to go professional, but given that people often can’t do this, I expect that it makes sense for most people who are deciding between earn-to-give and direct work (and who aren’t pulling down crazy trader/lawyer/doctor money) to try making it professionally and to use earn to give as a backup option.
Even then, I honestly think more people should be aiming to find a job where they can work four days a week and volunteer one day. I expect that would be both more impactful and more fulfilling for most people.
The challenge is that strong EtG jobs with four-day workweeks can be hard to find, especially for early to early-mid career roles. Medicine is probably an exception, but in the US you have to make it through four years of med school after undergrad, then a grueling 3-7 year residency first. So you’d be accepting an extended period of ~ no impact.
Hiring a personal assistant for enough hours a week might be another option, though.
It’s an interesting idea. My concern is that dropping the fifth day could have a significantly greater than 20% impact on the person’s ability to give due to cultural expectations, actual value to the main employer, or the fact that a 20% pay cut would mean >20% drop in discretionary income for most people.
It certainly could work, although my intuition is that it would only be more effective than FT work under less common conditions (e.g., where the main job wasn’t as well compensated, where the volunteer work was particularly impactful).
Switching between more impactful and more remunerative work could also be a viable pattern for some to have a mix of well-paid and more impactful work. You see something vaguely like this in some circles where people will move into senior government positions when their team is in power, then decamp for the private sector when it is not. But there’s no inherent reason someone couldn’t switch every few years for other reasons.
I didn’t neglect it—I specifically raised the question of in what conditions EAs occupying roles within orgs vs non-EAs adds substantial value. You assume that having EAs in (all?) roles is critical to having a “focused” org. I think this assumption warrants scrutiny, and there may be many roles in orgs for which “identifying as an EA” may not be important and that using it as a requirement could result in neglecting a valuable talent pool.
Additionally, a much wider pool of people could align with the specific mission of an org that don’t identify as EA.
I just reread your comment. Here’s my thoughts, but let me know if I missed anything.
You may have been aware of this concern, but as far as I can tell, your comment didn’t address it. For example, I would have included an additional point:
3. They are in a role where value alignment is important, likely because the role requires significant autonomy and where it is hard to provide effective oversight.
Now it’s reasonable for you to not have mentioned this because no one can cover every possible condition, but I think this breaks your argument that earn-to-give should be the strong default.
I agree that people may identify with the mission without being EA, but for many opportunities EA’s will be a large percentage of the accessible pool (ie. even if only 1% of sufficiently mission-aligned folks in the world are EA, half of the mission-aligned folks who actually see your job advertisement might be EA due to being in your network). People who could do the job well, but who you have no way of accessing are irrelevant to you.
For what it’s worth, the assumption at the start of EA was that you could just earn to give and pay other people to do the job instead. And this is true if the job is just handing out bednets, but it ended up turning out that for a lot of jobs, it’s much more complicated than this. Maybe EA has overcorrected, but it’s worth understanding why the community updated the way that it did.
Also, apologies if my previous comment came off as more critical than I intended. One downside with leaving a short comment is that they often end up sounding quite negative.
I think I considered it prior to the enumerated portion, where I’d said
“it would be valuable to see an analysis—perhaps there’s something like this on 80,000 Hours—of the types of roles where having an EA as opposed to a non-EA would significantly increase counterfactual impact.”
I agree that the “high autonomy and lack of ability to oversee or otherwise measure achievement of objectives” would be a reason that having EAs in the role might be better. The scope of jobs in this category is not clear.
There may have been an overcorrection and I still think ETG is a good default option—the scarcity of “EA jobs” and frequent posts lamenting the difficulty of getting jobs at EA orgs as an EA suggests that there is no shortage of EAs looking to fill roles for which close alignment is critical. Especially in the animal welfare EA space—everyone wants to be doing direct work and so little funding to enable excellent work. There may be more of an “aligned talent constraint” problem in AI Safety.
I think this argument would be stronger if people were better at gauging their potential to go professional, but given that people often can’t do this, I expect that it makes sense for most people who are deciding between earn-to-give and direct work (and who aren’t pulling down crazy trader/lawyer/doctor money) to try making it professionally and to use earn to give as a backup option.
Even then, I honestly think more people should be aiming to find a job where they can work four days a week and volunteer one day. I expect that would be both more impactful and more fulfilling for most people.
The challenge is that strong EtG jobs with four-day workweeks can be hard to find, especially for early to early-mid career roles. Medicine is probably an exception, but in the US you have to make it through four years of med school after undergrad, then a grueling 3-7 year residency first. So you’d be accepting an extended period of ~ no impact.
Hiring a personal assistant for enough hours a week might be another option, though.
The PA idea is interesting.
My point was that working four days and volunteering one day, instead of donating, may be more effective for most people.
It’s an interesting idea. My concern is that dropping the fifth day could have a significantly greater than 20% impact on the person’s ability to give due to cultural expectations, actual value to the main employer, or the fact that a 20% pay cut would mean >20% drop in discretionary income for most people.
It certainly could work, although my intuition is that it would only be more effective than FT work under less common conditions (e.g., where the main job wasn’t as well compensated, where the volunteer work was particularly impactful).
Switching between more impactful and more remunerative work could also be a viable pattern for some to have a mix of well-paid and more impactful work. You see something vaguely like this in some circles where people will move into senior government positions when their team is in power, then decamp for the private sector when it is not. But there’s no inherent reason someone couldn’t switch every few years for other reasons.