Concrete example affecting me right now: this summer I’m considering internships in mental health, x-risk or global health cause prioritisation, and I’m also considering just doing a bunch of Coursera courses and working on a start up.
I think ideally I would be choosing entirely based on what offers more career capital / is more impactful, but it’s difficult not to be influenced by the fact that one of the internships would pay me £11k more than the other 3.
You should keep in mind that high-earning positions enable a large amount of donations! Money is a lot more flexible in which cause you can deploy it to.
In light of current salaries, one could even work on x-risks as a global poverty EtG strategy.
You should be influenced by that! It is evidence for donors thinking that org is more important, and that org thinking you are more important. Prices transmit valuable information.
I think for difficult questions it is helpful to form both an inside view (what do I think) and an outside view (what does everyone else think). Pay is an indicator of the outside view. In an altruistic market how good an indicator it is depends on how much you trust a few big grantmakers to be making good decisions.
Ok, yes, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that, or we would all be working at Goldman or Google who also able to deploy altruistic narratives.
Yes you’re right (Goldman was bad/silly to bring up).
But it seems good to make the main point:
It’s possible and even ideal for salary to reflect impact.
However, people have used outside salaries to explain differential salaries. These justifications are extremely convincing (even if it is self serving write this).
(I don’t think you did this) but with the above justification, suggesting these norms are signals of impact risks leaning too hard on them. This might come off as slippery or wrong in certain situations.
[Edit: The original version of this comment offered an idea that, as Mauricio flagged below, could be inconsistent with U.S. antitrust law. Thanks, Mauricio, for flagging my mistake. I retract the comment.]
Conspiring to suppress wages is clearly off-limits. But because the intention is to raise wages to a uniform base that makes all high-impact work similarly attractive, rather than to suppress wages, I’d be interested to explore whether workers could pursue the strategy above by forming a union and bargaining collectively with employers for a consistent contract.
(I feel very uncertain of the feasibility of this idea—Before pursuing this idea any further, I think it would be important learn more about constraints on collective bargaining with multiple employers for similar contracts, as well as any limits on funders’ ability to encourage grantees to hire members of a union.)
Concrete example affecting me right now: this summer I’m considering internships in mental health, x-risk or global health cause prioritisation, and I’m also considering just doing a bunch of Coursera courses and working on a start up.
I think ideally I would be choosing entirely based on what offers more career capital / is more impactful, but it’s difficult not to be influenced by the fact that one of the internships would pay me £11k more than the other 3.
You should keep in mind that high-earning positions enable a large amount of donations! Money is a lot more flexible in which cause you can deploy it to. In light of current salaries, one could even work on x-risks as a global poverty EtG strategy.
You should be influenced by that! It is evidence for donors thinking that org is more important, and that org thinking you are more important. Prices transmit valuable information.
I think for difficult questions it is helpful to form both an inside view (what do I think) and an outside view (what does everyone else think). Pay is an indicator of the outside view. In an altruistic market how good an indicator it is depends on how much you trust a few big grantmakers to be making good decisions.
Ok, yes, but I think it’s a little more complicated than that, or we would all be working at Goldman or Google who also able to deploy altruistic narratives.
Yes, the scope is “Orgs whose donors you respect for their capital allocation.” Goldman doesn’t have donors at all.
Yes you’re right (Goldman was bad/silly to bring up).
But it seems good to make the main point:
It’s possible and even ideal for salary to reflect impact.
However, people have used outside salaries to explain differential salaries. These justifications are extremely convincing (even if it is self serving write this).
(I don’t think you did this) but with the above justification, suggesting these norms are signals of impact risks leaning too hard on them. This might come off as slippery or wrong in certain situations.
[Edit: The original version of this comment offered an idea that, as Mauricio flagged below, could be inconsistent with U.S. antitrust law. Thanks, Mauricio, for flagging my mistake. I retract the comment.]
Hm, this might violate US antitrust law?
I wonder whether the exception for organized labor might apply in this context?
Conspiring to suppress wages is clearly off-limits. But because the intention is to raise wages to a uniform base that makes all high-impact work similarly attractive, rather than to suppress wages, I’d be interested to explore whether workers could pursue the strategy above by forming a union and bargaining collectively with employers for a consistent contract.
(I feel very uncertain of the feasibility of this idea—Before pursuing this idea any further, I think it would be important learn more about constraints on collective bargaining with multiple employers for similar contracts, as well as any limits on funders’ ability to encourage grantees to hire members of a union.)
Maybe, does this apply to non-profits?