Interesting! I work in CB full-time (Director of EA Germany), and my impression is still that it’s challenging work, pays less than what I and my peers would earn elsewhere and most of the CB roles still have a lot less status than e.g. being a researcher who gets invited to give talks etc.
Do you think some CBs are motivated by money or status? What makes you think so? I’m genuinely curious (though no worries if you don’t feel like elaborating).
I think I am mostly comparing to how different my impression of the landscape of a few years ago is to today’s landscape.
I am mostly talking about uni groups (I know less about how status-y city groups are), but I there were certainly a few people putting in a lot of hours for 0 money and not much recognition from the community for just how valuable their work was. I don’t want to name specific people I have in mind, but some of them now work at top EA orgs or are doing other interesting things and have status now, I just think it was hard for them to know that this is how it would pan out so I’m pretty confident they are not particularly status motivated.
I’m also pretty confident that that most community builders I know wouldn’t be doing their job on minimum wage even if they thought it was the most impactful thing they could do. That’s probably fine, I just think they are less ‘hardcore’ than I would like.
Also being status motivated is not neccesarilly a bad thing, I’m confused about this but it’s plausibly a good thing for the movement to have lots of status motivated people to the degree that we can make status track the right stuff. I am sure that part of why I am less excited about these people is a vibes thing that isn’t tracking impact.
Interesting! I work in CB full-time (Director of EA Germany), and my impression is still that it’s challenging work, pays less than what I and my peers would earn elsewhere and most of the CB roles still have a lot less status than e.g. being a researcher who gets invited to give talks etc.
Do you think some CBs are motivated by money or status? What makes you think so? I’m genuinely curious (though no worries if you don’t feel like elaborating).
I think I am mostly comparing to how different my impression of the landscape of a few years ago is to today’s landscape.
I am mostly talking about uni groups (I know less about how status-y city groups are), but I there were certainly a few people putting in a lot of hours for 0 money and not much recognition from the community for just how valuable their work was. I don’t want to name specific people I have in mind, but some of them now work at top EA orgs or are doing other interesting things and have status now, I just think it was hard for them to know that this is how it would pan out so I’m pretty confident they are not particularly status motivated.
I’m also pretty confident that that most community builders I know wouldn’t be doing their job on minimum wage even if they thought it was the most impactful thing they could do. That’s probably fine, I just think they are less ‘hardcore’ than I would like.
Also being status motivated is not neccesarilly a bad thing, I’m confused about this but it’s plausibly a good thing for the movement to have lots of status motivated people to the degree that we can make status track the right stuff. I am sure that part of why I am less excited about these people is a vibes thing that isn’t tracking impact.