Thank you for writing this post; I know these take a lot of time and I think this was a really valuable contribution to the discourse/resonated strongly with me.
I find it helpful get clearer about who the audience is in any given circumstance, what they most want/value and how money might help/hurt in reaching them. When you have a lot of money, it’s tempting to use it as an incentive without noticing it’s not what your audience actually most values. (And creates the danger of attracting the audience that does most value money, which we obviously don’t want.)
For example, I think two critical audiences include both ‘talented people who really want to do good’ and ‘talented people who mostly just like solving hard problems.’ We’re competing with different kinds of entities/institutions in each case, but I think money is rarely the operative thing for the individuals I’d most like to see involved in EA.
For e.g. young people who really want to do good:
Many of them already know they could go work in finance/consulting and get lots of money and travel and perks, but choose not to. I was in this situation, and all the free stuff made me assume that there was nothing intrinsically motivating/valuable about the work, since they had to dangle so many extrinsic rewards to get me to do it. EA is competing for those people with other social movements/nonprofits, and I suspect the more EA starts looking like the finance career option in terms of extrinsic rewards, the more those people might end up dismissing it/feel like they’re being “bought.”
For people who really like solving hard problems:
I’m thinking here of people I know who are extremely smart and have chosen to do ethically neutral to dubious work because they got nerdswiped/enjoyed the magnitude of the challenge/felt like it was a good fit for their brain/etc.
My sense is that money was a factor for them but more as a neutral indicator of value/signal that they were working on something hard and valuable than because of a desire to live a specific lifestyle (many still live with roommates/don’t spend much). I think the best way to get these people is emphasizing that we have even harder and more interesting problems they could be solving (though offering reasonably comparable salaries so that the choice to switch is less disruptive also seems good).
I think the point has been made in a few places that more money means lower barrier to entry and is an opportunity to reduce elitism in EA and I just wanted to add some nuance:
I think deploying money to literally make participation in the movement possible for more people is great (i.e. offering good salaries/healthcare/scholarships to people who would be barred from an event by finances).
On the other hand, I think excessive perks/fancy events etc. are likely to be especially alienating for people who have close family members struggling financially (this aligns with my own experience), so I worry that spending of this kind may actually make the movement feel less welcoming to people from a different socioeconomic background instead of more.
Thank you for writing this post; I know these take a lot of time and I think this was a really valuable contribution to the discourse/resonated strongly with me.
I find it helpful get clearer about who the audience is in any given circumstance, what they most want/value and how money might help/hurt in reaching them. When you have a lot of money, it’s tempting to use it as an incentive without noticing it’s not what your audience actually most values. (And creates the danger of attracting the audience that does most value money, which we obviously don’t want.)
For example, I think two critical audiences include both ‘talented people who really want to do good’ and ‘talented people who mostly just like solving hard problems.’ We’re competing with different kinds of entities/institutions in each case, but I think money is rarely the operative thing for the individuals I’d most like to see involved in EA.
For e.g. young people who really want to do good:
Many of them already know they could go work in finance/consulting and get lots of money and travel and perks, but choose not to. I was in this situation, and all the free stuff made me assume that there was nothing intrinsically motivating/valuable about the work, since they had to dangle so many extrinsic rewards to get me to do it. EA is competing for those people with other social movements/nonprofits, and I suspect the more EA starts looking like the finance career option in terms of extrinsic rewards, the more those people might end up dismissing it/feel like they’re being “bought.”
For people who really like solving hard problems:
I’m thinking here of people I know who are extremely smart and have chosen to do ethically neutral to dubious work because they got nerdswiped/enjoyed the magnitude of the challenge/felt like it was a good fit for their brain/etc.
My sense is that money was a factor for them but more as a neutral indicator of value/signal that they were working on something hard and valuable than because of a desire to live a specific lifestyle (many still live with roommates/don’t spend much). I think the best way to get these people is emphasizing that we have even harder and more interesting problems they could be solving (though offering reasonably comparable salaries so that the choice to switch is less disruptive also seems good).
I think the point has been made in a few places that more money means lower barrier to entry and is an opportunity to reduce elitism in EA and I just wanted to add some nuance:
I think deploying money to literally make participation in the movement possible for more people is great (i.e. offering good salaries/healthcare/scholarships to people who would be barred from an event by finances).
On the other hand, I think excessive perks/fancy events etc. are likely to be especially alienating for people who have close family members struggling financially (this aligns with my own experience), so I worry that spending of this kind may actually make the movement feel less welcoming to people from a different socioeconomic background instead of more.