I notice that the listed grants seems substantially below $1000/hour (…)
Is this because you aren’t getting those senior people applying? Or are there other constraints?
The main reason is that the people are willing to work for a substantially lower amount than what they could make when earning to give. E.g., someone who might be able to make $5 million per year in quant trading or tech entrepreneurship might decide to ask for a salary of $80k/y when working at an EA organization. It would seem really weird for that person to ask for a $5 million / year salary, especially given that they’d most likely want to donate most of that anyway.
Cool, for what it’s worth my experience recruiting for a couple EA organizations is that labor supply is elastic even above (say) $100k/year, and your comments seem to indicate that you would be happy to fund at least some people at that level.
So I remain kind of confused why the grant amounts are so small.
If you have to pay fairly (i.e., if you pay one employee $200k/y, you have to pay everyone else with a similar skill level a similar amount), the marginal cost of an employee who earns $200k/y can be >$1m/y. That may still be worth it, but less clearly so.
FWIW, I also don’t really share the experience that labor supply is elastic above $100k/y, at least when taking into account whether staff have a good attitude, fit into the culture of the organization, etc. I’d be keen to hear more about that.
The main reason is that the people are willing to work for a substantially lower amount than what they could make when earning to give. E.g., someone who might be able to make $5 million per year in quant trading or tech entrepreneurship might decide to ask for a salary of $80k/y when working at an EA organization. It would seem really weird for that person to ask for a $5 million / year salary, especially given that they’d most likely want to donate most of that anyway.
Cool, for what it’s worth my experience recruiting for a couple EA organizations is that labor supply is elastic even above (say) $100k/year, and your comments seem to indicate that you would be happy to fund at least some people at that level.
So I remain kind of confused why the grant amounts are so small.
If you have to pay fairly (i.e., if you pay one employee $200k/y, you have to pay everyone else with a similar skill level a similar amount), the marginal cost of an employee who earns $200k/y can be >$1m/y. That may still be worth it, but less clearly so.
FWIW, I also don’t really share the experience that labor supply is elastic above $100k/y, at least when taking into account whether staff have a good attitude, fit into the culture of the organization, etc. I’d be keen to hear more about that.