I’m probably misunderstanding you, but I’m confused by (3) and (5). They seem like they somewhat contradict each other. Remove the emotive language and (3) is saying that people in positions of power should donate and/or have lower salaries because donors or grantees might be upset in comparison, and (5) is saying that we shouldn’t compare our own earnings and donations to others.
These claims contradict each other in the following ways:
If we take (5) as a given, (3) no longer makes sense. If it truly is the case that comparing earnings is never useful, we should not expect (or want) grantees or donors to compare earnings.
Hypothetically, maybe your position might be more like “oh it’s clearly bad to compare earnings, but we live in a flawed world with flawed people.” But if that were the case, then acceding to people’s comparisons is essentially enabling a harmful activity, and maybe we should have a higher bar for enabling others’ negative proclivities.
If we take (3) as the primary constraint (Donors/grantees respect us less if we don’t visibly make sacrifices for the Good), then it seems like (5) is very relevant. Pointing out ways in which we sacrificed earnings to take on EA jobs just seems like a really good reply to concerns that we are being overpaid in absolute terms, or are only doing EA jobs for the money. At least in my case, I don’t recall any of our large donors complaining about my salary, but if I did, “I took a >>70% pay cut originally to do EA work” [1] seems like a reasonable response that I predict to mollify most donors.
Though I think it’s closer to ~40-50% now at my current salary, adjusting for inflation? On the other hand, if I stayed and/or switched jobs in tech I’d probably have had salary increases substantially above inflation as well, so it’s kind of confusing what my actual counterfactual is[2]. But I’m also not sure how much I should adjust for liking EA work and being much more motivated at it, which seems like substantial non-monetary compensation. But EA work is also more stressful and in some ways depressing, so hazard pay is reasonable, so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
In part because I think if I wasn’t doing EA work the most obvious alternative I’d be aiming for high-variance earning-to-give, which means high equity value in expectation but ~0 payout in the median case.
(I work with Caleb. Opinions are my own.)
Thank you for your comment.
I’m probably misunderstanding you, but I’m confused by (3) and (5). They seem like they somewhat contradict each other. Remove the emotive language and (3) is saying that people in positions of power should donate and/or have lower salaries because donors or grantees might be upset in comparison, and (5) is saying that we shouldn’t compare our own earnings and donations to others.
These claims contradict each other in the following ways:
If we take (5) as a given, (3) no longer makes sense. If it truly is the case that comparing earnings is never useful, we should not expect (or want) grantees or donors to compare earnings.
Hypothetically, maybe your position might be more like “oh it’s clearly bad to compare earnings, but we live in a flawed world with flawed people.” But if that were the case, then acceding to people’s comparisons is essentially enabling a harmful activity, and maybe we should have a higher bar for enabling others’ negative proclivities.
If we take (3) as the primary constraint (Donors/grantees respect us less if we don’t visibly make sacrifices for the Good), then it seems like (5) is very relevant. Pointing out ways in which we sacrificed earnings to take on EA jobs just seems like a really good reply to concerns that we are being overpaid in absolute terms, or are only doing EA jobs for the money. At least in my case, I don’t recall any of our large donors complaining about my salary, but if I did, “I took a >>70% pay cut originally to do EA work” [1] seems like a reasonable response that I predict to mollify most donors.
Though I think it’s closer to ~40-50% now at my current salary, adjusting for inflation? On the other hand, if I stayed and/or switched jobs in tech I’d probably have had salary increases substantially above inflation as well, so it’s kind of confusing what my actual counterfactual is[2]. But I’m also not sure how much I should adjust for liking EA work and being much more motivated at it, which seems like substantial non-monetary compensation. But EA work is also more stressful and in some ways depressing, so hazard pay is reasonable, so...¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
In part because I think if I wasn’t doing EA work the most obvious alternative I’d be aiming for high-variance earning-to-give, which means high equity value in expectation but ~0 payout in the median case.