I don’t disagree with your overall point (paying more for better people can make a lot of sense), but it’s still useful to be calibrated on what constitutes poverty.
Fair enough, that was probably too dramatic of a rhetorical flourish! :)
I guess my point is that if you want top corporate counsel to consider working for Open Phil, you have to the market into account. Someone who could make $700k as General Counsel for the Gates Foundation or $1m+ at a public corporation probably isn’t going to take an 80% or 90% pay cut to work at Open Phil. Even the most well-motivated altruist is probably still going to find a reason to convince themselves that they’ll do as much good for the world at Gates, and they’ll have much more money to contribute to charity themselves, so they might as well take the job that allows them to easily pay for their kids’ college, etc.
Someone earning $125k, even with a family of four to support, is at the 98th income percentile globally. Within the US it’s 89th for an individual or 75th for a household, and even in the Bay Area it’s above the median household income.
I don’t disagree with your overall point (paying more for better people can make a lot of sense), but it’s still useful to be calibrated on what constitutes poverty.
Fair enough, that was probably too dramatic of a rhetorical flourish! :)
I guess my point is that if you want top corporate counsel to consider working for Open Phil, you have to the market into account. Someone who could make $700k as General Counsel for the Gates Foundation or $1m+ at a public corporation probably isn’t going to take an 80% or 90% pay cut to work at Open Phil. Even the most well-motivated altruist is probably still going to find a reason to convince themselves that they’ll do as much good for the world at Gates, and they’ll have much more money to contribute to charity themselves, so they might as well take the job that allows them to easily pay for their kids’ college, etc.