Very much agree with this post. It reminds me of a problem we see in certain other fields (entry-level journalism, congressional staff, etc.)--the salaries are so low that it’s as if the job is selecting for people who are either 1) independently wealthy (or heavily supported by parents), or 2) eager for some other job benefit (such as access to power). Neither characteristic is likely to make an employee . . . effective. Passion about EA might be good for some things, but in many roles, there is no reason to think that personal passion equates to skill, knowledge, personal productivity, etc.
Imagine there’s a top CEO who earns $10 million currently, and who knows MacKenzie Scott well. If paid $20 million, he would leave his job, and spend a year designing and implementing a strategy to convince MacKenzie Scott to take an EA approach with 25% of her yearly giving. Wouldn’t that be worth it, if it worked?
Or this: Open Phil recently was hiring a General Counsel. Imagine two options: 1) “We’ll pay $125k, but no more than that, because we want a General Counsel who has essentially taken a vow of poverty, and/or who is so desperate for a job that they’ll work anywhere.” 2) “We’ll pay market rate for the best non-profit lawyer we can find.”
Which option is likely to lead to a General Counsel who gives better advice to Open Phil about its operations, its legal structure, etc.?
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.
(I don’t disagree with you, or at least I suspect there could be very little actual disagreement if we drilled down to the root issues).
Assuming the comp for the general counsel was at market rates, which might not be true, here are some key points:
That institution you mention has a culture, management/faculties and reputation that is strong, even among good EA organizations. I think these traits greatly reduce the downsides of, and allow integration of talent at very high compensation.
With more uncertainty, I think another consideration is that the source of funding at that institution is more proximate than to most grantees. As a consequence of upstream conditions related to this proximity, the deployment of money is more disciplined and systemic consequences of high salaries are lower. (I guess the crude way of saying this is that the incentives are more aligned, but this isn’t quite right.)
I think a key issue that shouldn’t be ignored are conditions, like culture, management capacity, and the ability to buy and absorb high value talent.
There’s a lot going on in the preceding sentence, but I think there’s a huge point here related to funding debates going on now:
The conditions for the deployment of money and use of funds or capacity can be hard to attain, and people without these faculties may never see this. I’ll be even more direct: a lot of funding issues right now have nothing to do with cause area but competence and composition.
This can be true, and can be the overwhelming consideration for impact, even if the funding situation is as unbalanced as some describe.
Very much agree with this post. It reminds me of a problem we see in certain other fields (entry-level journalism, congressional staff, etc.)--the salaries are so low that it’s as if the job is selecting for people who are either 1) independently wealthy (or heavily supported by parents), or 2) eager for some other job benefit (such as access to power). Neither characteristic is likely to make an employee . . . effective. Passion about EA might be good for some things, but in many roles, there is no reason to think that personal passion equates to skill, knowledge, personal productivity, etc.
Imagine there’s a top CEO who earns $10 million currently, and who knows MacKenzie Scott well. If paid $20 million, he would leave his job, and spend a year designing and implementing a strategy to convince MacKenzie Scott to take an EA approach with 25% of her yearly giving. Wouldn’t that be worth it, if it worked?
Or this: Open Phil recently was hiring a General Counsel. Imagine two options: 1) “We’ll pay $125k, but no more than that, because we want a General Counsel who has essentially taken a vow of poverty, and/or who is so desperate for a job that they’ll work anywhere.” 2) “We’ll pay market rate for the best non-profit lawyer we can find.”
Which option is likely to lead to a General Counsel who gives better advice to Open Phil about its operations, its legal structure, 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.
(I don’t disagree with you, or at least I suspect there could be very little actual disagreement if we drilled down to the root issues).
Assuming the comp for the general counsel was at market rates, which might not be true, here are some key points:
That institution you mention has a culture, management/faculties and reputation that is strong, even among good EA organizations. I think these traits greatly reduce the downsides of, and allow integration of talent at very high compensation.
With more uncertainty, I think another consideration is that the source of funding at that institution is more proximate than to most grantees. As a consequence of upstream conditions related to this proximity, the deployment of money is more disciplined and systemic consequences of high salaries are lower. (I guess the crude way of saying this is that the incentives are more aligned, but this isn’t quite right.)
I think a key issue that shouldn’t be ignored are conditions, like culture, management capacity, and the ability to buy and absorb high value talent.
There’s a lot going on in the preceding sentence, but I think there’s a huge point here related to funding debates going on now:
The conditions for the deployment of money and use of funds or capacity can be hard to attain, and people without these faculties may never see this. I’ll be even more direct: a lot of funding issues right now have nothing to do with cause area but competence and composition.
This can be true, and can be the overwhelming consideration for impact, even if the funding situation is as unbalanced as some describe.