We basically just do our best to think about what the counterfactual would have been without 80k, and then subtract that from our impact. We tend to break this into two components: (i) the value of the new option compared to what they would have done otherwise (ii) the influence of others in the community, who might have brought about similar changes soon afterwards.
The value of their next best alternative matters a little less than it might first seem because we think the impact of different options is fat-tailed i.e. someone switching to a higher-impact option might well 2x or even 10x their impact, which means you only need to reduce the estimate by 10-50%, which is a comparatively small adjustment given other huge uncertainties.
With the value of working at EA organisations, because they’re talent constrained additional staff can have a big impact, even taking account of the fact that someone else could have been hired anyway. For more on this, see our recent talent survey: https://80000hours.org/2017/11/talent-gaps-survey-2017/
This showed that EA orgs highly value marginal staff, even taking account of replaceability.
Hi Jan,
We basically just do our best to think about what the counterfactual would have been without 80k, and then subtract that from our impact. We tend to break this into two components: (i) the value of the new option compared to what they would have done otherwise (ii) the influence of others in the community, who might have brought about similar changes soon afterwards.
The value of their next best alternative matters a little less than it might first seem because we think the impact of different options is fat-tailed i.e. someone switching to a higher-impact option might well 2x or even 10x their impact, which means you only need to reduce the estimate by 10-50%, which is a comparatively small adjustment given other huge uncertainties.
With the value of working at EA organisations, because they’re talent constrained additional staff can have a big impact, even taking account of the fact that someone else could have been hired anyway. For more on this, see our recent talent survey: https://80000hours.org/2017/11/talent-gaps-survey-2017/ This showed that EA orgs highly value marginal staff, even taking account of replaceability.