Excellent point, that’s an important reason to hire value-aligned people that I hadn’t really considered. I expect it wouldn’t matter much in some cases; for example, my understanding is that most GiveWell employees wouldn’t be doing anything particularly altruistic if they worked elsewhere, and GiveWell doesn’t seem to have substantial principal-agent problems. But I would expect you’d want to hire value-aligned employees in most cases.
Edit: Alternatively, you can benefit from hiring value-aligned people who probably wouldn’t do something similarly effective otherwise. For example, I’d expect that effective animal organizations hire some people who care about animals but otherwise would have worked at a shelter or something similarly small-scale.
GiveWell doesn’t seem to have substantial principal-agent problems
Grantmaking seems to me like an area where it’s especially important to hire value-aligned people. Handing out large amounts of money = conflict of interest opportunities galore.
It’s also hard to observe how good a job a GiveWell analyst is doing. It seems easy for poorly-aligned analysts to do suboptimal work (mainly through subtle omissions) in a way that more motivated people may not. e.g. a non-altruistic employee may not choose to highlight a crucial consideration that renders 3 months of their work irrelevant.
Excellent point, that’s an important reason to hire value-aligned people that I hadn’t really considered. I expect it wouldn’t matter much in some cases; for example, my understanding is that most GiveWell employees wouldn’t be doing anything particularly altruistic if they worked elsewhere, and GiveWell doesn’t seem to have substantial principal-agent problems. But I would expect you’d want to hire value-aligned employees in most cases.
Edit: Alternatively, you can benefit from hiring value-aligned people who probably wouldn’t do something similarly effective otherwise. For example, I’d expect that effective animal organizations hire some people who care about animals but otherwise would have worked at a shelter or something similarly small-scale.
Grantmaking seems to me like an area where it’s especially important to hire value-aligned people. Handing out large amounts of money = conflict of interest opportunities galore.
It’s also hard to observe how good a job a GiveWell analyst is doing. It seems easy for poorly-aligned analysts to do suboptimal work (mainly through subtle omissions) in a way that more motivated people may not. e.g. a non-altruistic employee may not choose to highlight a crucial consideration that renders 3 months of their work irrelevant.