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.
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.