Thanks for the correction—I’ll edit this in the comment above as I agree my phrasing was too weak. Apologies as I didn’t mean to underplay the significance of the pay cut and financial sacrifice yourself and others took—I think it’s substantial (and inspiring).
I don’t know how much credit/inspiration this should really give people. As you note, the other conditions for EA org work is often better than external jobs (though this is far from universal). And as you allude to in your post, there are large quality of life improvements from working on something that genuinely aligns with my values. At least naively, for many people (myself included) it is selfishly worth quite a large salary cut to do this. Many people both in and outside of EA also take large salary cuts to work in government and academia as well, sometimes with less direct alignment with their values, and often with worse direct working conditions.
Thanks for the correction—I’ll edit this in the comment above as I agree my phrasing was too weak. Apologies as I didn’t mean to underplay the significance of the pay cut and financial sacrifice yourself and others took—I think it’s substantial (and inspiring).
I don’t know how much credit/inspiration this should really give people. As you note, the other conditions for EA org work is often better than external jobs (though this is far from universal). And as you allude to in your post, there are large quality of life improvements from working on something that genuinely aligns with my values. At least naively, for many people (myself included) it is selfishly worth quite a large salary cut to do this. Many people both in and outside of EA also take large salary cuts to work in government and academia as well, sometimes with less direct alignment with their values, and often with worse direct working conditions.