Yeah this is a useful way of thinking about this issue of market rate so thanks for this! I guess I think people having the ability to earn more in non-EA orgs relative to EA roles is true for some people, and potentially most people, but also think it’s context dependent.
For example, I’ve spoken with a reasonable number of early career EAs (in the UK) for whom working at EA orgs is actually probably the highest paying options available to them (or very close), relative to what they could reasonably get hired for. So whilst I think it’s true for some EAs that EA jobs offer less* pay relative to their other options, I don’t think it’s universal. I can imagine you might agree so the question might be—how much of the community does it represent? and is it uniform? So maybe to clarify, I think that EA orgs are paying more than I would expect for certain skillsets, e.g. junior-ish ops people, rather than across the board.
I think the reasoning is sound. One caveat on the specific numbers/phrasing:
So whilst I think it’s true for some EAs that EA jobs offer slightly less pay [emphasis mine] relative to their other options
To be clear, many of us originally took >>70% pay cuts to do impactful work, including at EA orgs. EA jobs pay more now, but I imagine being paid <50% of what you’d otherwise earn elsewhere is still pretty normal for a fair number of people in meta and longtermist roles.
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.
I agree it’s reasonable to ask where (if anywhere) EA is paying too much, and that UK EA has been offering high salaries to junior ops talent. But even then, there are some good reasons for it, so it’s not obvious to me that this is excessive.
One hypothesis would be that some EA orgs are in-general overpaying junior staff, relative to executive staff, due to being “nice”. But that, really, is pure speculation.
Yeah this is a useful way of thinking about this issue of market rate so thanks for this! I guess I think people having the ability to earn more in non-EA orgs relative to EA roles is true for some people, and potentially most people, but also think it’s context dependent.
For example, I’ve spoken with a reasonable number of early career EAs (in the UK) for whom working at EA orgs is actually probably the highest paying options available to them (or very close), relative to what they could reasonably get hired for. So whilst I think it’s true for some EAs that EA jobs offer less* pay relative to their other options, I don’t think it’s universal. I can imagine you might agree so the question might be—how much of the community does it represent? and is it uniform? So maybe to clarify, I think that EA orgs are paying more than I would expect for certain skillsets, e.g. junior-ish ops people, rather than across the board.
*edited due to comment below
I think the reasoning is sound. One caveat on the specific numbers/phrasing:
To be clear, many of us originally took >>70% pay cuts to do impactful work, including at EA orgs. EA jobs pay more now, but I imagine being paid <50% of what you’d otherwise earn elsewhere is still pretty normal for a fair number of people in meta and longtermist roles.
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.
I agree it’s reasonable to ask where (if anywhere) EA is paying too much, and that UK EA has been offering high salaries to junior ops talent. But even then, there are some good reasons for it, so it’s not obvious to me that this is excessive.
One hypothesis would be that some EA orgs are in-general overpaying junior staff, relative to executive staff, due to being “nice”. But that, really, is pure speculation.