Thanks, Mark! I’ve been struggling to figure out what career goals I myself should pursue, so I appreciated this post.
Those considering EtG as their primary career path might want to consider direct work instead
I think this advice is missing a very important qualification: if you are a highly talented person, you might want to consider direct work. As the post mentions, highly talented people are rare—for example, you might be highly talented if you could plausibly earn upwards of $1m/year.
Regularly talented people are in general poor substitutes for highly talented people. As you say, there is little demand for them at EA organizations: “[Open Philanthropy is] not particularly constrained by finding people who have a strong resume who seemed quite aligned with their mission.” (More anecdotal evidence: “It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation.”)
In other words, EA orgs value regularly talented people below the market rate—that’s one reason those people should prefer earning to give instead of direct work. (On the other hand, maybe there are opportunities for direct work at non-EA organizations that constitute sufficient demand?)
As a probably regularly-talented person myself, I’m particularly interested in the best course of action here. Rather than “earn to give” or “do direct work,” I think it might be “try as hard as you can to become a highly talented person” (maybe by acquiring domain expertise in an important cause area).
One more thing:
Most people suffer extremely sharp diminishing returns to large sums of money [...] As people have more money, their desires shift: work-life balance, passion, location, etc. If someone is passionate about their work, no amount of money may be sufficient.
The flip side is that if you value money/monetary donations linearly—or more linearly than other talented people—then you’ve got a comparative advantage in earning to give! The fact that “people don’t value money” means that no one’s taking the exhausting/boring/bad-location jobs that pay really well. If you do, you can earn more than you “should” (in an efficient market) and make an outsize impact.
I think this advice is missing a very important qualification: if you are a highly talented person, you might want to consider direct work. As the post mentions, highly talented people are rare—for example, you might be highly talented if you could plausibly earn upwards of $1m/year.
I expect this isn’t what you’re actually implying, but I’m a bit worried this could be misread as saying that most people who are sufficiently talented in the relevant sense to work at an EA org are capable of earning $1m/year elsewhere, and that if you can’t, then you probably aren’t capable of working at an EA org or doing direct work. I just wanted to flag that I think the kinds of talent required for doing direct work are often not all that correlated with the kinds of talent that are highly financially rewarded outside of EA, and that people shouldn’t rule themselves out for the former because they wouldn’t be capable of earning a ton of money.
(Edit: People (or person?) who downvoted—I’d love to know why! Is it because you think smountjoy is obviously not saying the thing I thought they might be misread as saying, and so you think this is a pointless comment, or because you disagree with it, or something else? I’m fairly new to actually commenting on the forum, so maybe I’ve not understood the ettiquette properly.)
Agreed. I appreciate this post and responses alike, but think there are many examples of:
Brilliant mathematics/CS graduates who might earn $1M+ in finance, but of which there is an undersupply in direct work
Brilliant PhDs in history or other fields whose private-sector alternatives are rarely >$90K/year, and of which there is also an undersupply in direct work
I expect there are several cases a year where the world would be better off if an individual in category 1 would EtG and fund direct work of 5-10 individuals in category 2, than if the individual in bullet 1 were to choose direct work instead. Not that those in category 1 should mostly EtG rather than do direct work, but I’d be more bullish on the EtG path in some cases than Mark is given the huge labor supply in category 2.
A sad example of the glut of brilliant history PhDs is the challenging labor market and career that Thea Hunter confronted, despite her extraordinary reputation/abilities according to Foner and others. Her painful trajectory is a sign that there is real slack in the “brilliant historian” market. I expect some rising star historians could be induced to work on EA-relevant problems via grants from those whose academic backgrounds offer greater potential to EtG than history or political science PhDs do.
“She had this ability to be extemporaneous and brilliant,” he said. Eric Foner, a renowned American historian and Thea’s adviser, noticed this too...
Her work provided a new way of thinking about America’s past. And she had an ambition: to use an Atlantic understanding of history, of liberty, of freedom, to better grasp the present. It’s one thing to call for a new perspective on history, Foner says; it’s a completely different thing to be one of the “pioneering young scholars” to develop it.
You might not have to identify them in advance, rather than 10+ years into their post-doctoral career. Googling “mid-career grant history” leads to a few links like these — where charitable or governmental foundations provide support to experienced scholars.
The American Historical Association promoted the same grant here. One could imagine a similar grant (perhaps hosted at FHI, Princeton, or another EA-experienced university [or at Rethink Priorities]) where “architectural history,” “preservation-related,” and other italicized words below are replaced with EA-aligned project parameters that FHI and its donors would hope to support.
FITCH MID-CAREER FELLOWSHIP: Research grants of up to $15,000 will be awarded to one or more mid-career professionals with academic backgrounds, professional experience, and an established identity in one or more of the following fields… [truncated] architectural historyand the decorative arts. The James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation will consider proposals for the research and/or the execution of the preservation-related projects in any of these fields.
One could also structure fewer grants at a higher price point than $15K (say, $50K) to fund more ambitious projects that may absorb 6-9 months of a scholar’s time — rather than 2-3 months. As star scholars are identified, their funding could be renewed for multiple years. (Open Phil has certainly followed that model for rising stars and their high-potential projects. See their extension of Jade’s grant funding here.)
Thanks for that clarification—maybe the $1m/year figure is distracting. I only mentioned it as an illustration of this point:
The post argues that the kind of talent valuable for direct work is rare. Insofar as that’s true, the conclusion (“prefer direct work”) only applies to people with rare talent.
Rather than “earn to give” or “do direct work,” I think it might be “try as hard as you can to become a highly talented person” (maybe by acquiring domain expertise in an important cause area).
“Try and become very talented” is good advice to take from this post. I don’t have a particular method in mind, but becoming the Pareto best in the world at some combination of relevant skills might be a good starting point.
The flip side is that if you value money/monetary donations linearly—or more linearly than other talented people—then you’ve got a comparative advantage in earning to give! The fact that “people don’t value money” means that no one’s taking the exhausting/boring/bad-location jobs that pay really well. If you do, you can earn more than you “should” (in an efficient market) and make an outsize impact.
This is a good point. People able to competently perform work they’re unenthusiastic about should, all else being equal, have an outsized impact because the work they do can more accurately reflect the true value behind the work.
Thanks, Mark! I’ve been struggling to figure out what career goals I myself should pursue, so I appreciated this post.
I think this advice is missing a very important qualification: if you are a highly talented person, you might want to consider direct work. As the post mentions, highly talented people are rare—for example, you might be highly talented if you could plausibly earn upwards of $1m/year.
Regularly talented people are in general poor substitutes for highly talented people. As you say, there is little demand for them at EA organizations: “[Open Philanthropy is] not particularly constrained by finding people who have a strong resume who seemed quite aligned with their mission.” (More anecdotal evidence: “It is really, really hard to get hired by an EA organisation.”)
In other words, EA orgs value regularly talented people below the market rate—that’s one reason those people should prefer earning to give instead of direct work. (On the other hand, maybe there are opportunities for direct work at non-EA organizations that constitute sufficient demand?)
As a probably regularly-talented person myself, I’m particularly interested in the best course of action here. Rather than “earn to give” or “do direct work,” I think it might be “try as hard as you can to become a highly talented person” (maybe by acquiring domain expertise in an important cause area).
One more thing:
The flip side is that if you value money/monetary donations linearly—or more linearly than other talented people—then you’ve got a comparative advantage in earning to give! The fact that “people don’t value money” means that no one’s taking the exhausting/boring/bad-location jobs that pay really well. If you do, you can earn more than you “should” (in an efficient market) and make an outsize impact.
I expect this isn’t what you’re actually implying, but I’m a bit worried this could be misread as saying that most people who are sufficiently talented in the relevant sense to work at an EA org are capable of earning $1m/year elsewhere, and that if you can’t, then you probably aren’t capable of working at an EA org or doing direct work. I just wanted to flag that I think the kinds of talent required for doing direct work are often not all that correlated with the kinds of talent that are highly financially rewarded outside of EA, and that people shouldn’t rule themselves out for the former because they wouldn’t be capable of earning a ton of money.
(Edit: People (or person?) who downvoted—I’d love to know why! Is it because you think smountjoy is obviously not saying the thing I thought they might be misread as saying, and so you think this is a pointless comment, or because you disagree with it, or something else? I’m fairly new to actually commenting on the forum, so maybe I’ve not understood the ettiquette properly.)
Agreed. I appreciate this post and responses alike, but think there are many examples of:
Brilliant mathematics/CS graduates who might earn $1M+ in finance, but of which there is an undersupply in direct work
Brilliant PhDs in history or other fields whose private-sector alternatives are rarely >$90K/year, and of which there is also an undersupply in direct work
I expect there are several cases a year where the world would be better off if an individual in category 1 would EtG and fund direct work of 5-10 individuals in category 2, than if the individual in bullet 1 were to choose direct work instead. Not that those in category 1 should mostly EtG rather than do direct work, but I’d be more bullish on the EtG path in some cases than Mark is given the huge labor supply in category 2.
A sad example of the glut of brilliant history PhDs is the challenging labor market and career that Thea Hunter confronted, despite her extraordinary reputation/abilities according to Foner and others. Her painful trajectory is a sign that there is real slack in the “brilliant historian” market. I expect some rising star historians could be induced to work on EA-relevant problems via grants from those whose academic backgrounds offer greater potential to EtG than history or political science PhDs do.
Systematic undervaluing of some fields is not something I considered and slightly undermines my argument.
I still think the main problem would be identifying rising-star historians in advance instead of in retrospect.
You might not have to identify them in advance, rather than 10+ years into their post-doctoral career. Googling “mid-career grant history” leads to a few links like these — where charitable or governmental foundations provide support to experienced scholars.
The American Historical Association promoted the same grant here. One could imagine a similar grant (perhaps hosted at FHI, Princeton, or another EA-experienced university [or at Rethink Priorities]) where “architectural history,” “preservation-related,” and other italicized words below are replaced with EA-aligned project parameters that FHI and its donors would hope to support.
One could also structure fewer grants at a higher price point than $15K (say, $50K) to fund more ambitious projects that may absorb 6-9 months of a scholar’s time — rather than 2-3 months. As star scholars are identified, their funding could be renewed for multiple years. (Open Phil has certainly followed that model for rising stars and their high-potential projects. See their extension of Jade’s grant funding here.)
Thanks for that clarification—maybe the $1m/year figure is distracting. I only mentioned it as an illustration of this point:
The post argues that the kind of talent valuable for direct work is rare. Insofar as that’s true, the conclusion (“prefer direct work”) only applies to people with rare talent.
I think there are lots of opportunities for direct work at non-EA orgs with sufficient demand.
“Try and become very talented” is good advice to take from this post. I don’t have a particular method in mind, but becoming the Pareto best in the world at some combination of relevant skills might be a good starting point.
This is a good point. People able to competently perform work they’re unenthusiastic about should, all else being equal, have an outsized impact because the work they do can more accurately reflect the true value behind the work.