I think there’s a big difference between “you are an at will employee, and we can fire you on two weeks notice, but the default is you will stay with us indefinitely” and “you have a one year contract and can re-apply at the end”. Legally the latter gives the worker 50 extra weeks of security, but in practice the former seems to be preferable to many people.
I agree that default employment seems preferred by most fulltime workers, and that’s why I’m interested in the concept of “default-recurring monthly grants”.
I will note that this employment structure is not the typical arrangement among founders trying to launch a startup, though. A broad class of grants in EA are “work on this thing and maybe turn it into a new research org”, and the equivalent funding norms in the tech sector at least are not “employment” but “apply for incubators, try to raise funding”.
For EAs trying to do research… academia is the typical model for research but I also think academia is extremely inefficient, so copying the payment model doesn’t seem like a recipe for success. FROs are maybe the closest thing I can think of to “multi-year stable grants”—but there’s only like 3 of those in existence and it’s very early to say if they produce good outcomes.
Yes, because when you are at at will employee, the chance that you will still have income in n years tends to be higher than if you had to apply to renew a contract, and you don’t need to think about that application. People are typically angry if asked to reapply for their own job, because it implies that their employer might want to terminate them.
I think there’s a big difference between “you are an at will employee, and we can fire you on two weeks notice, but the default is you will stay with us indefinitely” and “you have a one year contract and can re-apply at the end”. Legally the latter gives the worker 50 extra weeks of security, but in practice the former seems to be preferable to many people.
I agree that default employment seems preferred by most fulltime workers, and that’s why I’m interested in the concept of “default-recurring monthly grants”.
I will note that this employment structure is not the typical arrangement among founders trying to launch a startup, though. A broad class of grants in EA are “work on this thing and maybe turn it into a new research org”, and the equivalent funding norms in the tech sector at least are not “employment” but “apply for incubators, try to raise funding”.
For EAs trying to do research… academia is the typical model for research but I also think academia is extremely inefficient, so copying the payment model doesn’t seem like a recipe for success. FROs are maybe the closest thing I can think of to “multi-year stable grants”—but there’s only like 3 of those in existence and it’s very early to say if they produce good outcomes.
What does FRO stand for?
“Focused Research Org”
Yes, because when you are at at will employee, the chance that you will still have income in n years tends to be higher than if you had to apply to renew a contract, and you don’t need to think about that application. People are typically angry if asked to reapply for their own job, because it implies that their employer might want to terminate them.