Just wanted to provide some info that might be helpful:
We currently have 30 staff at the moment.
Our 2019 fundraiser post has a high-level breakdown of our spending estimates for 2020.
In our 2018 fundraiser post there’s a budget estimate for 2019. The upper end of our estimated spending for 2019 in that post was $5.5M. I expect we’ll actually come in under $6M but definitely over $5.5M. (This is inline with the upper end of updated spending estimates I generated internally in Q1 2019.)
Our 2018 in review post has a high-level breakdown of our 2018 spending. You can also see audited financial statements on our transparency page. (Note that figures in the financial statements and in the review post might not match up for a bunch of reasons, e.g., differences in how expenses are categorized, expenses for lease holder improvement and equipment etc. being considered fixed assets that depreciate over time on the financial statements, etc.)
The notable increase in our spending after 2017 is for the most part due to doubling the size of our staff, where more new staff were added in 2019 than in 2018.
The above doesn’t include AI Impacts, which operates on it’s own restricted funding.
What’s included in the “cost of doing business” category? $0.8M strikes me as high, but I don’t have a granular understanding here.
It includes things like, rent, utilities, general office expenses, furnishings/equipment, bank/processing fees, software/services, insurance, bookkeeping/accounting, visas/legal. The largest expense that makes up the estimated ~$0.8M is rent, which accounts for just over half.
Is it right that you’re estimating 2020′s compensation expenditure at ~$182,000 per employee? (($3.56M + $1.4M + $0.51M) / 30 employees)
No, that will be an over estimate for a few reasons:
The $0.51M is an estimate of what new research staff we’ll add to the team in 2020 will cost. (So above the 30 we have at the moment.)
The $1.4M estimate for General Personnel assumes we’ll add one new operations staff in 2020.
The $3.56M estimate for Research Personnel, largely represents salaries and related costs for existing research staff, but it also includes compensation for research interns and research contractors.
Were most of the 12 new staff onboarded early enough in 2019 such that it makes sense to include them in a 2019 per capita expenditure estimate?
We added 8 new staff in 2019. When I make our spending estimates, I assume new staff are added evenly throughout the year, i.e., I assume the spending on all new staff in a given year will be ~50% of their total annual cost. In practice given that we aren’t talking about very large numbers here the accuracy of that estimate varies quite a bit. The distributions of when new staff were added in 2019 was pretty centered on the middle of the year, though salary level of those staff will likely complicate things here (I haven’t run those numbers.)
No, that will be an over estimate for a few reasons...
Got it. Is ~$142,000 per employee closer to what MIRI is estimating for 2020 compensation expenditure?
(Removing the $0.51M term entirely, removing $0.56M from the Research Personnel estimate to account for interns & contractors, and adding one new ops employee to the denominator gives ($3M + $1.4M) / 31 employees = $142k per employee)
(I’m COO at MIRI.)
Just wanted to provide some info that might be helpful:
We currently have 30 staff at the moment.
Our 2019 fundraiser post has a high-level breakdown of our spending estimates for 2020.
In our 2018 fundraiser post there’s a budget estimate for 2019. The upper end of our estimated spending for 2019 in that post was $5.5M. I expect we’ll actually come in under $6M but definitely over $5.5M. (This is inline with the upper end of updated spending estimates I generated internally in Q1 2019.)
Our 2018 in review post has a high-level breakdown of our 2018 spending. You can also see audited financial statements on our transparency page. (Note that figures in the financial statements and in the review post might not match up for a bunch of reasons, e.g., differences in how expenses are categorized, expenses for lease holder improvement and equipment etc. being considered fixed assets that depreciate over time on the financial statements, etc.)
The notable increase in our spending after 2017 is for the most part due to doubling the size of our staff, where more new staff were added in 2019 than in 2018.
The above doesn’t include AI Impacts, which operates on it’s own restricted funding.
Thanks!
Were most of the 12 new staff onboarded early enough in 2019 such that it makes sense to include them in a 2019 per capita expenditure estimate?
Thanks for the pointer – this is helpful.
Is it right that you’re estimating 2020′s compensation expenditure at ~$182,000 per employee? (($3.56M + $1.4M + $0.51M) / 30 employees)
What’s included in the “cost of doing business” category? $0.8M strikes me as high, but I don’t have a granular understanding here.
It includes things like, rent, utilities, general office expenses, furnishings/equipment, bank/processing fees, software/services, insurance, bookkeeping/accounting, visas/legal. The largest expense that makes up the estimated ~$0.8M is rent, which accounts for just over half.
No, that will be an over estimate for a few reasons:
The $0.51M is an estimate of what new research staff we’ll add to the team in 2020 will cost. (So above the 30 we have at the moment.)
The $1.4M estimate for General Personnel assumes we’ll add one new operations staff in 2020.
The $3.56M estimate for Research Personnel, largely represents salaries and related costs for existing research staff, but it also includes compensation for research interns and research contractors.
We added 8 new staff in 2019. When I make our spending estimates, I assume new staff are added evenly throughout the year, i.e., I assume the spending on all new staff in a given year will be ~50% of their total annual cost. In practice given that we aren’t talking about very large numbers here the accuracy of that estimate varies quite a bit. The distributions of when new staff were added in 2019 was pretty centered on the middle of the year, though salary level of those staff will likely complicate things here (I haven’t run those numbers.)
Got it. Is ~$142,000 per employee closer to what MIRI is estimating for 2020 compensation expenditure?
(Removing the $0.51M term entirely, removing $0.56M from the Research Personnel estimate to account for interns & contractors, and adding one new ops employee to the denominator gives ($3M + $1.4M) / 31 employees = $142k per employee)
Yeah, that should be a reasonably good estimate.