[comment no longer endorsed, though I still think it’s reasonable to value his time highly, just not quite as highly]
FWIW, I think Habryka should probably value his time at >$1700 per hour. Put differently, I think if longtermist funders could spend $3.4 million per year to get another Habryka, that seems like a good use of longtermist resources to me. I’m not totally confident in this judgment and have some uncertainty about this, but here some intuitions/examples: 1) having another Habryka could’ve reduced community exposure to FTX and fallout from the FTX collapse, which could easily be worth more than $3.4 million, 2) it’s generally really hard to find people who can run organizations competently, 3) if longtermism spends $250m/y and ~3x that amount in human labor, that’s roughly $1b per year, and I think it’s plausible that he’s improving the culture of the community and allocation of those resources by more than 0.34% via useful commenting on this forum and similar activities, 4) other people of an (in my view) similar caliber often have excellent earning-to-give opportunities with an expected value of >$5m/y.
(That said, I agree with your other points and I personally think the coffee table is excessive.)
[comment no longer endorsed, though I still think it’s reasonable to value his time highly, just not quite as highly]
FWIW, I think Habryka should probably value his time at >$1700 per hour. Put differently, I think if longtermist funders could spend $3.4 million per year to get another Habryka, that seems like a good use of longtermist resources to me. I’m not totally confident in this judgment and have some uncertainty about this, but here some intuitions/examples: 1) having another Habryka could’ve reduced community exposure to FTX and fallout from the FTX collapse, which could easily be worth more than $3.4 million, 2) it’s generally really hard to find people who can run organizations competently, 3) if longtermism spends $250m/y and ~3x that amount in human labor, that’s roughly $1b per year, and I think it’s plausible that he’s improving the culture of the community and allocation of those resources by more than 0.34% via useful commenting on this forum and similar activities, 4) other people of an (in my view) similar caliber often have excellent earning-to-give opportunities with an expected value of >$5m/y.
(That said, I agree with your other points and I personally think the coffee table is excessive.)