On mobile while on train, but I don’t see the math fully working here. Per the post, all-in cost per employee “range is more like $83,000 to $140,000,” which covers salary, benefits, taxes, and various smaller things. That does imply a median all-in of roughly $111.5K...but I think you are comparing that figure to AIM base salary alone. If you added in other costs, I suspect it would be considerably closer (although you’re very likely right that WAI is significantly higher cost than AIM).
The other thing to note is that AIM pays considerably lower than most EA orgs (or even most non-EA profits in the US at least.) I think it is particularly unusual in keeping low salaries after it becomes successful, so wouldnt assume the hypothetical startup would follow suit. So I think a fair bit of your critique applies to most EA orgs having the possibility of lower-cost upstarts in their area, rather than to WAI especially.
+1 to the idea that AIM has idiosyncratically low senior staff costs that I think are pretty strongly influenced by Joey Savoie’s personal attitude to cost minimization and sacrifice; I think the main scarce resource that AIM staff spends is not exactly “amount of money” but more like “number of Joeys”, and that if you wanted to start a second AIM you wouldn’t get it nearly as cheaply.
I think this is partially correct. I do believe AIM is lower than the EA average, and I think my personal attitude does affect this, though I would guess it accounts for less than 50% of the reason. I would argue that more EA organizations should and could adopt this approach. The EA movement is quite unusual in the salaries it pays—see some numbers I looked up (although these figures are now somewhat higher as they are based on older data).
I do believe AIM is lower than the EA average, and I think my personal attitude does affect this, though I would guess it accounts for less than 50% of the reason.
I get the sense that your and/or AIM’s views on pay localization explain a fair amount of the variance.[1] I’m not sure if that is counting in the less-than-50% or not.
For example, the median US full-time worker salary in 2022 was about twice the figure you linked for the UK in that year. I get the sense that many other orgs have chosen to pay at US rates (even Bay rates) as a baseline, with a desire to avoid huge US/non-US disparities minimizing the degree of downward adjustment applied to other locations. But it seems that could explain a good bit of the variance.
I am attempting to use a more favorable characterization than “cost-of-living adjustments” because untangling cost of similar lifestyles vs. differences in quality of lifestyle across areas can be challenging.
I do think localization has some effect but not a huge one. A quick Google search gave me a sum of $60,000 or £47,000 for the US in 2022 (if you only include full-time workers), so it’s a bit higher, but not enough to radically change the picture. My soft sense is that US vs. UK EA organizations would not have large pay differences. Also, I do not think AIM historically has had fewer US employees than other organizations that are based in the UK.
The EA movement is quite unusual in the salaries it pays
This is plausible, because EA is weird in a lot of ways ( <3 ). But I think we should have a lot of uncertainty in claims like these. My experience researching salaries (at GFI in ~2019 and at WAI over the last couple years) is that it’s really hard to do well, because (a) it’s really hard to know when you’re comparing apples to apples and (b) there’s strong reporting bias in the freely available datasets (I talked with a firm who said they had better methods, but didn’t end up paying the minimum $10k they required to access their database).
Faunalytics will soon be publishing the results of their project benchmarking compensation in the farmed animal protection movement (details in their OSF registration, subscribe to their newsletter for updates, report will probably be posted here), which will at least be helpful in understanding the animal advocacy side of the equation (if not the other side, which is the other areas we compete with for talent).
Thanks for correcting the numbers and sorry for my sloppiness with them. I think 2 → 2.5x would be a more sensible multiplier based on what you wrote. I think the conclusion still holds.
Regarding paragraph 2, a charity must hit an exceptionally high standard for me to deem it unworthy of competition, even in a downturn. I accept it’s not realistic for the median charity to do that well.
On mobile while on train, but I don’t see the math fully working here. Per the post, all-in cost per employee “range is more like $83,000 to $140,000,” which covers salary, benefits, taxes, and various smaller things. That does imply a median all-in of roughly $111.5K...but I think you are comparing that figure to AIM base salary alone. If you added in other costs, I suspect it would be considerably closer (although you’re very likely right that WAI is significantly higher cost than AIM).
The other thing to note is that AIM pays considerably lower than most EA orgs (or even most non-EA profits in the US at least.) I think it is particularly unusual in keeping low salaries after it becomes successful, so wouldnt assume the hypothetical startup would follow suit. So I think a fair bit of your critique applies to most EA orgs having the possibility of lower-cost upstarts in their area, rather than to WAI especially.
+1 to the idea that AIM has idiosyncratically low senior staff costs that I think are pretty strongly influenced by Joey Savoie’s personal attitude to cost minimization and sacrifice; I think the main scarce resource that AIM staff spends is not exactly “amount of money” but more like “number of Joeys”, and that if you wanted to start a second AIM you wouldn’t get it nearly as cheaply.
I think this is partially correct. I do believe AIM is lower than the EA average, and I think my personal attitude does affect this, though I would guess it accounts for less than 50% of the reason. I would argue that more EA organizations should and could adopt this approach. The EA movement is quite unusual in the salaries it pays—see some numbers I looked up (although these figures are now somewhat higher as they are based on older data).
I get the sense that your and/or AIM’s views on pay localization explain a fair amount of the variance.[1] I’m not sure if that is counting in the less-than-50% or not.
For example, the median US full-time worker salary in 2022 was about twice the figure you linked for the UK in that year. I get the sense that many other orgs have chosen to pay at US rates (even Bay rates) as a baseline, with a desire to avoid huge US/non-US disparities minimizing the degree of downward adjustment applied to other locations. But it seems that could explain a good bit of the variance.
I am attempting to use a more favorable characterization than “cost-of-living adjustments” because untangling cost of similar lifestyles vs. differences in quality of lifestyle across areas can be challenging.
I do think localization has some effect but not a huge one. A quick Google search gave me a sum of $60,000 or £47,000 for the US in 2022 (if you only include full-time workers), so it’s a bit higher, but not enough to radically change the picture. My soft sense is that US vs. UK EA organizations would not have large pay differences. Also, I do not think AIM historically has had fewer US employees than other organizations that are based in the UK.
This is plausible, because EA is weird in a lot of ways ( <3 ). But I think we should have a lot of uncertainty in claims like these. My experience researching salaries (at GFI in ~2019 and at WAI over the last couple years) is that it’s really hard to do well, because (a) it’s really hard to know when you’re comparing apples to apples and (b) there’s strong reporting bias in the freely available datasets (I talked with a firm who said they had better methods, but didn’t end up paying the minimum $10k they required to access their database).
Faunalytics will soon be publishing the results of their project benchmarking compensation in the farmed animal protection movement (details in their OSF registration, subscribe to their newsletter for updates, report will probably be posted here), which will at least be helpful in understanding the animal advocacy side of the equation (if not the other side, which is the other areas we compete with for talent).
Faunalytics published the results of their benchmarking research (I haven’t read them yet): https://faunalytics.org/compensation-in-farmed-animal-advocacy/
Thanks for correcting the numbers and sorry for my sloppiness with them. I think 2 → 2.5x would be a more sensible multiplier based on what you wrote. I think the conclusion still holds.
Regarding paragraph 2, a charity must hit an exceptionally high standard for me to deem it unworthy of competition, even in a downturn. I accept it’s not realistic for the median charity to do that well.