Surprising compared to what reference class? It’s true that Peter Singer came from an accomplished family (his maternal grandfather has a Wikipedia page) and apparently William MacAskill went to private school, but I don’t know how rare this is for somewhat influential philosophy professors in prestigious universities.
If you replaced “EA researchers” in your quick-take with “professors” or even “researchers”, I think it would still be true. (At least for some definition of “surprising”)
I believe the nonprofit world attracts people with financial security. While compensation is often modest, the work can offer significant prestige and personal fulfillment.
For what it’s worth, I think EA is absolutely non-representative of the non-profit world, salaries in EA are higher than average salaries. I know several people who make more in their EA role than they made in their previous role, and there are many EA people working in AI making tons of money.
Do you expect that the median employee at The Salvation Army comes from a wealthy family?
But the most obvious implication to me, for people in this community, is to realize that it’s very difficult to access how impressive specific individual EAs/nonprofit people are, without understanding their full personal situations. Many prominent community members have reached their positions through a combination of merit, family/social networks, and fortunate life circumstances.
I’m curious why is it important for people in your EA community to assess how impressive someone is? Do you mean for hiring decisions? I think anyone anywhere has reached their position through a combination of merit, family/social networks, and fortunate life circumstances.
Quick anecdote: I found this dynamic surprising in all the paths you mentioned: academia, research, EA research, and non-profit work. But I realized it very quickly for academia (one month) and painfully slowly for non-profits (several years).
In academia, the markers of success are transparent, the divide between “good” and “bad” jobs is sharp, and even very successful professors complain about the system.
On the other extreme, the non-profit sector is much fuzzier about credentials and career progression. So I might see an employee who graduated from a school like mine and think I could be that person, but not realize that they took on increasing amounts of responsibilities over various low-paid volunteer roles or not realize how much insider information they absorbed from their parents.
This caused me to underestimate how many skills I needed to build. Then I underestimated how long it would take to “make it”, which meant setting goals too high for myself and almost giving up too early.
I’m not just talking about the most famous people, like Peter Singer or William MacAskill. I have a lot of more regular people in mind, like various employees at normal EA organizations that I don’t suspect many people here would individually know the names of.
I’m curious how much this would match other prestigious nonprofits. My quick guess is that EAs probably have more academic-leaning parents than those of the majority of other nonprofits. I’m sure that there are some higher-status nonprofits/organizations like UN, that have employees that come from wealth greater than the EA average.
Do you expect that the median employee at The Salvation Army comes from a wealthy family?
My impression is that the salvation army is quite huge, and probably not particularly high-status among privileged crowds.
I’m curious why is it important for people in your EA community to assess how impressive someone is?
I’m thinking of situations where someone thinks to themselves, “Person X has achieved a lot more than I have, they must just be more motivated/intelligent.”.
I think anyone anywhere has reached their position through a combination of merit, family/social networks, and fortunate life circumstances.
I agree. I’m not sure how unusual EA is here. My main point is that it happens here—not that it doesn’t happen in other similar areas.
I decided to do a “deep search” with Perplexity. It largely determines that charitable workers come from privilege. This does seem to focus on charities that pay less than EA ones do, but I’d flag that even EA ones are very often significantly worse than similar corporate positions.
“The evidence strongly suggests that certain clusters within the nonprofit sector—particularly executive leadership, board positions, fundraising roles, and positions in smaller or resource-constrained organizations—disproportionately draw individuals from backgrounds of wealth and privilege. This pattern stems from structural factors including compensation practices, opportunity cost considerations, networking requirements, and the relationship between financial independence and leadership autonomy.”
Surprising compared to what reference class? It’s true that Peter Singer came from an accomplished family (his maternal grandfather has a Wikipedia page) and apparently William MacAskill went to private school, but I don’t know how rare this is for somewhat influential philosophy professors in prestigious universities.
If you replaced “EA researchers” in your quick-take with “professors” or even “researchers”, I think it would still be true. (At least for some definition of “surprising”)
For what it’s worth, I think EA is absolutely non-representative of the non-profit world, salaries in EA are higher than average salaries. I know several people who make more in their EA role than they made in their previous role, and there are many EA people working in AI making tons of money.
Do you expect that the median employee at The Salvation Army comes from a wealthy family?
I’m curious why is it important for people in your EA community to assess how impressive someone is? Do you mean for hiring decisions? I think anyone anywhere has reached their position through a combination of merit, family/social networks, and fortunate life circumstances.
Quick anecdote: I found this dynamic surprising in all the paths you mentioned: academia, research, EA research, and non-profit work. But I realized it very quickly for academia (one month) and painfully slowly for non-profits (several years).
In academia, the markers of success are transparent, the divide between “good” and “bad” jobs is sharp, and even very successful professors complain about the system.
On the other extreme, the non-profit sector is much fuzzier about credentials and career progression. So I might see an employee who graduated from a school like mine and think I could be that person, but not realize that they took on increasing amounts of responsibilities over various low-paid volunteer roles or not realize how much insider information they absorbed from their parents.
This caused me to underestimate how many skills I needed to build. Then I underestimated how long it would take to “make it”, which meant setting goals too high for myself and almost giving up too early.
Another random anecdote: I was reading the Wikipedia page of an ultramarathon runner, and apparently her father is a famous mathematician
I’m not just talking about the most famous people, like Peter Singer or William MacAskill. I have a lot of more regular people in mind, like various employees at normal EA organizations that I don’t suspect many people here would individually know the names of.
I’m curious how much this would match other prestigious nonprofits. My quick guess is that EAs probably have more academic-leaning parents than those of the majority of other nonprofits. I’m sure that there are some higher-status nonprofits/organizations like UN, that have employees that come from wealth greater than the EA average.
My impression is that the salvation army is quite huge, and probably not particularly high-status among privileged crowds.
I’m thinking of situations where someone thinks to themselves, “Person X has achieved a lot more than I have, they must just be more motivated/intelligent.”.
I agree. I’m not sure how unusual EA is here. My main point is that it happens here—not that it doesn’t happen in other similar areas.
I decided to do a “deep search” with Perplexity. It largely determines that charitable workers come from privilege. This does seem to focus on charities that pay less than EA ones do, but I’d flag that even EA ones are very often significantly worse than similar corporate positions.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/do-a-bunch-of-research-on-the-XUyjcqCdQGKHoyl1LCrgZA