I wrote ‘most relevant’ to contrast that group with people who know they’ll never be able to do direct work at the organisations surveyed, for whom those figures are largely irrelevant. As you say, they’re still not quite right for that group because you’re only part way through the process (I think by the time you’re offered a job, about half the costs have been paid, though that depends on whether you had a trial period).
They would be even more relevant to someone considering quitting—but as they can talk to their colleagues, they probably wouldn’t be using this survey.
The costs of hiring makes applying to join a project look worse, but it also makes earning to give to fund the salaries of new staff look worse too. If you’re expecting to donate hoping the money will be used to fund new hires, it seems like it should cancel out.
The three ways around bearing those costs that I can see at first glance are i) earning to give to prevent a group from laying off staff for lack of funding, ii) earning to give to buy capital goods rather than hire people, iii) staying in your current direct work job rather than switching.
Since most of the EA orgs in question are heavily constrained in hiring by whatever level of growth they can manage or feel comfortable with (that’s kinda the whole point of the OP, right?), it would not generally be my assumption that additional funds would be used for extra hiring compared to the counterfactual. I grant that if that is the assumption, these effects seem to cancel.
Other ways not listed in your last paragraph.
-earning to give to allow orgs to raise salaries
-earning to give to fund regranting
-earning to give to fund things like targeted advertising (you may have intended to cover this category in ‘capital goods’, I’m not sure)
These things are much closer to my model of where extra funding to at least CEA and 80k in at least the past 18 months has gone, not into additional hiring.
I wrote ‘most relevant’ to contrast that group with people who know they’ll never be able to do direct work at the organisations surveyed, for whom those figures are largely irrelevant. As you say, they’re still not quite right for that group because you’re only part way through the process (I think by the time you’re offered a job, about half the costs have been paid, though that depends on whether you had a trial period).
They would be even more relevant to someone considering quitting—but as they can talk to their colleagues, they probably wouldn’t be using this survey.
The costs of hiring makes applying to join a project look worse, but it also makes earning to give to fund the salaries of new staff look worse too. If you’re expecting to donate hoping the money will be used to fund new hires, it seems like it should cancel out.
The three ways around bearing those costs that I can see at first glance are i) earning to give to prevent a group from laying off staff for lack of funding, ii) earning to give to buy capital goods rather than hire people, iii) staying in your current direct work job rather than switching.
Since most of the EA orgs in question are heavily constrained in hiring by whatever level of growth they can manage or feel comfortable with (that’s kinda the whole point of the OP, right?), it would not generally be my assumption that additional funds would be used for extra hiring compared to the counterfactual. I grant that if that is the assumption, these effects seem to cancel.
Other ways not listed in your last paragraph.
-earning to give to allow orgs to raise salaries
-earning to give to fund regranting
-earning to give to fund things like targeted advertising (you may have intended to cover this category in ‘capital goods’, I’m not sure)
These things are much closer to my model of where extra funding to at least CEA and 80k in at least the past 18 months has gone, not into additional hiring.