I have a bad feeling about funding researchers in the most expensive places in the world and calculating their salaries based on what they could earn at Google, minus a discount.
Agreed. I don’t have a particularly clear or solid argument against it; at this point just a sort of yucky feeling when someone claims that the best possible use of money is to give it to someone as a really big salary to motivate them to leave their other really big salary role.
One needs to consider that instead of hiring X people at Y salary, one could have hired 2X people at Y/2 salary. My factual claim is that whether many of the “best people” take the deal does not depend as much on their salary as on how helpful they imagine the work environment to be for their output, and (more cynically) how prestigious they perceive the institution to be.
In fact, support by an environment of 2X (vs. X) researchers may be a stronger incentive than being paid Y/2 salary (vs. Y) is a disincentive, if these 2X people are actually more supportive.
Considering the ratio of Google researcher salary and median PhD student salary, I factually believe that basing salaries on need, rather than the tech market* - and allowing/encouraging people or groups to be from/in cheaper places, like India, the CIS or even Europe—would result in higher-quality output. Especially considering that people from these places move to the Bay Area to get these sorts of jobs even if they would have preferred to stay where they are.
*Of course, once expectations of salaries are set, people will get angry if these are decreased. So decreasing current salaries may be different.
Agreed. I don’t have a particularly clear or solid argument against it; at this point just a sort of yucky feeling when someone claims that the best possible use of money is to give it to someone as a really big salary to motivate them to leave their other really big salary role.
You agree that the salaries roughly track skill level though?
I actually share the ugh, but it seems way more important to maximise the competence we’re bringing to the problem than to minimise bad optics.
(I’m responding to “Agreed”, which implies endorsement of the yucky feeling. Ignore if not endorsed)
One needs to consider that instead of hiring X people at Y salary, one could have hired 2X people at Y/2 salary. My factual claim is that whether many of the “best people” take the deal does not depend as much on their salary as on how helpful they imagine the work environment to be for their output, and (more cynically) how prestigious they perceive the institution to be.
In fact, support by an environment of 2X (vs. X) researchers may be a stronger incentive than being paid Y/2 salary (vs. Y) is a disincentive, if these 2X people are actually more supportive.
Considering the ratio of Google researcher salary and median PhD student salary, I factually believe that basing salaries on need, rather than the tech market* - and allowing/encouraging people or groups to be from/in cheaper places, like India, the CIS or even Europe—would result in higher-quality output. Especially considering that people from these places move to the Bay Area to get these sorts of jobs even if they would have preferred to stay where they are.
*Of course, once expectations of salaries are set, people will get angry if these are decreased. So decreasing current salaries may be different.
Roughly speaking, I think so.