Hey all, earning-to-give is one of my intended ways of contributing to EA. Working in tech myself, I wanted to see what kind of impact a tech worker could make if they focused only on earning-to-give over a 20-year career.
For this model, I’m using salary data from levels.fyi for a hypothetical SWE working at a top tech company (eg FB, Microsoft, Google).
First, I wanted to get a sense of what the salary progression for such an individual would look like.
According to Candor, it takes 6-9 years to become a senior SWE (L5) at Google. I decided to be conservative and estimated it would take 10 years for an average engineer at a top tech company to become a senior SWE.
Then, I took the average salary of 5 different companies for entry-level SWEs and senior SWEs (of comparable level).
Entry-level SWE (Year 1)
Senior SWE (Year 10)
FB
$184,311
$386,970
Google
$190,443
$358,417
Salesforce
$174,913
$289,148
Microsoft
$159,124
$250,462
Amazon
$168,124
$342,335
Average
$175,383
$325,466
Using the averages, to go from an $175k to $325k in 10 years, I calculated that an engineer’s TC would be growing at about 7.2% per year. I then used the calculator from Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save Pledge to calculate how much an engineer would have to donate each year for the first 10 years.
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6
Year 7
Year 8
Year 9
Year 10
Gross Salary
$175,383
$188,011
$201,547
$216,059
$231,615
$248,291
$266,168
$285,332
$305,876
$327,899
Recommended Gift
$7,298
$8,561
$9,915
$11,366
$12,921
$14,589
$16,377
$18,293
$20,348
$22,945
Percentage of Salary
4.2%
4.6%
4.9%
5.3%
5.6%
5.9%
6.2%
6.4%
6.7%
7.0%
From what I understand, going from L5 to L6 is a significant jump, and requires taking on a lot of responsibility that some people would prefer to avoid. Therefore, I decided to just keep the income level at the Senior SWE level for the remaining 10 years of the hypothetical SWE’s career.
At the end of their career, the SWE would end up donating $372,063, or about 6.5% of their $5.7m in career gross earnings.
Pretty neat! This also doesn’t factor in that many top companies offer donation match programs ($5k-$10k per year), which would add on another $100-200k if one happens to work at those companies.
This suggests that if you introduce a friend in tech to EA and they choose to contribute based on The Life You Can Save’s model, you’re bringing in another $300-500k+ into EA by proxy. Pretty exciting stuff!
How much could a SWE at top companies donate throughout their 20-year career?
Hey all, earning-to-give is one of my intended ways of contributing to EA. Working in tech myself, I wanted to see what kind of impact a tech worker could make if they focused only on earning-to-give over a 20-year career.
For this model, I’m using salary data from levels.fyi for a hypothetical SWE working at a top tech company (eg FB, Microsoft, Google).
First, I wanted to get a sense of what the salary progression for such an individual would look like.
According to Candor, it takes 6-9 years to become a senior SWE (L5) at Google. I decided to be conservative and estimated it would take 10 years for an average engineer at a top tech company to become a senior SWE.
Then, I took the average salary of 5 different companies for entry-level SWEs and senior SWEs (of comparable level).
Using the averages, to go from an $175k to $325k in 10 years, I calculated that an engineer’s TC would be growing at about 7.2% per year. I then used the calculator from Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save Pledge to calculate how much an engineer would have to donate each year for the first 10 years.
From what I understand, going from L5 to L6 is a significant jump, and requires taking on a lot of responsibility that some people would prefer to avoid. Therefore, I decided to just keep the income level at the Senior SWE level for the remaining 10 years of the hypothetical SWE’s career.
Here’s a visualization of income / donations over time
At the end of their career, the SWE would end up donating $372,063, or about 6.5% of their $5.7m in career gross earnings.
Pretty neat! This also doesn’t factor in that many top companies offer donation match programs ($5k-$10k per year), which would add on another $100-200k if one happens to work at those companies.
This suggests that if you introduce a friend in tech to EA and they choose to contribute based on The Life You Can Save’s model, you’re bringing in another $300-500k+ into EA by proxy. Pretty exciting stuff!