I’m sympathetic to the argument that it would be hard to operationalise a salary sacrifice pledge in ways that are hard to game, but true to the spirit of it.
But I feel annoyed that the tone of the FAQ and Luke’s comment is not “this is a meaningful flaw in the pledge, we don’t see a good way to fix it, but acknowledge it creates bad incentivises”. Eg it seems terrible that the FAQ frames this as “resigning from your pledge”, which I consider to have strong connotations of giving up or failing.
In many cases, the above conclusion is based on misunderstandings about the 10% Pledge which are resulting in opportunities for impact being missed by people like yourself not pledging.
For example, this part of Luke’s comment rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt like it was saying that actually people are misunderstanding the pledge, and it’s totally consistent with taking a massive pay cut to pursue direct altruistic work. But it is clearly, by design, not, and his comment felt like it was missing the point. Eg someone who leaves a job in finance or tech to take a job at half the salary to do direct work, and intends to remain in that new role for the rest of their career, is making far more of a sacrifice than if they just donated 10%, and I consider them to have no obligation to donate further. But I don’t see the conditions of Luke’s comment applying, as the salary sacrifice comes from switching industries not an arrangement with their employer. And they may never be able to donate later, if they just postpone their pledge. So they would need to resign. Which is a terrible incentive!
I’m sympathetic to the argument that it would be hard to operationalise a salary sacrifice pledge in ways that are hard to game, but true to the spirit of it.
But I feel annoyed that the tone of the FAQ and Luke’s comment is not “this is a meaningful flaw in the pledge, we don’t see a good way to fix it, but acknowledge it creates bad incentivises”. Eg it seems terrible that the FAQ frames this as “resigning from your pledge”, which I consider to have strong connotations of giving up or failing.
For example, this part of Luke’s comment rubbed me the wrong way, because it felt like it was saying that actually people are misunderstanding the pledge, and it’s totally consistent with taking a massive pay cut to pursue direct altruistic work. But it is clearly, by design, not, and his comment felt like it was missing the point. Eg someone who leaves a job in finance or tech to take a job at half the salary to do direct work, and intends to remain in that new role for the rest of their career, is making far more of a sacrifice than if they just donated 10%, and I consider them to have no obligation to donate further. But I don’t see the conditions of Luke’s comment applying, as the salary sacrifice comes from switching industries not an arrangement with their employer. And they may never be able to donate later, if they just postpone their pledge. So they would need to resign. Which is a terrible incentive!