The default cultural norm varies a lot across offices within countries. Should we anchor to Google, hedge funds, Amazon, academia, Wave, Trajan House, the nonprofit sector, the local city council etc? So I don’t understand which cultural norm the post is anchoring to, and so I don’t understand the central claim of the post.
One of the examples given in the post is the implicit judgement that EA doesn’t want to be like Google—Google is an extremely successful company that people want to work for. I don’t get why it is an example of excessive perk culture. It’s true that FTX had excessive perks and also committed fraud. Google has nice perks but hasn’t committed fraud.
While there may be some perks in EA, it is also the case that work in EA is (a) extremely competitive and (b) highly precarious. Most people struggle to get jobs or get by on one year contracts, and have to compete for jobs with assorted Stakhanovite super-geniuses. This is very different to the rest of the comparably cushy nonprofit sector.
While at times it appears the OP is arguing for the default cultural norm, he also says various things which seem/are inconsistent with that such as that we can’t have nice things and we must not be free from menial tasks. There is a big gap between the extravagance of FTX and standard office perks and the post provides no criterion on which to decide between these different perk cultures.
Re your last paragraph, that might be some of what is driving my disagreement, but I think my disagreement is:
I don’t understand what the central claim of the post is and that seems to be common among commenters eg see Richard Ngo’s comment, the first sentence in your reply to me. There appears to be widespread confusion about the post means—should we have wine at conferences, should offices serve free coffee, what type of coffee is permitted etc?
Some of the supporting arguments for the central claim seem unsound
Some of the supporting claims in the post seem inconsistent.
At present, the section on what EA salaries should be has no substantive content. By definition, we don’t want to underpay or overpay: these are tautologies. Similarly, what does ‘pay well’ mean?
The default cultural norm varies a lot across offices within countries. Should we anchor to Google, hedge funds, Amazon, academia, Wave, Trajan House, the nonprofit sector, the local city council etc? So I don’t understand which cultural norm the post is anchoring to, and so I don’t understand the central claim of the post.
One of the examples given in the post is the implicit judgement that EA doesn’t want to be like Google—Google is an extremely successful company that people want to work for. I don’t get why it is an example of excessive perk culture. It’s true that FTX had excessive perks and also committed fraud. Google has nice perks but hasn’t committed fraud.
While there may be some perks in EA, it is also the case that work in EA is (a) extremely competitive and (b) highly precarious. Most people struggle to get jobs or get by on one year contracts, and have to compete for jobs with assorted Stakhanovite super-geniuses. This is very different to the rest of the comparably cushy nonprofit sector.
While at times it appears the OP is arguing for the default cultural norm, he also says various things which seem/are inconsistent with that such as that we can’t have nice things and we must not be free from menial tasks. There is a big gap between the extravagance of FTX and standard office perks and the post provides no criterion on which to decide between these different perk cultures.
Re your last paragraph, that might be some of what is driving my disagreement, but I think my disagreement is:
I don’t understand what the central claim of the post is and that seems to be common among commenters eg see Richard Ngo’s comment, the first sentence in your reply to me. There appears to be widespread confusion about the post means—should we have wine at conferences, should offices serve free coffee, what type of coffee is permitted etc?
Some of the supporting arguments for the central claim seem unsound
Some of the supporting claims in the post seem inconsistent.
At present, the section on what EA salaries should be has no substantive content. By definition, we don’t want to underpay or overpay: these are tautologies. Similarly, what does ‘pay well’ mean?