I’m confused about what this post is suggesting should be the principle that determines which perks are acceptable and which are not. For example, you say “(We might use money in various ways—to make our work relationships stronger or stave off burnout—but we aren’t profligate.)” What counts as profligate here? Everyone already agrees that we shouldn’t be profligate, but I take it that this just means that we agree that the benefit of the perk outweighs the cost. Is it ever worth it to pay for a perk in order to save people time? You say that business class flights are never acceptable. What about getting flights that take 5 hours longer in order to save £100?
In the Oxford office, we have a small gym, on-site vegan caterers, snacks, drinks and a nap room. I would guess that you think these are unacceptable perks? Firstly, people in the Oxford office by my observations, work extremely hard, especially relative to the non-profit sector. I don’t see much indication that this is leading to a cushy lifestyle and lack of seriousness. Secondly, the nearest gym to the office is about a ten minute cycle, so not having a gym would cost about 2.5 days per person of possible work time (assuming someone goes 3x a week for 45 weeks a year).
Some of the signals you think that perks send out seem to me to be good or justified.
We desperately want to keep you around
This just seems good to me. We do want people to stay around if they are doing a good job. (Whether we want to be desperate is another matter, but this feels a bit like rhetoric to me.) It also just seems like a different way of framing another principle you endorse “We invest a lot in our people and their relationships, and act to preserve that value”.
Then:
You are free from menial tasks.
One option in EA offices and other offices would be to have the people at EA orgs clean the toilets and the office. These are menial tasks that staff at EA orgs (and other offices workers) are not expected to do. Does this mean we should get rid of our dishwashers? Should people buying new office space not get dishwashers?
Your time is worth a lot of money
This just seems to be true for a lot of people doing EA work, whether it sounds nice or not, and you yourself explicitly endorse it. I don’t know whether you’re saying that it is true but we shouldn’t say it or signal it, or whether you are conflicted on whether it is true. And it basically seems to follow from the “We’re normal people who have chosen to take on especially important work” principle that you endorse. If it’s important then our time is worth a lot of money.
Ultimately, some perks may sometimes not be worth it, but a blanket ban on perks that most people class as ‘nice’ doesn’t seem justified.
My guess is that this post is implicitly aimed at Bay Area EAs, and that roughly every perk at Trajan House/other Oxford locations is acceptable by these standards.
Perhaps worth clarifying this explicitly, if true—it would be unfortunate if the people who were already most scrupulous about perks were the ones who updated most from this post.
I think it would be good if the OP would clarify which office perks he is criticising. Perks vary a lot across offices—probably more generous at Google and hedge funds, less at Amazon, less at a paper merchant in Slough, not great for an academia etc. The terms ‘normal’, ‘usual’, ‘nice’ are doing a lot of work in this post but are never defined and I don’t know what they mean. Some things are normal in offices (dishwashers, standing desks) but are also nice.
Maybe this is somewhat indicative of Bay spending culture?
I at least could see someone walking away from Lightcone with the impression that we don’t believe in budgets, and I would be happy to defend our current policy.
I don’t know if this is right, but I take Lincoln to be (a bit implicitly but I see it throughout the post) taking the default cultural norm as a pretty strong starting point, and aiming to vary from that when you have a good reason (I imagine because variations from what’s normal is what sends the most salient messages), rather than think about what a perk is from first principles, which explains the dishwashing and toilet cleaning.
The Christian rule of chastity must not be confused with the social rule of ‘modesty’ (in one sense of that word); i.e. propriety, or decency. The social rule of propriety lays down how much of the human body should be displayed and what subjects can be referred to, and in what words, according to the customs of a given social circle. Thus, while the rule of chastity is the same for all Christians at all times, the rule of propriety changes. A girl in the Pacific islands wearing hardly any clothes and a Victorian lady completely covered in clothes might both be equally ‘modest’, proper, or decent, according to the standards of their own societies: and both, for all we could tell by their dress, might be equally chaste (or equally unchaste). Some of the language which chaste women used in Shakespeare’s time would have been used in the nineteenth century only by a woman completely abandoned.
I wonder if another way of saying what Lincoln is trying to get at is something like “it’s about the work, not you”, a message of “happy to invest in your work” can have all the same outward features of “happy to invest in you” but with different effects, but not sure he’d endorse this.
I take your disagreement with Lincoln to be something of the form “Lincoln wants and gestures at a certain vibe change that is underspecified”—“Halstead is like “is that even a consistent thing to want / does it make sense in reality”″ which feels like a really common conversational dynamic and can be frustrating for everyone involved.
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 OP didn’t spell our why menial tasks could be valuable, so here’s why I think we should keep doing at least some menial tasks. I’m not saying we should eschew technology or other help (I’m not ideologically against dishwashers or hiring cleaners) but I think there can be deep value in spending a not-necessarily-very-large amount of time on some menial task
- It can be a humbling experience, helping us identify with those less fortunate than us both in our own country and abroad. - Maintaining our own spaces (dishes, toilets etc.) can be a community and maturity building experience, through forcing people to spend extra time in community spaces, working together to solve problems unrelated to their work and to help each other understand each others preferences and rub up against each others expectations and cultural norms a bit. Obviously it can also cause conflict and stress as well which can be a tradeoff. - While we are doing practical things with our hands, we can rest and quiet our minds, which may sometimes lead to unexpected creativity or discovery. - They can help us appreciate more the other more cerebral work we might be doing - We can demonstrate to others looking in, and to our other workmates that we don’t consider ourselves “elite” or “above” certain tasks
I’m confused about what this post is suggesting should be the principle that determines which perks are acceptable and which are not. For example, you say “(We might use money in various ways—to make our work relationships stronger or stave off burnout—but we aren’t profligate.)” What counts as profligate here? Everyone already agrees that we shouldn’t be profligate, but I take it that this just means that we agree that the benefit of the perk outweighs the cost. Is it ever worth it to pay for a perk in order to save people time? You say that business class flights are never acceptable. What about getting flights that take 5 hours longer in order to save £100?
In the Oxford office, we have a small gym, on-site vegan caterers, snacks, drinks and a nap room. I would guess that you think these are unacceptable perks? Firstly, people in the Oxford office by my observations, work extremely hard, especially relative to the non-profit sector. I don’t see much indication that this is leading to a cushy lifestyle and lack of seriousness. Secondly, the nearest gym to the office is about a ten minute cycle, so not having a gym would cost about 2.5 days per person of possible work time (assuming someone goes 3x a week for 45 weeks a year).
Some of the signals you think that perks send out seem to me to be good or justified.
We desperately want to keep you around
This just seems good to me. We do want people to stay around if they are doing a good job. (Whether we want to be desperate is another matter, but this feels a bit like rhetoric to me.) It also just seems like a different way of framing another principle you endorse “We invest a lot in our people and their relationships, and act to preserve that value”.
Then:
You are free from menial tasks.
One option in EA offices and other offices would be to have the people at EA orgs clean the toilets and the office. These are menial tasks that staff at EA orgs (and other offices workers) are not expected to do. Does this mean we should get rid of our dishwashers? Should people buying new office space not get dishwashers?
Your time is worth a lot of money
This just seems to be true for a lot of people doing EA work, whether it sounds nice or not, and you yourself explicitly endorse it. I don’t know whether you’re saying that it is true but we shouldn’t say it or signal it, or whether you are conflicted on whether it is true. And it basically seems to follow from the “We’re normal people who have chosen to take on especially important work” principle that you endorse. If it’s important then our time is worth a lot of money.
Ultimately, some perks may sometimes not be worth it, but a blanket ban on perks that most people class as ‘nice’ doesn’t seem justified.
My guess is that this post is implicitly aimed at Bay Area EAs, and that roughly every perk at Trajan House/other Oxford locations is acceptable by these standards.
Perhaps worth clarifying this explicitly, if true—it would be unfortunate if the people who were already most scrupulous about perks were the ones who updated most from this post.
I think it would be good if the OP would clarify which office perks he is criticising. Perks vary a lot across offices—probably more generous at Google and hedge funds, less at Amazon, less at a paper merchant in Slough, not great for an academia etc. The terms ‘normal’, ‘usual’, ‘nice’ are doing a lot of work in this post but are never defined and I don’t know what they mean. Some things are normal in offices (dishwashers, standing desks) but are also nice.
What’s the difference between Bay Area spaces and Trajan ? They seemed roughly the same to me?
Maybe this is somewhat indicative of Bay spending culture?
I don’t know if this is right, but I take Lincoln to be (a bit implicitly but I see it throughout the post) taking the default cultural norm as a pretty strong starting point, and aiming to vary from that when you have a good reason (I imagine because variations from what’s normal is what sends the most salient messages), rather than think about what a perk is from first principles, which explains the dishwashing and toilet cleaning.
Reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s view on modesty
I wonder if another way of saying what Lincoln is trying to get at is something like “it’s about the work, not you”, a message of “happy to invest in your work” can have all the same outward features of “happy to invest in you” but with different effects, but not sure he’d endorse this.
I take your disagreement with Lincoln to be something of the form “Lincoln wants and gestures at a certain vibe change that is underspecified”—“Halstead is like “is that even a consistent thing to want / does it make sense in reality”″ which feels like a really common conversational dynamic and can be frustrating for everyone involved.
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?
A small note
The OP didn’t spell our why menial tasks could be valuable, so here’s why I think we should keep doing at least some menial tasks. I’m not saying we should eschew technology or other help (I’m not ideologically against dishwashers or hiring cleaners) but I think there can be deep value in spending a not-necessarily-very-large amount of time on some menial task
- It can be a humbling experience, helping us identify with those less fortunate than us both in our own country and abroad.
- Maintaining our own spaces (dishes, toilets etc.) can be a community and maturity building experience, through forcing people to spend extra time in community spaces, working together to solve problems unrelated to their work and to help each other understand each others preferences and rub up against each others expectations and cultural norms a bit. Obviously it can also cause conflict and stress as well which can be a tradeoff.
- While we are doing practical things with our hands, we can rest and quiet our minds, which may sometimes lead to unexpected creativity or discovery.
- They can help us appreciate more the other more cerebral work we might be doing
- We can demonstrate to others looking in, and to our other workmates that we don’t consider ourselves “elite” or “above” certain tasks