Altruism sharpens altruism (I always misremember this as âaltruism begets altruismâ, which I think is catchier)
I fairly strongly disagree with âbe honest about your counterfactual impactâmost people overestimate it.â, and on only working at a nonprofit you consider effective if you think youâre ~10x better than the counterfactual hire or âirreplaceable.â
As an example, Iâm confident that there are software developers who would have been significantly more impactful than me at my role at GWWC, but didnât apply, and the extra ~$/âyear that they are donating (if they are actually donating more in practice than what they would have) does not compensate for that. I also think that thereâs a good chance that I would have done other vaguely impactful work, or donated more myself, if they had been hired instead of me, largely compensating for their missed donations.
We have fairly different beliefs regarding replaceability of staff by orgs with funding (depending, of course on the scarcity of the labor supply), but you can certainly apply the framework this post endorses with a wide range of discounting job impact due to replaceability.
Posts on this topic that I liked:
Pain is not the unit of Effort
âI would summarize a lot of effective altruism as âpretending to actually tryââ
And this response: In praise of pretending to really try (although Iâm not sure I agree, I think itâs an interesting point)
Altruism sharpens altruism (I always misremember this as âaltruism begets altruismâ, which I think is catchier)
I fairly strongly disagree with âbe honest about your counterfactual impactâmost people overestimate it.â, and on only working at a nonprofit you consider effective if you think youâre ~10x better than the counterfactual hire or âirreplaceable.â
As an example, Iâm confident that there are software developers who would have been significantly more impactful than me at my role at GWWC, but didnât apply, and the extra ~$/âyear that they are donating (if they are actually donating more in practice than what they would have) does not compensate for that.
I also think that thereâs a good chance that I would have done other vaguely impactful work, or donated more myself, if they had been hired instead of me, largely compensating for their missed donations.
Thanks for sharing these other posts.
We have fairly different beliefs regarding replaceability of staff by orgs with funding (depending, of course on the scarcity of the labor supply), but you can certainly apply the framework this post endorses with a wide range of discounting job impact due to replaceability.