I’ve started feeling super guilty and sad about how much I, and the EA community, have wasted on supporting my participation i
I think that in saying this, you’re technically putting a rather low upper bound on the marginal value of a community building staff member as lower than your recruitment and moving costs, which has implications for what you ought to think about community building (vs earning to give an amount greater than your moving costs, or working in a different cause area).
To expand on this in more detail: I think there is something incoherent in saying that it wasn’t justified for you in particular to move to the US with the 100% intention to work (which is a much stronger case than flying people out to conferences who might one day work), but it is justifed for you to work on the project now that you have moved. Why not discount the value of working on the project at all even if you are local, if there’s truly such a big supply of other locals ready to do it who could have done just as well, such that the marginal impact is ultimately less than a moving and recruit cost? You can probably find a more neglected project to work on instead, one in which no one equally talented would replace you, one which is important enough that the flight isn’t a material consideration, right?
In fact why do community building and work so hard to recruit anyone, if it’s not even worth the cost of flying yourself and your suitcases on site to get one new recruit, then why is it worth spending so many much more expensive hours of expensive labor on recruitment in general, regardless of if they’re local to an ea hub or not? I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of staff time spent to vet and recruit and hire one local is greater than your moving costs.
Is the scale really so precisely balaned that the your flight is what tips it, probably not, probably either you’re working on entirely the wrong thing, or you’re working on the right thing and the flight and moving is a rounding error. If money is at such a premium that moving tips the balance, why not instead move to the highest earning city and earn to give? I bet boston/nyc jobs pay better than south african ones, you can make back the cost of the moving manyfold.
So I think, logically speaking, either you’re placing the value of community building as net positive but inferior to earning to give an amount more than your move and recruit cost, or you should thinkthe move was a net-positive relative to the next best person being hired, there isn’t really a coherent narrative where the move wasn’t worth it and locals who don’t need to move should on the margin continue to work on community building rather than ETG (or a better direct work alternative).
(Edit: moving this to its own comment as it is a separate point)
I think that in saying this, you’re technically putting a rather low upper bound on the marginal value of a community building staff member as lower than your recruitment and moving costs, which has implications for what you ought to think about community building (vs earning to give an amount greater than your moving costs, or working in a different cause area).
To expand on this in more detail: I think there is something incoherent in saying that it wasn’t justified for you in particular to move to the US with the 100% intention to work (which is a much stronger case than flying people out to conferences who might one day work), but it is justifed for you to work on the project now that you have moved. Why not discount the value of working on the project at all even if you are local, if there’s truly such a big supply of other locals ready to do it who could have done just as well, such that the marginal impact is ultimately less than a moving and recruit cost? You can probably find a more neglected project to work on instead, one in which no one equally talented would replace you, one which is important enough that the flight isn’t a material consideration, right?
In fact why do community building and work so hard to recruit anyone, if it’s not even worth the cost of flying yourself and your suitcases on site to get one new recruit, then why is it worth spending so many much more expensive hours of expensive labor on recruitment in general, regardless of if they’re local to an ea hub or not? I wouldn’t be surprised if the cost of staff time spent to vet and recruit and hire one local is greater than your moving costs.
Is the scale really so precisely balaned that the your flight is what tips it, probably not, probably either you’re working on entirely the wrong thing, or you’re working on the right thing and the flight and moving is a rounding error. If money is at such a premium that moving tips the balance, why not instead move to the highest earning city and earn to give? I bet boston/nyc jobs pay better than south african ones, you can make back the cost of the moving manyfold.
So I think, logically speaking, either you’re placing the value of community building as net positive but inferior to earning to give an amount more than your move and recruit cost, or you should think the move was a net-positive relative to the next best person being hired, there isn’t really a coherent narrative where the move wasn’t worth it and locals who don’t need to move should on the margin continue to work on community building rather than ETG (or a better direct work alternative).
(Edit: moving this to its own comment as it is a separate point)