Stefan, your most important argument seems to be that higher salaries will help with recruitment and motivation. But you don’t address the concern there’s something a bit puzzling about the most competent effective altruists being motivated by making money for themselves.
If someone says “look, I’ll do the work, and I will be excellent, but you have to pay me $150k a year or I walk” I would doubt that were that serious about helping other people. They’d sound more like your classic corporate lawyer than an effective effective altruist.
If someone says “look, I’ll do the work, and I will be excellent, but you have to pay me $150k a year or I walk” I would doubt that were that serious about helping other people. They’d sound more like your classic corporate lawyer than an effective effective altruist.
Adding to my other comment, there are several reasons I might choose a different job if I were paid <<150k, even as someone who is basically dedicated to maximizing my impact.
My bargain with the EA machine lets selfish parts of me enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in exchange for giving EA work my all.
Salaries between EA orgs should be a signal of value in order to align incentives. If EA org A is paying less than org B, but I add more value at org A, this is a wrong incentive that could be fixed at little cost.
There are time-money tradeoffs like nice apartments and meal delivery that make my productivity substantially higher with more money.
Having financial security is really good for my mental health and ability to take risks; in the extreme case, poverty mindset is a huge hit to both.
Underpaying people might be a bad omen. The organization might be confusing sacrifice with impact, be constrained by external optics, unable to make trades between other resources, or might have trouble getting funding because large funders don’t think they’re promising.
Being paid, say, 15% of what I could probably make in industry just feels insulting. This is not an ideal situation, but pay is tied up with status in our society, especially taking pay cuts.
An organization that cuts my pay might be exhibiting distrust and expecting me to spend the money poorly; this is also negative signal.
I’m not quite sure I understand the argument. One interpretation of it is that higher salaries don’t actually have positive incentive effects on recruitment, motivation, etc. It would be good to have more data on that, but my sense is that they do have an effect. With respect to this argument, one needs to consider how high salaries are as a fraction of the monetised impact of the jobs in question. If that fraction is low, as Thomas Kwa suggests, then it could be worth increasing salaries substantially even if the effect on impact (in terms of percentages) is relatively modest.
Another interpretation is that one needs to pay low salaries to filter for value-alignment. I discussed that argument critically in two of my posts.
Hmm, I don’t think you’ve engaged with my point: there’s something odd about very altruistically capable people requiring very high salaries, lest they choose to go and do non-impactful jobs instead. The charity section famously has lower salaries because the work is more intrinsically rewarding than regular corporate fare.
The salaries might have an effect, but I don’t think you’ve shown that in this case—the linked tweet is anecdata. A possibility is that higher salaries in one EA org just pull the better candidates to that org. So I want evidence showing it is pulling in ‘new’ candidates.
I’m not sure about the fraction of monetised impact bit of that relevant. As someone who runs an org, I only have access to my budget, not the monetised impact—a job might have ‘£1m a year of impact’, but that’s um, more than 4x HLI’s budget. For someone with enormous resources, eg Open Phil, it might make more sense to think like this.
Of course, it might be that we just have different meanings of ‘high’ and I would have welcomed if you’d offered a operationalisation in your discussion. I’m not sure I disagree with your conclusion, I just don’t think you’ve proved your case.
I was trying to understand your argument, and suggested two potential interpretations.
there’s something odd about very altruistically capable people requiring very high salaries, lest they choose to go and do non-impactful jobs instead
Sound more like your classic corporate lawyer than an effective effective altruist
I don’t understand where you’re trying to go with these sorts of claims. I’m saying that I believe that compensation helps recruitment and similar, and therefore increase impact; and that I don’t think that higher compensation harms value-alignment to the extent that’s often claimed. How do the quoted claims relate to those arguments? And if you are trying to make some other argument, how does it influence impact?
I’m not sure about the fraction of monetised impact bit of that relevant. As someone who runs an org, I only have access to my budget, not the monetised impact—a job might have ‘£1m a year of impact’, but that’s um, more than 4x HLI’s budget. For someone with enormous resources, eg Open Phil, it might make more sense to think like this.
It’s relevant because orgs’ budgets aren’t fixed. Funders should take the kind of reasoning I outline here into account when they decide how much to fund an org.
I’ve been very clear that I don’t have non-anecdotal evidence, and called for more research in my post.
Stefan, your most important argument seems to be that higher salaries will help with recruitment and motivation. But you don’t address the concern there’s something a bit puzzling about the most competent effective altruists being motivated by making money for themselves.
If someone says “look, I’ll do the work, and I will be excellent, but you have to pay me $150k a year or I walk” I would doubt that were that serious about helping other people. They’d sound more like your classic corporate lawyer than an effective effective altruist.
Adding to my other comment, there are several reasons I might choose a different job if I were paid <<150k, even as someone who is basically dedicated to maximizing my impact.
My bargain with the EA machine lets selfish parts of me enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in exchange for giving EA work my all.
Salaries between EA orgs should be a signal of value in order to align incentives. If EA org A is paying less than org B, but I add more value at org A, this is a wrong incentive that could be fixed at little cost.
There are time-money tradeoffs like nice apartments and meal delivery that make my productivity substantially higher with more money.
Having financial security is really good for my mental health and ability to take risks; in the extreme case, poverty mindset is a huge hit to both.
Underpaying people might be a bad omen. The organization might be confusing sacrifice with impact, be constrained by external optics, unable to make trades between other resources, or might have trouble getting funding because large funders don’t think they’re promising.
Being paid, say, 15% of what I could probably make in industry just feels insulting. This is not an ideal situation, but pay is tied up with status in our society, especially taking pay cuts.
An organization that cuts my pay might be exhibiting distrust and expecting me to spend the money poorly; this is also negative signal.
I’m not quite sure I understand the argument. One interpretation of it is that higher salaries don’t actually have positive incentive effects on recruitment, motivation, etc. It would be good to have more data on that, but my sense is that they do have an effect. With respect to this argument, one needs to consider how high salaries are as a fraction of the monetised impact of the jobs in question. If that fraction is low, as Thomas Kwa suggests, then it could be worth increasing salaries substantially even if the effect on impact (in terms of percentages) is relatively modest.
Another interpretation is that one needs to pay low salaries to filter for value-alignment. I discussed that argument critically in two of my posts.
Hmm, I don’t think you’ve engaged with my point: there’s something odd about very altruistically capable people requiring very high salaries, lest they choose to go and do non-impactful jobs instead. The charity section famously has lower salaries because the work is more intrinsically rewarding than regular corporate fare.
The salaries might have an effect, but I don’t think you’ve shown that in this case—the linked tweet is anecdata. A possibility is that higher salaries in one EA org just pull the better candidates to that org. So I want evidence showing it is pulling in ‘new’ candidates.
I’m not sure about the fraction of monetised impact bit of that relevant. As someone who runs an org, I only have access to my budget, not the monetised impact—a job might have ‘£1m a year of impact’, but that’s um, more than 4x HLI’s budget. For someone with enormous resources, eg Open Phil, it might make more sense to think like this.
Of course, it might be that we just have different meanings of ‘high’ and I would have welcomed if you’d offered a operationalisation in your discussion. I’m not sure I disagree with your conclusion, I just don’t think you’ve proved your case.
I thought it was because there’s no profit to be made doing the work.
I was trying to understand your argument, and suggested two potential interpretations.
I don’t understand where you’re trying to go with these sorts of claims. I’m saying that I believe that compensation helps recruitment and similar, and therefore increase impact; and that I don’t think that higher compensation harms value-alignment to the extent that’s often claimed. How do the quoted claims relate to those arguments? And if you are trying to make some other argument, how does it influence impact?
It’s relevant because orgs’ budgets aren’t fixed. Funders should take the kind of reasoning I outline here into account when they decide how much to fund an org.
I’ve been very clear that I don’t have non-anecdotal evidence, and called for more research in my post.