(1) With respect to prioritize India/ādeveloping country talent, it probably depends on the type of work (e.g. direct work in GHD/āAW suffers less for this), but in any case, the pool of talent is big, and the cost savings are substantial, so it might be reasonably to go this route regardless.
(2) Agreed that itās challenging, but I guess itās a chicken vs egg problemāwe probably have to start somewhere (e.g. HIP etc does good work in the space, we understand).
(3) For 80k, see my discussion with Arden aboveāAGBās views are also reasonably close to my own.
(4) On Rethinkāto be fair, our next statement after that sentence is āThis objection holds less water if one is disinclined to accept OPās judgement as final.ā I think OPās moral weights work, especially, is very valuable.
(5) Thereās a huge challenge over valuing talent, especially early career talent (especially if you consider the counterfactual being earning to give at a normal job). One useful heuristic is: Would the typical EA organization prefer an additional 5k in donations (from an early career EA giving 10% of their income annually) or 10 additional job applications to a role? My sense from talking to organizations in the space is that (a) the smaller orgs are far more funding constrained, so prefer the former, and (b) the bigger orgs are more agnostic, because funding is less a challenge but also there is a lot of demand for their jobs anyway.
(6) I canāt speak for OP specifically, but I (and others in the GHD policy space Iāve spoken to) think that Eirik is great. And generally, in GHD, the highest impact work is convincing governments to change the way they do things, and you canāt really do that without positions of influence.
For 1: A lot of global health and development is much less talent-hungry than animal welfare work or x-risk work. Take for example the Against Malaria Foundation. They receive hundreds of millions of dollars, but they only have a core team of 13. Sure you need a bunch of people to hand out bed nets, but the requirements for that arenāt that tight and sure you need some managers, but lots of people are capable of handling this kind of logistics, you donāt really have to headhunt them. I suppose this could change if there was more of a pivot into policy where talent really matters. However, in that case, you would probably want people from the country whose policy you want to influence, moreso then thinking about cost.
For 5: Itās not clear to me that the way youāre thinking about this makes sense to me. If youāre asking about the trade-off between direct work and donations, it seems as though we should ask about $5k from the job vs. a new candidate who is better than your current candidate as, in a lot of circumstances, they will have the option of doing earn to give so long as they donāt take an EA job (I suppose there is the additional factor of how much chasing EA jobs detracts from chasing earn to give jobs).
1) It agree that policy talent is important but comparatively scarce, even in GHD. Itās the biggest bottleneck that Charity Entrepreneurship is facing on incubating GHD policy organizations right now, unfortunately.
5) I donāt think itās safe to assume that the new candidate is better than your current candidate? While I agree thatās fine for dedicated talent pipeline programmes, Iām not confident of making this assumption for general community building, is by its nature less targeted and typically more university/āearly-career oriented.
I apologize if weāre talking at cross purposes, but the original idea I was trying to get across is that when valuing additional talent from community building, there is the opportunity cost of a non-EA career where you just give. So basically youāre comparing (a) the value of money from that earning to give vs (b) the value of the same individual trying for various EA jobs.
The complication is that (i) the uncertainty of the individual really following through on the intention to earn to give (or going into an impactful career) applies to both branches; however, (ii) the uncertainty of success only applies to (b). If they really try to earn to give they can trivially succeed (e.g. give 10% of the average American salaryāso maybe $5k, ignoring adjustments for lower salaries for younger individual and higher salaries for typically elite educated EAs). However, if they apply to a bunch of EA jobs, the arenāt necessarily going to succeed (i.e. they arenāt necessary going to be better than the counterfactual hire). So ultimately weāre comparing the value an additional $5k annual donation vs additional ~10 applications of average quality to various organizations (depends on how many organizations an application will apply to per annumāvery uncertain).
I also canāt speak with certainty as to how organizations will choose, but my sense is that (a) smaller EA organizations are funding constrained and would prefer getting the money; while (b) larger EA organizations are more agnostic because they have both more money and the privilege of getting the pick of the crop for talent (c.f. high demand for GiveWell/āOP jobs).
Okay, I guess parts of that framework make a bit more sense now that youāve explained it.
At the same time, it feels that people can always decide to earn to give if they fail to land an EA-relevant gig, so Iām not sure why youāre modeling it as a $5k annual donation vs. a one-time $5k donation for someone spending a year focusing on upskilling for EA roles. Maybe you could add an extra factor for the slowdown in their career advancement, but $50k extra per year is unrealistic.
I think itās also worth considering that there are selection effects here. So insofar as EA promotes direct work, people with higher odds of being successful in landing a direct work position are more likely to pursue that and people with better earn-to-give potential are less likely to take the advice.
Additionally, I wonder whether the orgs you surveyed understood ten additional applications as ten additional average applications or ten additional applications from EAās (more educated and valued-aligned than the general population) who were dedicated enough to actually follow through on earning to give.
I think youāre right in pointing out the limitations of the toy model, and I strongly agree that the trade-off is not as stark as it seemsāitās more realistic that we model it aa a delay from applying to EA jobs before settling for a non EA job (and that this wont be like a year or anything)
However, I do worry that the focus on direct work means people generally neglect donations as a path to impact and so the practical impact of deciding to go for an EA career is that people decide not to give. An unpleasant surprise I got from talking to HIP and others in the space is that the majority of EAs probably donāt actually give. Maybe itās the EA boomer in me speaking, but itās a fairly different culture compared to 10+ years ago where being EA meant you bought into the drowning child arguments and gave 10% or more to whatever cause you thought most important
Hi Chris,
Just to respond to the points you raised
(1) With respect to prioritize India/ādeveloping country talent, it probably depends on the type of work (e.g. direct work in GHD/āAW suffers less for this), but in any case, the pool of talent is big, and the cost savings are substantial, so it might be reasonably to go this route regardless.
(2) Agreed that itās challenging, but I guess itās a chicken vs egg problemāwe probably have to start somewhere (e.g. HIP etc does good work in the space, we understand).
(3) For 80k, see my discussion with Arden aboveāAGBās views are also reasonably close to my own.
(4) On Rethinkāto be fair, our next statement after that sentence is āThis objection holds less water if one is disinclined to accept OPās judgement as final.ā I think OPās moral weights work, especially, is very valuable.
(5) Thereās a huge challenge over valuing talent, especially early career talent (especially if you consider the counterfactual being earning to give at a normal job). One useful heuristic is: Would the typical EA organization prefer an additional 5k in donations (from an early career EA giving 10% of their income annually) or 10 additional job applications to a role? My sense from talking to organizations in the space is that (a) the smaller orgs are far more funding constrained, so prefer the former, and (b) the bigger orgs are more agnostic, because funding is less a challenge but also there is a lot of demand for their jobs anyway.
(6) I canāt speak for OP specifically, but I (and others in the GHD policy space Iāve spoken to) think that Eirik is great. And generally, in GHD, the highest impact work is convincing governments to change the way they do things, and you canāt really do that without positions of influence.
For 1: A lot of global health and development is much less talent-hungry than animal welfare work or x-risk work. Take for example the Against Malaria Foundation. They receive hundreds of millions of dollars, but they only have a core team of 13. Sure you need a bunch of people to hand out bed nets, but the requirements for that arenāt that tight and sure you need some managers, but lots of people are capable of handling this kind of logistics, you donāt really have to headhunt them. I suppose this could change if there was more of a pivot into policy where talent really matters. However, in that case, you would probably want people from the country whose policy you want to influence, moreso then thinking about cost.
For 5: Itās not clear to me that the way youāre thinking about this makes sense to me. If youāre asking about the trade-off between direct work and donations, it seems as though we should ask about $5k from the job vs. a new candidate who is better than your current candidate as, in a lot of circumstances, they will have the option of doing earn to give so long as they donāt take an EA job (I suppose there is the additional factor of how much chasing EA jobs detracts from chasing earn to give jobs).
1) It agree that policy talent is important but comparatively scarce, even in GHD. Itās the biggest bottleneck that Charity Entrepreneurship is facing on incubating GHD policy organizations right now, unfortunately.
5) I donāt think itās safe to assume that the new candidate is better than your current candidate? While I agree thatās fine for dedicated talent pipeline programmes, Iām not confident of making this assumption for general community building, is by its nature less targeted and typically more university/āearly-career oriented.
My point was that presumably the org thinks theyāre better if they decide to hire them as opposed to the next best person.
I apologize if weāre talking at cross purposes, but the original idea I was trying to get across is that when valuing additional talent from community building, there is the opportunity cost of a non-EA career where you just give. So basically youāre comparing (a) the value of money from that earning to give vs (b) the value of the same individual trying for various EA jobs.
The complication is that (i) the uncertainty of the individual really following through on the intention to earn to give (or going into an impactful career) applies to both branches; however, (ii) the uncertainty of success only applies to (b). If they really try to earn to give they can trivially succeed (e.g. give 10% of the average American salaryāso maybe $5k, ignoring adjustments for lower salaries for younger individual and higher salaries for typically elite educated EAs). However, if they apply to a bunch of EA jobs, the arenāt necessarily going to succeed (i.e. they arenāt necessary going to be better than the counterfactual hire). So ultimately weāre comparing the value an additional $5k annual donation vs additional ~10 applications of average quality to various organizations (depends on how many organizations an application will apply to per annumāvery uncertain).
I also canāt speak with certainty as to how organizations will choose, but my sense is that (a) smaller EA organizations are funding constrained and would prefer getting the money; while (b) larger EA organizations are more agnostic because they have both more money and the privilege of getting the pick of the crop for talent (c.f. high demand for GiveWell/āOP jobs).
Okay, I guess parts of that framework make a bit more sense now that youāve explained it.
At the same time, it feels that people can always decide to earn to give if they fail to land an EA-relevant gig, so Iām not sure why youāre modeling it as a $5k annual donation vs. a one-time $5k donation for someone spending a year focusing on upskilling for EA roles. Maybe you could add an extra factor for the slowdown in their career advancement, but $50k extra per year is unrealistic.
I think itās also worth considering that there are selection effects here. So insofar as EA promotes direct work, people with higher odds of being successful in landing a direct work position are more likely to pursue that and people with better earn-to-give potential are less likely to take the advice.
Additionally, I wonder whether the orgs you surveyed understood ten additional applications as ten additional average applications or ten additional applications from EAās (more educated and valued-aligned than the general population) who were dedicated enough to actually follow through on earning to give.
I think youāre right in pointing out the limitations of the toy model, and I strongly agree that the trade-off is not as stark as it seemsāitās more realistic that we model it aa a delay from applying to EA jobs before settling for a non EA job (and that this wont be like a year or anything)
However, I do worry that the focus on direct work means people generally neglect donations as a path to impact and so the practical impact of deciding to go for an EA career is that people decide not to give. An unpleasant surprise I got from talking to HIP and others in the space is that the majority of EAs probably donāt actually give. Maybe itās the EA boomer in me speaking, but itās a fairly different culture compared to 10+ years ago where being EA meant you bought into the drowning child arguments and gave 10% or more to whatever cause you thought most important