A reread of ‘Judicious Ambition’ post from not so long ago is interesting:
”In 2013, it made sense for us to work in a poorly-lit basement, eating baguettes and hummus. Now it doesn’t. Frugality is now comparatively less valuable.”
So, I guess, bring the hummus back?
Jokes aside, an explosion in funding changed EA from ‘hedge fund for charity’ into ‘VC for charity’. This analogy goes a long way to explain shifts in attitude, decisions, exuberance. So perhaps going back to hedge-fundiness, and shifting the focus back from ‘company builders’ building the next big thing to less scalable but cost-effective operations is a good direction?
For theoretical reasons, this makes sense. It’s incompatible with Singerite alturism to spend money on frivolous luxuries while people are still starving. EAs were supposed to donate their surplus income to GiveWell. This doesn’t change when your surplus income grows. At least, not as much as people behaved.
Also for practical reasons. We could’ve hired double the researchers on half the salary. Okay maybe 1.25x the researchers on 80% the salary. I don’t know the optimal point in the workforce-salary tradeoff but EA definitely went too far in the salary direction.
The result was golden handcuffs, grifters, and value drift.
As someone who (briefly) worked in VC and cofounded nonprofits, I’m not sure that’s a good signal.
”VC for charity” makes more sense when you consider that VC focus on high upside, diversification, lower information and higher uncertainty, which reflects the current stage of the EA movement. EA is still discovering new effective interventions, launching new experimental projects, building capacity of new founders and discovering new ways of doing good on a systemic level. Even today, there’s an acknowledgement that we might not know what the most cost-effective ways of doing good are.
If anything, I would argue that EA initially tried to go with “hedge fund for charity” for the first few years and this was not clearly better.
As for free spending, I’m not sure that has to do with “VC for charity”. A few of the projects I saw coming out of Future Fund were quite lean with low overhead due to everyone working remote without paying for stuff associated with normal movement building (retreats, events, office spaces etc.). The one I work at regularly debates expenses.
A reread of ‘Judicious Ambition’ post from not so long ago is interesting:
”In 2013, it made sense for us to work in a poorly-lit basement, eating baguettes and hummus. Now it doesn’t. Frugality is now comparatively less valuable.”
So, I guess, bring the hummus back?
Jokes aside, an explosion in funding changed EA from ‘hedge fund for charity’ into ‘VC for charity’. This analogy goes a long way to explain shifts in attitude, decisions, exuberance. So perhaps going back to hedge-fundiness, and shifting the focus back from ‘company builders’ building the next big thing to less scalable but cost-effective operations is a good direction?
imo EA should have remained frugal.
For theoretical reasons, this makes sense. It’s incompatible with Singerite alturism to spend money on frivolous luxuries while people are still starving. EAs were supposed to donate their surplus income to GiveWell. This doesn’t change when your surplus income grows. At least, not as much as people behaved.
Also for practical reasons. We could’ve hired double the researchers on half the salary. Okay maybe 1.25x the researchers on 80% the salary. I don’t know the optimal point in the workforce-salary tradeoff but EA definitely went too far in the salary direction.
The result was golden handcuffs, grifters, and value drift.
Let’s bring back Ascetic EA. Hummus on toast.
As someone who (briefly) worked in VC and cofounded nonprofits, I’m not sure that’s a good signal.
”VC for charity” makes more sense when you consider that VC focus on high upside, diversification, lower information and higher uncertainty, which reflects the current stage of the EA movement. EA is still discovering new effective interventions, launching new experimental projects, building capacity of new founders and discovering new ways of doing good on a systemic level. Even today, there’s an acknowledgement that we might not know what the most cost-effective ways of doing good are.
If anything, I would argue that EA initially tried to go with “hedge fund for charity” for the first few years and this was not clearly better.
As for free spending, I’m not sure that has to do with “VC for charity”. A few of the projects I saw coming out of Future Fund were quite lean with low overhead due to everyone working remote without paying for stuff associated with normal movement building (retreats, events, office spaces etc.). The one I work at regularly debates expenses.