I definitely agree EAs are motivated somewhat by money in this range.
My thought is more about how it compares to other factors.
My impression of hiring at 80k is that salary rarely seems like a key factor in choosing us vs. other orgs (probably under 20% of cases). If we doubled salaries, I expect existing staff would save more, donate more, and consume a bit more; but I don’t think we’d see large increases in productivity or happiness.
My impression is that this is similar at other orgs who pay similarly to us. Some EA orgs still pay a lot less, and I think there’s a decent chance this is a mistake – though you’d need to weigh it against the current cost-effectiveness of the project.
I think the PR risks for charities paying high salaries are pretty big—normal people hate the idea of charities paying a lot. Paying regular employees $200k in London would make them higher paid than the CEOs of most regular charities, including pretty big ones where the staff are typically middle aged. EA has also had a lot of kudos from the ‘living on not very much to donate’ meme. Most people aiming to do good are assumed to be full of shit, and living on not very much is a hard-to-fake symbol that shows you’re morally serious. I agree that meme has some serious downsides relative to ‘you can earn a bunch of money doing good’ meme, but giving up that kudos is a major cost – which makes the trade off ambiguous to me. Maybe it’s possible to have some of both by paying a lot but having some people donate most of it, or maybe you get the worst of both worlds.
Agree that we shouldn’t expect large productivity/wellbeing changes. Perhaps a ~0.1SD improvement in wellbeing, and a single-digit improvement in productivity—small relative to effects on recruitment and retention.
I agree that it’s been good overall for EA to appear extremely charitable. It’s also had costs though: it sometimes encouraged self-neglect, portrayed EA as ‘holier than thou’, EA orgs as less productive, and EA roles as worse career moves than the private sector. Over time, as the movement has aged, professionalised, and solidified its funding base, it’s been beneficial to de-emphasise sacrifice, in order to place more emphasis on effectiveness. It better reflects what we’re currently doing, who we want to recruit, too. So long as we take care to project an image that is coherent, and not hypocritical, I don’t see a problem with accelerating the pivot. My hunch is that even apart from salaries, it would be good, and I’d be surprised if it was bad enough to be decisive for salaries.
I think there are a few other considerations that may point in the direction of slightly higher salaries (or at least, avoiding very low salaries). EA skews young in age as a movement, but this is changing as people grow up ‘with it’ or older people join. I think this is good. It’s important to avoid making it more difficult for people to join/remain involved who have other financial obligations that come in a little later in life, e.g. - child-rearing - supporting elderly parents Relatedly, lower salaries can be easier to accept for longer for people who come from wealthier backgrounds and have better-off social support networks or expectations of inheritance etc (it can feel very risky if one is only in a position to save minimally, and not be able to build up rainy day funds for unexpected financial needs otherwise).
I definitely agree EAs are motivated somewhat by money in this range.
My thought is more about how it compares to other factors.
My impression of hiring at 80k is that salary rarely seems like a key factor in choosing us vs. other orgs (probably under 20% of cases). If we doubled salaries, I expect existing staff would save more, donate more, and consume a bit more; but I don’t think we’d see large increases in productivity or happiness.
My impression is that this is similar at other orgs who pay similarly to us. Some EA orgs still pay a lot less, and I think there’s a decent chance this is a mistake – though you’d need to weigh it against the current cost-effectiveness of the project.
I think the PR risks for charities paying high salaries are pretty big—normal people hate the idea of charities paying a lot. Paying regular employees $200k in London would make them higher paid than the CEOs of most regular charities, including pretty big ones where the staff are typically middle aged. EA has also had a lot of kudos from the ‘living on not very much to donate’ meme. Most people aiming to do good are assumed to be full of shit, and living on not very much is a hard-to-fake symbol that shows you’re morally serious. I agree that meme has some serious downsides relative to ‘you can earn a bunch of money doing good’ meme, but giving up that kudos is a major cost – which makes the trade off ambiguous to me. Maybe it’s possible to have some of both by paying a lot but having some people donate most of it, or maybe you get the worst of both worlds.
Agree that we shouldn’t expect large productivity/wellbeing changes. Perhaps a ~0.1SD improvement in wellbeing, and a single-digit improvement in productivity—small relative to effects on recruitment and retention.
I agree that it’s been good overall for EA to appear extremely charitable. It’s also had costs though: it sometimes encouraged self-neglect, portrayed EA as ‘holier than thou’, EA orgs as less productive, and EA roles as worse career moves than the private sector. Over time, as the movement has aged, professionalised, and solidified its funding base, it’s been beneficial to de-emphasise sacrifice, in order to place more emphasis on effectiveness. It better reflects what we’re currently doing, who we want to recruit, too. So long as we take care to project an image that is coherent, and not hypocritical, I don’t see a problem with accelerating the pivot. My hunch is that even apart from salaries, it would be good, and I’d be surprised if it was bad enough to be decisive for salaries.
I think there are a few other considerations that may point in the direction of slightly higher salaries (or at least, avoiding very low salaries). EA skews young in age as a movement, but this is changing as people grow up ‘with it’ or older people join. I think this is good. It’s important to avoid making it more difficult for people to join/remain involved who have other financial obligations that come in a little later in life, e.g.
- child-rearing
- supporting elderly parents
Relatedly, lower salaries can be easier to accept for longer for people who come from wealthier backgrounds and have better-off social support networks or expectations of inheritance etc (it can feel very risky if one is only in a position to save minimally, and not be able to build up rainy day funds for unexpected financial needs otherwise).