I expect 10 people donating 10% of their time to be less effective than 1 person using 100% of their time because you don’t get to reap the benefits of learning for the 10% people. Example: if people work for 40 years, then 10 people donating 10% of their time gives you 10 years with 0 experience, 10 with 1 year, 10 with 2 years, and 10 with 3 years; however, if someone is doing EA work full-time, you get 1 year with 0 exp, 1 with 1, 1 with 2, etc. I expect 1 year with 20 years of experience to plausibly be as good/useful as 10 with 3 years of experience. Caveats to the simple model:
labor-years might be more valuable during the present
if you’re volunteering for a thing that is similar to what you spend the other 90% of your time doing, then you still get better at the thing you’re volunteering for
I expect 10 people donating 10% of their time to be less effective than 1 person using 100% of their time because you don’t get to reap the benefits of learning for the 10% people [emphasize mine]
“benefits of learning” doesn’t feel like the only reason, or even the primary reason, why I expect full-time EA work to be much more impactful than part-time EA work, controlling for individual factors. To me, network/coordination costs seem much higher. E.g. it’s very hard to manage a team of volunteer researchers or run an org where people volunteer 4h/week on average, and presumably less consistently.
My bad, I meant to write “Part-time volunteering might not provide as much of an opportunity to build unique skills, compared to working full-time on direct work”. Fixed.
I expect 10 people donating 10% of their time to be less effective than 1 person using 100% of their time because you don’t get to reap the benefits of learning for the 10% people. Example: if people work for 40 years, then 10 people donating 10% of their time gives you 10 years with 0 experience, 10 with 1 year, 10 with 2 years, and 10 with 3 years; however, if someone is doing EA work full-time, you get 1 year with 0 exp, 1 with 1, 1 with 2, etc. I expect 1 year with 20 years of experience to plausibly be as good/useful as 10 with 3 years of experience. Caveats to the simple model:
labor-years might be more valuable during the present
if you’re volunteering for a thing that is similar to what you spend the other 90% of your time doing, then you still get better at the thing you’re volunteering for
I make a similar argument here.
“benefits of learning” doesn’t feel like the only reason, or even the primary reason, why I expect full-time EA work to be much more impactful than part-time EA work, controlling for individual factors. To me, network/coordination costs seem much higher. E.g. it’s very hard to manage a team of volunteer researchers or run an org where people volunteer 4h/week on average, and presumably less consistently.
My bad, I meant to write “Part-time volunteering might not provide as much of an opportunity to build unique skills, compared to working full-time on direct work”. Fixed.