Sometimes people in EA will target scalability and some will target cost-effectiveness. In some cause areas scalability will matter more and in some cost-effectiveness will matter more. E.g. longtermists seem more focused on scalability of new projects than those working on global health. Where scalability matters more there is more incentive for higher salaries (oh we can pay twice as much and get 105% of the befit – great). As such I expect there to be an imbalance in slaries between cases areas.
This has certainly been my experience with the people funding me to do longtermist work giving the feedback that they don’t care about cost-effectiveness if I can scale a bit quicker at higher costs I should do so and the people paying me to do neartermist work having a more frugal approach to spending resources.
As such my intuition aligns with Rockwell that:
My concern here is that cause impartial EAs are still likely to go for the higher salary, which could lead to an imbalance in a talent-constrained landscape.
On the other hand some EA folk might actively go for lower salaries with the view that they will likely have a higher counterfactual impact in roles that pay less or driven by some sense of self-scarificingness being important.
As an aside, I wonder if you (and OP) mean a different thing by “cause impartial” than I do. I interpret “cause impartial” as “I will do whatever actions maximize the most impact (subject to personal constraints), regardless of cause area.” Whereas I think some people take it to mean a more freeform approach to cause selection that’s more like “Oh I don’t care what job I do as long as it has the “EA” stamp?” (maybe/probably I’m strawmanning here).
I think that’s a fair point. I normally mean the former (the impact maximising one) but in this context was probably reading it in the context OP used it more like that later (the EA stamp one). Good to clarify what was meant here, sorry for any confusion.
I feel like this isn’t the definition being used here, but when I use cause neutral, I mean what you describe, and when use cause impartial I mean something like and intervention that will lift all boats without respect to cause.
Sometimes people in EA will target scalability and some will target cost-effectiveness. In some cause areas scalability will matter more and in some cost-effectiveness will matter more. E.g. longtermists seem more focused on scalability of new projects than those working on global health. Where scalability matters more there is more incentive for higher salaries (oh we can pay twice as much and get 105% of the befit – great). As such I expect there to be an imbalance in slaries between cases areas.
This has certainly been my experience with the people funding me to do longtermist work giving the feedback that they don’t care about cost-effectiveness if I can scale a bit quicker at higher costs I should do so and the people paying me to do neartermist work having a more frugal approach to spending resources.
As such my intuition aligns with Rockwell that:
On the other hand some EA folk might actively go for lower salaries with the view that they will likely have a higher counterfactual impact in roles that pay less or driven by some sense of self-scarificingness being important.
As an aside, I wonder if you (and OP) mean a different thing by “cause impartial” than I do. I interpret “cause impartial” as “I will do whatever actions maximize the most impact (subject to personal constraints), regardless of cause area.” Whereas I think some people take it to mean a more freeform approach to cause selection that’s more like “Oh I don’t care what job I do as long as it has the “EA” stamp?” (maybe/probably I’m strawmanning here).
I think that’s a fair point. I normally mean the former (the impact maximising one) but in this context was probably reading it in the context OP used it more like that later (the EA stamp one). Good to clarify what was meant here, sorry for any confusion.
I feel like this isn’t the definition being used here, but when I use cause neutral, I mean what you describe, and when use cause impartial I mean something like and intervention that will lift all boats without respect to cause.
Thanks! That’s helpful.