The subquestion of high salaries at EA orgs is interesting to me. I think it pushes on an existing tension between a conception of the EA community as a support network for people who feel the weight of the world’s problems and are trying to solve them, vs. a conception of the EA community as the increasingly professional project of recruiting the rest of the world to work on those problems too.
If you’re thinking of the first thing, offering high salaries to people “in the network” seems weird and counterproductive. After all, the truly committed people will just donate the excess, minus a bunch of transaction costs, and meanwhile you run the risk of high salaries attracting people who don’t care about the mission at all, who will unhelpfully dilute the group.
Whereas if you’re thinking of the second thing, it seems great to offer high salaries. Working on the world’s biggest problems should pay as much as working at a hedge fund! I would love to be able to whole-heartedly recommend high-impact jobs to, say, college acquaintances who feel some pressure to go into high-earning careers, not just to the people who are already in the top tenth of a percentile for commitment to altruism.
I really love the EA-community-as-a-support-network-for-people-who-feel-the-weight-of-the-world’s-problems-and-are-trying-to-solve-them. I found Strangers Drowning a very moving read in part for its depiction of pre-EA-movement EAs, who felt very alone, struggled to balance their demanding beliefs with their personal lives, and probably didn’t have as much impact as they would have had with more support. I want to hug them and tell them that it’s going to be okay, people like them will gather and share their experiences and best practices and coping skills and they’ll know that they aren’t alone. (Even though this impulse doesn’t make a lot of logical sense in the case of, say, young Julia Wise, who grew up to be a big part of the reason why things are better now!) I hope we can maintain this function of the EA community alongside the EA-community-as-the-increasingly-professional-project-of-recruiting-the-rest-of-the-world-to-work-on-those-problems-too. But to the extent that these two functions compete, I lean towards picking the second one, and paying the salaries to match.
I think this distinction is well-worded, interesting, and broadly correct.
If you’re thinking of the first thing, offering high salaries to people “in the network” seems weird and counterproductive. After all, the truly committed people will just donate the excess, minus a bunch of transaction costs
I separately think there’s a bunch of timesaving activities that “people “in the network” can spend money on,” though of course it depends a bunch on details of whether you think the marginal EA direct work hour’s value is closer to $10, $100, or $1000.
Even at $1000/h, spending substantially above 100k/year still feels kinda surprising to me, but no longer crazy, and I can totally imagine people smart about ekeing out effectiveness managing to spend that much or more.
After all, the truly committed people will just donate the excess, minus a bunch of transaction costs, and meanwhile you run the risk of high salaries attracting people who don’t care about the mission at all, who will unhelpfully dilute the group.
Fwiw that doesn’t seem true to me. I think there are many people who wouldn’t donate the excess (or at least not most of it) but who are still best described as truly committed.
The subquestion of high salaries at EA orgs is interesting to me. I think it pushes on an existing tension between a conception of the EA community as a support network for people who feel the weight of the world’s problems and are trying to solve them, vs. a conception of the EA community as the increasingly professional project of recruiting the rest of the world to work on those problems too.
If you’re thinking of the first thing, offering high salaries to people “in the network” seems weird and counterproductive. After all, the truly committed people will just donate the excess, minus a bunch of transaction costs, and meanwhile you run the risk of high salaries attracting people who don’t care about the mission at all, who will unhelpfully dilute the group.
Whereas if you’re thinking of the second thing, it seems great to offer high salaries. Working on the world’s biggest problems should pay as much as working at a hedge fund! I would love to be able to whole-heartedly recommend high-impact jobs to, say, college acquaintances who feel some pressure to go into high-earning careers, not just to the people who are already in the top tenth of a percentile for commitment to altruism.
I really love the EA-community-as-a-support-network-for-people-who-feel-the-weight-of-the-world’s-problems-and-are-trying-to-solve-them. I found Strangers Drowning a very moving read in part for its depiction of pre-EA-movement EAs, who felt very alone, struggled to balance their demanding beliefs with their personal lives, and probably didn’t have as much impact as they would have had with more support. I want to hug them and tell them that it’s going to be okay, people like them will gather and share their experiences and best practices and coping skills and they’ll know that they aren’t alone. (Even though this impulse doesn’t make a lot of logical sense in the case of, say, young Julia Wise, who grew up to be a big part of the reason why things are better now!) I hope we can maintain this function of the EA community alongside the EA-community-as-the-increasingly-professional-project-of-recruiting-the-rest-of-the-world-to-work-on-those-problems-too. But to the extent that these two functions compete, I lean towards picking the second one, and paying the salaries to match.
I think this distinction is well-worded, interesting, and broadly correct.
I separately think there’s a bunch of timesaving activities that “people “in the network” can spend money on,” though of course it depends a bunch on details of whether you think the marginal EA direct work hour’s value is closer to $10, $100, or $1000.
Even at $1000/h, spending substantially above 100k/year still feels kinda surprising to me, but no longer crazy, and I can totally imagine people smart about ekeing out effectiveness managing to spend that much or more.
Fwiw that doesn’t seem true to me. I think there are many people who wouldn’t donate the excess (or at least not most of it) but who are still best described as truly committed.