Thanks for spelling that out, makes it clearer to me. I am ambivalent here because that might scare off many people that could actually afford going lower for 1-3 years but are just very anchored on their market rate.
I feel many people have never questioned how much they would compromise their salary for the chance of 10-100x their impact in the world—until they get a real opportunity to do so. I feel assumptions like “I’m OK with my market rate-30 to 50%” are quite common even though the threshold for living a comfortable life for them might be much lower.
I only found out how much salary I was willing to sacrifice after engaging more deeply with the idea of founding. Thus, based on my experience I find it fair to discuss salary expectations as a part of the co-founder matching process, not upfront. On a sidenote, I see an important psychological difference to make an active founder choice of setting your own starting salary low, in contrast to “being offered only minimum wage”.
All in all, maybe I am a bit disappointed that 90% of the discussion here so far has focused on salary, while impact potential and cost-effectiveness are more important matters to cover.
It might seem daunting for Global Health people to confront a big lobby while there are seemingly easier interventions with less resistance around.
From the vantage point of an animal activists it’s not that daunting though. I am relatively certain that it’s easier than e.g. to go against the factory farming lobby. At least it’s so much common sense that it should be possible to convince the rational parts of government—increasing both public health and tax returns. Concerns arise around corruption but if you encounter too much of that you could simply switch intervention countries.
Looking at scale and neglectedness, tobacco taxation seems just too important to shy away from the challenge.