Sam Anschell

• Sam Anschell 16 Apr 2025 1:57 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Mo Putera’s comment on: Mo Putera’s Quick takes

  Can confirm; Zipline is ridiculously cool. I saw their P1 Drones in action in Ghana and met some of their staff at EA conferences. Imo, Zipline is one of the most important organizations around for last-mile delivery infrastructure. They’re a key partner for GAVI, and they save lives unbelievably cost-effectively by transporting commodities like snakebite antivenom within minutes to people who need it.

  Their staff and operations are among the most high-performing of any organization I’ve ever seen. Here are some pics from a visit I took to their bay area office in October 2024. I’d highly recommend this Mark Rober video, and checking out Zipline’s website. If any software engineers are interested in high-impact work, I would encourage you to apply to Zipline!

Ad­vice to my EA new­comer self

Sam An­schell’s Quick takes

• Sam Anschell 7 Apr 2025 18:23 UTC

  31 points

  9 ∶ 0

  on: Sam An­schell’s Quick takes

  If you put a substantial amount of time into something, I think it’s worth considering whether there’s an easy way to summarize what you learned or repurpose your work for the EA Forum.

  I find that repurposing existing work is quick to write up because I already know what I want to say. I recently wrote a summary of what I learned applying to policy schools, and I linked to the essays I used to apply. The process of writing this up took me about three hours, and I think the post would have saved me about five hours had I read it before applying. And I’m just one reader!

  I get the sense that there are a lot of Forum readers who don’t vote or comment on posts, but still get value from what they read. Benefits from Forum posts are diffuse, and I think authors can find it difficult to internalize the full social value of their writing. I also expect that the residual value of certain posts (e.g., those with timeless, original, practical advice) may be underrated. I’ve been sending this post (and its previous iteration) to friends for years, and I’m pretty confident that next year it will still be my favorite piece of writing encouraging perseverance in pursuit of impactful work.

  I find it handy to be able to send a bunch of people a link, rather than having the same conversation multiple times. For example:

  • I’ve sent the “writing about my job” posts I’ve written to a couple hundred jobseekers who’ve reached out about an informational call. I think this helped make the time we spent on the phone much more productive.
    

  • I sent an information-dense post I wrote about high-value ways to help loved ones with their finances to a few hundred people in my life. If one person takes action to augment a family member’s finances due to the post, the post will have been worth writing.
    

  Finally, it feels really cool to have a collection of your writing out in the world! EA is a pretty tight-knit professional community, and putting your writing out there can be a great way to build a reputation.^[1]

  1. ^

     I feel unabashedly proud when someone I meet asks “wait, are you the guy from the sportsbetting post?”

Policy school can be a re­ally good deal. The case for go­ing and tips for applying

• Sam Anschell 4 Apr 2025 0:30 UTC

  15 points

  7 ∶ 0

  on: Three Or­ga­niz­ers Walk Into a Liberal Arts College

  Woah, huge congratulations on getting 80 pledges! That’s a really incredible achievement—I hope you all feel proud :)

  I would guess that established uni groups at big schools don’t get 80 pledges per year; you might consider reaching out to GWWC (community@givingwhatwecan.org) to brainstorm how to make the most of this momentum.

  I don’t have experience in student group organizing (not starting an EA group at my college is my biggest regret in life), but I’d recommend looking into whether your campus career center is open to co-hosting events and working with students on applying to high-impact roles.

  At the liberal arts school I went to, events hosted by the career center tended to be pretty well-attended. Plus, you can lean on the job boards from 80k, Probably Good, and Animal Advocacy Careers to direct students to real world opportunities.

  Another idea is to look into whether you can teach a student forum about EA for college credit! It really lowers the bar for students to commit to weekly meetings/​readings if they can substitute it for another class.
  
  And if students in your club are ever interested in talking to someone about entry-level operations or grantmaking work, I’m always excited to call!

• Sam Anschell 16 Mar 2025 1:14 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: sawyer🔸’s comment on: Con­sider haggling

  Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Sawyer. I agree that haggling can be zero sum in many (though not all) cases, and I understand the sentiment of your note.

  In my personal experience, haggling hasn’t felt particularly adversarial or deceptive. It feels less like the Pawn Stars guy ripping off antiquers, and more like marketing, campaign finance, professional poker, standardized test prep, quant trading, or another type of legal and socially acceptable form of working for a bigger piece of a fixed pie.

  I think Robi raises a good point. Despite transaction costs, I would guess that haggling creates societal surplus on net by enabling more trades. In much (maybe most) of the world, haggling for daily goods is common; I’ve been a fly on the wall at outdoor markets in a handful of LMICs, and my impression is that haggling helps customers and vendors send valuable signals about their willingness to buy/​sell.

  This isn’t exactly getting at what you wrote, but I feel uncomfortable negotiating when my counterparty seems like they need the money. E.g., if a taxi driver in another country quotes a “tourist” price where it’s pretty clear that locals would haggle and I’m (literally) getting taken for a ride, I pay sticker.

  When it comes to contracts with a San Francisco landlord, a big university, or DocuSign, I feel motivated to haggle. Not because I see my counterparty as “the bad guy”, but because haggling is a standard practice following social norms that helps me direct more resources to important projects making the world a better place.

Con­sider haggling

• Sam Anschell 13 Sep 2024 0:39 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Javier Prieto🔸’s comment on: Giv Effek­tivt (DK) need ~110 more mem­bers to be able to offer tax de­duc­tions of around $66.000)

  I also got an error when I tried a credit card, but my debit card (Bank of America) went through on the first try.

• Sam Anschell 13 Sep 2024 0:38 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vesa Hautala’s comment on: Giv Effek­tivt (DK) need ~110 more mem­bers to be able to offer tax de­duc­tions of around $66.000)

  Fwiw I was able to sign up by using the nine digit alphanumeric code on my German passport.
  
  Thanks for trying, fingers crossed you’re able to join—signing up seems high leverage!

• Sam Anschell 22 Aug 2024 21:46 UTC

  19 points

  5 ∶ 2

  on: How do you deal with the “meat eater” problem

  Hi Sammy, I’ve also found the meat eater problem compelling/​distressing. One idea that gives me peace is an “offsetting” argument—that the most effective animal welfare charities use resources remarkably well. I’ve seen estimates online that the average American eats 7,000 animals over the course of their life (98.5% of which are fish and chicken). My intuition is that the average recipient of a GiveWell-recommended program eats slightly fewer animals, though I could be wrong.
  

  The Humane League claims to be able to be able to spare a hen from the life of extreme confinement for just $2.63, and the Fish Welfare Initiative claims to be able to help a fish live in lower stocking density, higher water quality environments for just $1. Altogether, this suggests that donating ~$11,000 to cost-effective farmed animal welfare organizations mitigates a substantial amount of the harm that a meat-eater might cause (consuming 4500 fish and 2400 chickens). So a portfolio of global health and animal welfare donations seems likely to do good across both worldviews.

  
  A few other scattered thoughts:

  • Saving human lives doesn’t just contribute to the problem of animal consumption, I hope it it also accelerates the solutions to factory farming.

  • The extent to which averting a death of a child under 5 (which GiveWell programs primarily target) increases total global population is unclear to me. Families that lose a child may be more inclined to have another baby than families that don’t. My guess is that lifesaving GiveWell-style charities do increase population in the short term, but not by one full person per life saved.

  • I would recommend this blog on the idea of a “moral parliament”, which I think can be an interesting thought exercise for resolving tensions like this. Rethink Priorities also has a cool tool for this idea.
    

  I know this may not be fully satisfying, and this isn’t a strong argument against using your resources to go all in on animal welfare (which I think is a great thing to do), but I hope it might be helpful.

  What links here?

  • Karthik Tadepalli's comment on GiveWell may have made 1 billion dol­lars of harm­ful grants, and Am­bi­tious Im­pact in­cu­bated 8 harm­ful or­gani­sa­tions via in­creas­ing fac­tory-farm­ing? by Vasco Grilo🔸 (22 Dec 2024 23:11 UTC; 6 points)
  • Vasco Grilo🔸's comment on GiveWell may have made 1 billion dol­lars of harm­ful grants, and Am­bi­tious Im­pact in­cu­bated 8 harm­ful or­gani­sa­tions via in­creas­ing fac­tory-farm­ing? by Vasco Grilo🔸 (23 Dec 2024 0:09 UTC; 1 point)

• Sam Anschell 2 Jul 2024 22:39 UTC

  34 points

  11 ∶ 0

  on: Cen­ter for Effec­tive Aid Policy has shut down

  Mathias, I hope you feel proud of what you did at CEAP. I have a lot of respect for the thought and effort you put into this project, and I thought your decisionmaking was well-reasoned throughout. A number of people in the field and at CE have told me they feel the same way.

  Running an organization with such a broad remit and weak feedback loops is a challenge. Doing so by yourself with waning morale is an uphill battle. You were in a tough position and I thought you handled it well. And as Jason wrote, you may have had more success developing Dutch, Danish, and British champions than you know.

  I’m looking forward to following what you do next :)

• Sam Anschell 20 Jun 2024 20:40 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Adam Berman’s comment on: Helping loved ones with their fi­nances: the why and how of an un­usu­ally im­pact­ful op­por­tu­nity

  Interesting! Thanks for adding this.

• Sam Anschell 21 May 2024 20:47 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David M’s comment on: Helping loved ones with their fi­nances: the why and how of an un­usu­ally im­pact­ful op­por­tu­nity

  Thanks for asking, and I want to caveat again that this is not intended as financial advice.
  
  Unfortunately I think relatively little of this material would be relevant outside the US. The section on finding fee-for-service financial professionals is probably helpful across borders, but the rest of the post is based on US tax laws.

Helping loved ones with their fi­nances: the why and how of an un­usu­ally im­pact­ful op­por­tu­nity

• Sam Anschell 18 Apr 2024 3:36 UTC

  34 points

  6 ∶ 0

  on: How good it is to donate and how hard it is to get a job

  Thanks for writing this, Elijah. I agree that it’s really difficult to get an “EA job” (it took me five years). I wish this felt more normalized, and that there was better scoped advice on what EA jobseekers should do. I wrote about this last year and included a section on ways to contribute directly to EA projects even without an EA job. I’d also recommend Aaron Gertler’s post on recovering from EA job rejection, probably my favorite ever EA Forum post.

  On Aaron Bergman’s comment about finding a higher paying role, certain tipped positions can be surprisingly lucrative and require very little training. Dealing poker pays $40-60/​hour (tips + min wage) in the Seattle area, and I’ve heard that some high stakes baccarat dealing jobs in the greater Seattle area pay $200-400k/​year (also tips + min wage) for 40 hour weeks. I imagine bartending jobs at pricey/​busy bars would be a similar story, as would waiting tables at expensive restaurants (perhaps an upscale vegetarian/​vegan spot).

  You may find that substitute teaching and working special education students is more fulfilling than these types of jobs; I think it was a great decision to withdraw your application from a job that may have triggered loneliness-induced depression. You shouldn’t feel compelled to take a job you’ll dislike in order to give more, but hopefully there are small steps you can take to grow your lifetime impact without sacrificing your happiness. Some ideas could be:

  • Looking at higher education, certifications, coding bootcamps, training programs or apprenticeships to have a better shot at more lucrative or impactful work.

    • It may be tough to afford the fees or time off work right now. If so, consider investing in yourself by saving up some money you would have donated. In expectation, you’ll be able to help more animals in the long run by doing so.
      

  • Reaching out to Probably Good or 80,000 hours for careers advising. It’s completely OK if this doesn’t lead to a career call, it’s still a good idea to apply in expectation.
    

  • Talking to friends and family who have jobs or connections to jobs you would be interested in and seeing what they’d recommend.

  You might set a goal of making a little progress each month, be that applying to a few jobs, asking for advice from other EAs, or getting closer to a new skill or credential, as an intermediate step to growing the impact you’ll be able to have five years from now. If you want someone to spitball with to kick things off, I’m happy to be that person https://​​calendly.com/​​sam-anschell/​​30min

  Careers are long, and the impact one can have at the beginning of their career is usually a rounding error compared to what they can do later in their career anyway. I hope you remain ambitious about the difference you can make for animals, and proud of the good you’ve already done :)

Writ­ing about my job on Open Philan­thropy’s Global Aid Policy pro­gram + re­lated ca­reer opportunities

• Sam Anschell 31 Mar 2023 20:37 UTC

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: tylermjohn’s comment on: What’s sur­prised me as an en­try-level gen­er­al­ist at Open Phil & my recom­men­da­tions to early ca­reer professionals

  Thank you for this thoughtful comment, Tyler—I appreciate your perspective and I think it will help readers improve their decision-making.

  On point 1: I suspect this is less true for entry level roles, especially those that don’t specify an advanced degree or technical skill requirement. But it’s valuable to know that this was your experience when reviewing applications, and this updates my opinion.

  On point 2: I agree there are more early career EAs looking for EA jobs than entry level EA job openings at any given time, but I disagree with the conclusion that early career EAs should apply to fewer EA jobs.

  • It seems hard to get the same level of mentorship, relevant skills, at most “non-EA” orgs. If you’re working as e.g. an SWE for FAANG, your employer’s incentives are to invest in your professional development insofar as that increases your productivity and job satisfaction (for retention). If you’re working as e.g. a researcher for the Center for Global Development, your employer’s incentives are to invest in your professional development to maximize your lifetime impact on your & CGD’s shared mission (agnostic as to whether you achieve that impact while working at CGD or elsewhere).
    

  • You might be a great culture fit, or have a particularly relevant background that headhunters or EA orgs wouldn’t know about unless you actively apply.
    

  • Of the current entry level roles on 80k’s job board, there are a pretty diverse array of functions. I agree that applying to all 224 wouldn’t be a good use of time, but regularly checking back in and applying to promising leads seems like a good idea to me (especially keeping an eye out for jobs matching any specialized background/​knowledge base you might have, like in policy, academia, development economics, ML, infectious disease, etc.)
    
    I personally made the mistake of applying to a bunch of stuff all at once, feeling disappointed about not getting anything, and giving up until I felt motivated to apply again later. I think I should have applied consistently and internalized that the EV of an application working out (in my opinion) makes the application process worth it.
    
    The post and this comment each have the tacit asterisk that individuals’ situations are unique, and that I’d be excited for the hypothetical average early-career reader to apply for more EA jobs/​get more involved with EA projects on the margin. Some people don’t have the time/​financial runway to apply for lots of jobs or volunteer for EA projects, and I hope my advice isn’t perceived as one-size-fits-all.

  On point 3: Couldn’t agree more :)

  I know 80k used to recommend careers in management consulting pretty strongly for skill development, and these days my read is that they’re starting to recommend more “direct work” roles right away. I’d love to learn 80k’s current view, and I would recommend that a reader weight the perspectives of the professionals (those with recruiting/​hiring experience like Tyler, and those who research the EA job landscape like 80k) much stronger than my perspective when deciding what makes most sense for their personal career circumstances.

What’s sur­prised me as an en­try-level gen­er­al­ist at Open Phil & my recom­men­da­tions to early ca­reer professionals

• Sam Anschell 17 Jun 2022 2:35 UTC

  11 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Tyler Smith’s comment on: An Es­ti­mated $4 – $7 Billion in Match­ing Gift Funds Goes Un­claimed Per Year

  I love the spirit of this post and I agree with almost everything Charles said. My only difference of opinion is that I don’t think people are taxed on gift income, so long as a giver provides under $16,000 in a year to any single individual and under $12.06MM in their lifetime. Letting participants keep the tax savings could be a polite way to compensate them for their involvement without dampening their altruistic glow.

  I’d be excited by a project that explored surrogate donation from employees of these companies to multiply the impact of our giving. I expect the cap on Meta’s Giving Tuesday match will barely scratch the surface of EAs’ personal donations this year. My preliminary thoughts to scale this idea would be:

  • Learn the fine print of the programs. Some employers explicitly disallow donating money that is given to an employee for this purpose.

  • Try to form a nuanced understanding of the long term incidence of doing this. I imagine many companies would discontinue or scale back their charity benefits if it was exploited in this way.
    I suspect that it would still be net good because of which charities would get bonus funding, but companies price in the fact that most employees don’t utilize donation matching & I suspect they would adjust their offering if it were used more.

  • Focus on employees of companies with the most generous matches first. Possibly establish a fund where EAs could pool their money and funnel them through each surrogate donor to max out the donor’s gift cap.
    

  I want to reiterate what Charles said about disassociating this from EA, and I recommend speaking to a(t least one) lawyer before making any moves. This feels like the type of ends-justifying-means action that is righteous in intent, but underhanded in public appearance.

  
  Feel free to reply here or PM me if you’d like to flesh this out. I think it’s a great idea, thanks for sharing!

  What links here?

  • Helping loved ones with their fi­nances: the why and how of an un­usu­ally im­pact­ful op­por­tu­nity by Sam Anschell (21 May 2024 17:34 UTC; 31 points)