{"items": [{"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890142724722", "anchor": "fb-890142724722", "service": "fb", "text": "\"My impression is salary (\"I'm pretty altruistic, but I'm not altruistic enough to do the equivalent of donating 75%\") is currently a common reason for going into earning to give.\"
One problem with raising salaries to attract people who care more about cash, is disgruntlement on the part of those more willing to forego cash. Say you have 10 employees working below market rates as an in-kind donation, and then you hire one marginal person at market rates. It can often be the case that pressures to raise salaries for the existing employees will cost more than the gains from the new employee, unless you are making a lot of such hires and shifting the whole organization.
Low salaries are also a signal of dedication for donors (indicating value alignment), and make donation look more cost-effective. If the below-market staff would otherwise do top-notch altruistic things this is a donor illusion ( http://blog.givewell.org/.../why-you-shouldnt-let.../ ), but if you have staff who like the work a lot (relative to donation or other fields) and so take lower salaries that can represent actual room for gains from trade.
These factors in the donor-organization-employee system can make spending more and raising salaries a net loser where it would otherwise be a gain.
\"For example, imagine each organization has a guideline for its staff in the form of \"be willing to spend $X to save yourself 1hr\". I'm very curious where organizations would put this division.\"
Probably low in many cases, but there are a lot of frictions and issues with fixing that.
[CoI notice: I have worked for and consult for several EA orgs, not speaking for any of them.]", "timestamp": "1501092825"}, {"author": "Elizabeth", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890142724722&reply_comment_id=890383302602", "anchor": "fb-890142724722_890383302602", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It seems like this is easy to address by using contractors/consultants, outsourcing all of a given type of work (so no one's comparing their salary to the consultant), work no one wants to do (e.g. janitorial work), and work that is sped up by specialized expertise such that using a motivated generalist is not necessarily a savings. I think Jeff's example of organizing EAG is a good one.", "timestamp": "1501172811"}, {"author": "Alex", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890142724722&reply_comment_id=890844957442", "anchor": "fb-890142724722_890844957442", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Also worth noting from my experience hiring for startups: interviewing is really hard, plenty of research suggesting humans are terrible at it so hopefully that's not controversial, can look up refs if useful, so - you end up harnessing every well correlating filter you can find. One big target is often to hire 'missionaries rather than mercenaries' i.e. Genuine passion for the project and its goals over other factors that might lead to judgement issues, misincentives, lost productivity or a reduction in team moral.
Asking people to take a financial hit is, often, an excccellent filter to this end.
This said I'm generally pro paying better to get better people - I must say in startups though I haven't seen so much a correlation between quality or hire and their salaries as I have between team culture, mission and ability of the leader.", "timestamp": "1501365356"}, {"author": "Carl", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890142744682", "anchor": "fb-890142744682", "service": "fb", "text": "Past discussion:
http://lesswrong.com/.../on_the_concept_of.../
https://concepts.effectivealtruism.org/.../talent.../
https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/.../self-fulfilling.../", "timestamp": "1501092852"}, {"author": "Ajeya", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890302629272", "anchor": "fb-890302629272", "service": "fb", "text": "Sometimes there are people willing to pay market rates for some sort of service, it just happens to require both a high degree of trust/value alignment AND rare, difficult skills. Then you might just have to wait until an EA gets those skills or someone who does develops enough motivation to do it well.", "timestamp": "1501139453"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890302629272&reply_comment_id=890350762812", "anchor": "fb-890302629272_890350762812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I agree, but I also think there are a lot of tasks that don't require this that are currently not things I think we generally hire non-EAs for: proofreading, hr, most of the EA Global organizing work", "timestamp": "1501161748"}, {"author": "Sasha", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772", "anchor": "fb-890478027772", "service": "fb", "text": "Another way of transmuting money into talent is just to pay for more training courses for people who can't afford them (or who you could at least establish would be deterred from taking them by the cost).", "timestamp": "1501200613"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890482498812", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890482498812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Are there many EAs blocked on training?
This seems like something one could apply for an EA grant for", "timestamp": "1501202257"}, {"author": "Kirsten", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890544469622", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890544469622", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Only the top ~10% of grant applicants were interviewed and fewer were (are going to be?) given grants (allegedly due to staff constraints). Seems like an ineffective way to pay for eg short training courses", "timestamp": "1501231994"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890560766962", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890560766962", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Kirsten: could you give an example of the kind of training course you're thinking of?", "timestamp": "1501240340"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890575911612", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890575911612", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff, I think maybe you meant to direct that question at Sasha rather than Kirsten?", "timestamp": "1501246537"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890582772862", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890582772862", "service": "fb", "text": "→ David: I asked Kirsten because of the addition of \"short\", though reading back it was a silly question, sorry!", "timestamp": "1501249333"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890582877652", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890582877652", "service": "fb", "text": "→ @whoever: if you're in favor of paying for training courses, it would be helpful to have a sense of what kind of courses you're thinking of. Programming bootcamps? CPA school? PhD programs?", "timestamp": "1501249379"}, {"author": "Kirsten", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890584569262", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890584569262", "service": "fb", "text": "→ If EA is talent constrained because people are willing to do direct work but don't have the right skills, which is a bunch of assumptions in itself, then it would make sense to train them.
That could be by funding or partially funding postgraduate degrees - it makes sense to regulate that carefully through EA grants.
This could also be by paying for or subsidizing short courses or bootcamps (eg in data science or a specific programming language). Or it could be by providing a stipend for people pursuing unpaid internships (eg for a political party or at a think tank). These are much smaller costs; maybe decisions could be made more quickly by hiring a staff member who just deals with small funding requests on a rolling basis or by getting local groups to disperse training funds.
A several-week process that includes an interview might not be an efficient solution if you're already very talent constrained and not money constrained.", "timestamp": "1501250172"}, {"author": "Kirsten", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890585347702", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890585347702", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I guess a more useful question would be \"Why is EA talent constrained?\"", "timestamp": "1501250387"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890587044302", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890587044302", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I think the talent constraint looks less like \"we need people who can do X, which is taught in course Y\" and more like \"we need people who can do Z, which we have no idea how to train\".
Things like, \"consistently makes good decisions given incomplete information\" or \"notices small things before the become big problems\".
I also think there are a bunch that we do know how people learn, but that you learn through experience and not training. For example, I think more management capacity is a strong limiting factor, and so EAs getting management experience in non-EA settings could be pretty useful. Though I don't know how much it's \"learning how to be a good manager\" vs \"figuring out if this person has the right inclinations to be a good manager\". I'm also not sure if the situations where it's relatively easy to get into a management position are ones that give you the kind of practice that's useful for managing people at an EA org.", "timestamp": "1501250806"}, {"author": "Sasha", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=890618082102", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_890618082102", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff, that makes sense is *all* talent constraints are of that nature, but that doesn't seem to be true. I read somewhere a lot of EA orgs are struggling to find web developers for eg.
Re 'consistently makes good decisions given incomplete information' - statisticians seem to be substantially better at this than average, so I would expect statistics courses to have a decent chance at improving this quality.
'notices small things before the become big problems' seems more nebulous (perhaps partly because it's somewhat nebulously phrased), but I would expect certain things like sleep quality to improve this strongly, and there are numerous ways to buy sleep quality.
You could also pay for someone to research what the main adjustable causal factors for these qualities are, and if they're not super-talented, you could pay for two people to do it.
In general, I feel like enough money can always buy talent and enough talent can always generate money. It's difficult to know the relative efficiency of either path (let's pay someone to find out!), but if the EA movement claims that it can't substantially benefit from more funding I think it's doing something seriously wrong.", "timestamp": "1501263985"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=894685875212", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_894685875212", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sasha: \"a lot of EA orgs are struggling to find web developers for example\"
\"Web developers\" seem well within the category of jobs where you should be able to hire non-EAs or contract the work, and so seems like one where money should be pretty applicable?", "timestamp": "1503005453"}, {"author": "Sasha", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890478027772&reply_comment_id=894694557812", "anchor": "fb-890478027772_894694557812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Web developers are possibly the staff of whom it's truest (though it also seems to be a cultural thing - my org were a lot more willing to hire me than a developer of similar skills without an EA background), but I think pretty much all EA jobs except academic researchers are in the category (and I'm not sure of their exclusion). With more money you can hire better managers, and sufficiently good ones wouldn't necessarily have to be more than vaguely sympathetic to EA to do their job well.
It's also a question of ratio. Developer training is fairly cheap and as an EA I was willing to work for less than other developers with the same level of competence might have been - so had I not existed, the optimal route might have been to pay one of their existing staff to go to a development bootcamp. Plenty of short managerial (for eg) courses exist, so a number of people must think they provide something of use.
If you don't think training in some particular skill is reliable enough to make it worth gambling on individuals, you might achieve a similar effect by funding a course, to spread the risk.", "timestamp": "1503007967"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402", "anchor": "fb-890575517402", "service": "fb", "text": "Peter says that EA grants \"turned down a lot of great proposals\". I don't know how he knows that, but if it's true it would seem like another example of how EA could be spending more money.
https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/888642725732...", "timestamp": "1501246250"}, {"author": "Kirsten", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402&reply_comment_id=890578172082", "anchor": "fb-890575517402_890578172082", "service": "fb", "text": "→ They've said they turned them down because of staff time constraints eg for interviewing projects rather than funding constraints", "timestamp": "1501247352"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402&reply_comment_id=890578730962", "anchor": "fb-890575517402_890578730962", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Oh, thanks. I guess it's not an example then!", "timestamp": "1501247581"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402&reply_comment_id=890605532252", "anchor": "fb-890575517402_890605532252", "service": "fb", "text": "→ David Chudzicki The projects are still not funded, though, so I guess there's still a connect-these-people-with-money bottleneck there.", "timestamp": "1501258855"}, {"author": "Sasha", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402&reply_comment_id=890616914442", "anchor": "fb-890575517402_890616914442", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sounds like they need to pay for more staff...", "timestamp": "1501263470"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402&reply_comment_id=890654269582", "anchor": "fb-890575517402_890654269582", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Sasha But is the staff constraint for fixing funding constraints itself the result of a talent constraint, a funding constraint, or yet a higher level talent constraint on resolving funding constraints?", "timestamp": "1501277646"}, {"author": "Roxanne", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/890131716782?comment_id=890575517402&reply_comment_id=890872147952", "anchor": "fb-890575517402_890872147952", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm working on EA Grants. We'll be publishing something on this topic shortly.", "timestamp": "1501377446"}]}