There seems to be a huge blind spot here, dismissed in just one sentence:
I don’t think more money moves the needle for anyone who’s familiar with a cause area but isn’t convinced it’s worth working on or directing resources to.
Of course it moves the needle! That’s how pretty much everything in the world outside direct family and friend relationships gets done.
There isn’t even a category in this article for people who would never donate, but will still do good work for pay. That covers the vast majority of the people who could be working for the organization! It’s a huge blind spot to completely ignore these people who almost certainly make up 99% or more of the talent pool!
The only way it makes sense to just ignore all those people is if the talent pool is so broad and deep that you can afford to just exclude almost all of them, or if the organization is based on some ideology that absolutely requires converts instead of just people who will do good work.
Even among people who think “this organization’s work is worthwhile”, there’s a huge gulf to “I’ll donate much of my disposable income to this specific organization” in the form of being paid below the market rate. An organization that requires the latter is definitely going to get a lot fewer candidates, even among those who think that the organization is doing worthwhile things and would donate to it.
Yeah, that section could probably have benefited from being fleshed out a little bit. Given the numbers you’re proposing I think you’re suggesting that EA orgs could be hiring people that fit the profile “technically qualified candidate who’s either never heard of EA org’s mission or who has and doesn’t find it particularly convincing”. I think I’m operating on a model where EA orgs mostly don’t want to hire people who are explicitly skeptical or unconvinced of the value of their mission, and the question of “is it worth hiring such people rather than spending additional time looking for more aligned employees” is a worthy one but not what I wanted to cover in this post. If we assume the answer is mostly “no” then we can ignore them; if the answer is “yes” then that folds in to widening the top of the funnel under “The not-yet-aware”.
For what its worth I think most EA orgs, at the current stage in their lifecycles, should still be trying to hire people who are strongly mission-aligned, if not necessarily strongly motivated to do direct work otherwise.
It seems like you’re assuming there’s no space between “people who don’t find EA convincing” and “people who find it so convincing they’re willing to donate 30% of their salary”. What about the people who think EA is a good idea but don’t want to donate such a large amount (right now)?
I think I address that group of people under the subheading “Those who are earning enough to give but don’t”—they definitely seem like group that could find more money motivating, on the margin.
There may be a miscommunication here. I interpreted your whole “earning to give” section as meaning people who already turn over a significant fraction of their salary to that specific organization that is considering employing people:
There are many reasons why someone might be earning to give instead of doing direct work, assuming they have the skillset necessary to do the second (or can acquire it).
So now I’m not sure whether you meant people “earning to give in general”, or “earning to give to EA more specifically” or “earning to give to the specific organization that is looking for workers”.
Most likely! To clarify: when I say “earning to give” in this post I generally mean “earning to give to EA organizations”, unless I explicitly specify an organization or domain in context. Of course, I think most people would choose to work for an organization they were donating to if they could meaningfully do direct work for it, rather than some other org (assuming that their choice of donation targets reflects some belief about the relative value of the work that org does), but lots of people would probably still take their second, third, or even tenth choices of orgs to donate to as employers if they were paid market rate.
I don’t think more than a tiny fraction of people would choose to work for an organization they donate to, even if you limit it to those who donate a lot more than most. Perhaps they might with everything else being equal, but everything else is never equal.
Yes, and one of the most salient things that usually isn’t equal is compensation :)
I do cover some other factors that might dissuade someone from doing direct work at an organization that they donate to (or would donate to, if earning to give), but beyond compensation, career capital, inherent interest in that kind of work, and culture fit, what other major factors do you foresee being a downside?
In my case if I wanted to work for the organization to which I have donated most, I would have to move a very significant distance and either waste 100+ minutes per day commuting or pay more than double house prices or rent. Others might also have family commitments, schools, etc to deal with.
I think this is covered under “Maintaining their present lifestyle”. The framing of your top-level post led me to think we were discussing those who who didn’t have hard physical constraints (such as not living in the same state) preventing them from working for a given org.
The context of this sub-thread has drifted greatly from the top-level comment, to the point where here we’re talking about the directly opposite class of people. I was originally talking about people who would work for an organization but not donate, but we’ve drifted into talking about people who would donate but are unlikely to work for.
It’s still relevant, since one of the things that could compensate for a less desireable change in life circumstances would be a sufficient amount of monetary incentive.
There seems to be a huge blind spot here, dismissed in just one sentence:
Of course it moves the needle! That’s how pretty much everything in the world outside direct family and friend relationships gets done.
There isn’t even a category in this article for people who would never donate, but will still do good work for pay. That covers the vast majority of the people who could be working for the organization! It’s a huge blind spot to completely ignore these people who almost certainly make up 99% or more of the talent pool!
The only way it makes sense to just ignore all those people is if the talent pool is so broad and deep that you can afford to just exclude almost all of them, or if the organization is based on some ideology that absolutely requires converts instead of just people who will do good work.
Even among people who think “this organization’s work is worthwhile”, there’s a huge gulf to “I’ll donate much of my disposable income to this specific organization” in the form of being paid below the market rate. An organization that requires the latter is definitely going to get a lot fewer candidates, even among those who think that the organization is doing worthwhile things and would donate to it.
Yeah, that section could probably have benefited from being fleshed out a little bit. Given the numbers you’re proposing I think you’re suggesting that EA orgs could be hiring people that fit the profile “technically qualified candidate who’s either never heard of EA org’s mission or who has and doesn’t find it particularly convincing”. I think I’m operating on a model where EA orgs mostly don’t want to hire people who are explicitly skeptical or unconvinced of the value of their mission, and the question of “is it worth hiring such people rather than spending additional time looking for more aligned employees” is a worthy one but not what I wanted to cover in this post. If we assume the answer is mostly “no” then we can ignore them; if the answer is “yes” then that folds in to widening the top of the funnel under “The not-yet-aware”.
For what its worth I think most EA orgs, at the current stage in their lifecycles, should still be trying to hire people who are strongly mission-aligned, if not necessarily strongly motivated to do direct work otherwise.
It seems like you’re assuming there’s no space between “people who don’t find EA convincing” and “people who find it so convincing they’re willing to donate 30% of their salary”. What about the people who think EA is a good idea but don’t want to donate such a large amount (right now)?
I think I address that group of people under the subheading “Those who are earning enough to give but don’t”—they definitely seem like group that could find more money motivating, on the margin.
There may be a miscommunication here. I interpreted your whole “earning to give” section as meaning people who already turn over a significant fraction of their salary to that specific organization that is considering employing people:
So now I’m not sure whether you meant people “earning to give in general”, or “earning to give to EA more specifically” or “earning to give to the specific organization that is looking for workers”.
Most likely! To clarify: when I say “earning to give” in this post I generally mean “earning to give to EA organizations”, unless I explicitly specify an organization or domain in context. Of course, I think most people would choose to work for an organization they were donating to if they could meaningfully do direct work for it, rather than some other org (assuming that their choice of donation targets reflects some belief about the relative value of the work that org does), but lots of people would probably still take their second, third, or even tenth choices of orgs to donate to as employers if they were paid market rate.
I don’t think more than a tiny fraction of people would choose to work for an organization they donate to, even if you limit it to those who donate a lot more than most. Perhaps they might with everything else being equal, but everything else is never equal.
Yes, and one of the most salient things that usually isn’t equal is compensation :)
I do cover some other factors that might dissuade someone from doing direct work at an organization that they donate to (or would donate to, if earning to give), but beyond compensation, career capital, inherent interest in that kind of work, and culture fit, what other major factors do you foresee being a downside?
In my case if I wanted to work for the organization to which I have donated most, I would have to move a very significant distance and either waste 100+ minutes per day commuting or pay more than double house prices or rent. Others might also have family commitments, schools, etc to deal with.
I think this is covered under “Maintaining their present lifestyle”. The framing of your top-level post led me to think we were discussing those who who didn’t have hard physical constraints (such as not living in the same state) preventing them from working for a given org.
The context of this sub-thread has drifted greatly from the top-level comment, to the point where here we’re talking about the directly opposite class of people. I was originally talking about people who would work for an organization but not donate, but we’ve drifted into talking about people who would donate but are unlikely to work for.
It’s still relevant, since one of the things that could compensate for a less desireable change in life circumstances would be a sufficient amount of monetary incentive.