Why Altruists Can't Have Nice Things

I think this principle is important, but question using Amazon as a positive counter example, and I think the reasons why are indicative of why this is hard.

My Amazon info is out of date. But back in 2015 I had many friends there, and it was a miserable place to work. The at-desk crying was past its peak, but stupid applications of frugality were so common they had a word for it (frupid).

Highly paid developers were given underpowered laptops that slowed down their work. The savings on the laptops were clearly OOM less than the cost of the developers time (even though Amazon paid less than other bigtech), but they wanted to send a message to employees. They would occasionally spend more money for a worse solution because it signaled frugality, like door desks that cost than real desks.

And that's for highly paid developers. Amazon requires warehouse employees leave all valuables in cubbies rather than bring them on the floor, but won't buy locking lockers for them.

The overwhelming message from Amazon is "fuck you, we will hurt our own interests rather than make your life easier".

Maybe this level of malice is necessary to maintain mission alignment. Maybe it's necessary with programmers spoiled by perks, but not other office staff (my non-programmer friend at Amazon Offices tend to find Amazon no worse than their last employer, maybe better, and with a salary boost that buys a lot of forgiveness). But I do think it's important to track what it takes.

Especially because EA has an ~extractive thread through it. Things like paying only enough to get by, while having a work set up that will require periods of non-payment, such that you have to spend down runway acquired elsewhere. I'd much rather solve this by paying fulfilling salaries, in part to spare us all debates about what counts as a necessary work expense, but it's important the salary be based on demands as a whole and not cherrypicked bits of the demands.

I appreciate this post, thanks for sharing it! 

I disagree with — or feel pretty unsure about — some notable parts/interpretations of the post, and that's what this comment is focused on.^[1]  But I agree with some other parts, especially the specific suggestions for organization-level policies, and really like this point: 

One of the things that I notice about "perks" is that they tend to shift individual lifestyle choices about how to spend your personal money into org-level decisions. I'm advocating for lots of these decisions to stay at the individual level rather than standardizing on them.

I also quite like the suggestion to make "a cultural distinction between "perks" and "business expenses" and the nudge towards transforming some ~perks for employees into services (asking people to pay, and then potentially paying more in salaries). (I should note that I haven't thought about this a lot.)

...

Disagreements with a broad interpretation of the message of the post (something like: "~be more frugal / avoid perks")

This feels like a "reverse any advice you hear" situation, potentially: one in which different people are drawn to different/opposite pitfalls, and advice targeted at some people is counterproductive to others. 

My rough sense is something like: 

1. Biased over-justification of ~luxuries/perks is in fact a problem in EA (or has been) (I'm not sure about the frequency/extent). So some people should hear a message like: "be more suspicious of perks" or "let's be more frugal." 
   • Example reason for this: it's easy for people to tell themselves that something is a productivity boost, etc. 
   • I think the "zooming out" motion (mentioned in the post) is useful to ground our actions in something more real — it's easy to be swept up in grand arguments. 
   • And I worry that people fall prey to fake options or fake tradeoffs in a way that also pushes in this direction  (I remember seeing some good discussion about this, but can't find it right now). 
     • The basic point is that some decisions are framed as a worktime-vs-money tradeoff incorrectly. 
       • E.g. the decision: "should you take an Uber or public transit?" If you take the Uber you'd just have an extra hour but it's not always an extra hour of proper work time and you might be counting it as if it's at least as good as the average hour of your work.
       • (There's also this post on time-time tradeoffs.)
   • (There's a lot more on frugality, including this post, which has some interesting points: Ways Frugality Increases Productivity)
2. But it's also true that the "make time-money tradeoffs deliberately, charity cost-effectiveness is not about overhead, etc." meme has been/can be really helpful in some ways. And different people are on different sides of what seems reasonable on the "how frugal to be" spectrum, so I also think that some people should feel more allowed to accept/offer things that look like perks. 
   • There's a lot of writing about this (including your own :) ), which I assume is part of what's caused EA to have this meme. 
   • But some basic benefits of the mentality/approach might be worth flagging again:
     • Lots of really useful purchases/services feel like "perks" or "luxuries" to some people who instinctively avoid them (or feel like they'll be judged).^[2] It seems quite helpful to nudge some people to get those. Examples, most of which I've used and needed pushing for:
       • Noise-canceling headphones, a travel keyboard/mouse, a better computer than a 4-year-old computer
       • Wifi or an improved office setup
       • Good clothes that make people look more professional if they're in a field that has codes about things
       • Therapy
       • Some paid apps/subscriptions (e.g. Text Blaze, Zapier, ChatGPT, Cold Turkey, OnePassword, SavvyCal, etc.)
     • Stuff like the above is generally approached as a time-money tradeoff, but I think there are also costs to frugality like "someone just doesn't do something that would have been useful because they were blocked by the feeling that it's not frugal" (e.g. going to an event)
     • Other things, like ~recruitment for specific projects, which discussed more elsewhere (e.g. here)

Other thoughts prompted by the post: 

• Salaries
  • My weak impression is that lots of EA positions pay less what the people in them would probably be able to get outside of EA/philanthropy. (These positions also often have many benefits, like nice coworkers, which might be ignored, but still.) I don't know if you're implying (or if you believe) otherwise.
  • In some cases, we have projects/roles where we just want to hire the most qualified person we can, and something like value alignment is not a serious consideration. I think maybe sometimes "how will this affect culture" is not considered enough, but sometimes this probably doesn't matter much. 
  • Childcare and family support are a big deal for some people. (When I personally think about how I am/will be trading personal happiness/comfort and ~impact, this is a big consideration. Related thread, and there are probably others.)
• It seems possible that a culture-first approach to looking at the problems you've listed here would be more productive than a perks-first approach. (I'm unsure, but maybe approaching this from the POV of perks is privileging the question too much; implies that the strategy of how to deal with perks is a key part of creating a healthy culture.)
  • E.g. maybe we'd then discuss stuff like: 
    • How transparent and public to be about mistakes (both in terms of how much employees should do this within the org, and in terms of how much the org should do this)
    • Social relationships among staff, and how they affect things
    • How much should people be doing exclusively work that they like (e.g. because they're likely better at it)? How much of the work should be in a kind of hero mentality? 
    • How can we make sure that we're avoiding motivated reasoning about our projects being effective (what a lot of people tie a lot of feelings and personal status/assessment to) when they aren't
    • How rigid should employees and employers be about work/personal-life boundaries
    • How to encourage people to try high-upside/EV (and no-big-downside-risk) things even if the default option is that the project will mostly look mediocre/like a failure
  • Relatedly: For the "signals you might send instead" section (or how it's presented), maybe it should be clearer that avoiding perks doesn't actually send all the positive signals listed there (please correct me if I've misinterpreted, but my guess is that this is supposed to be something more like an overview of what signals could be good to send)

Again, thanks a bunch for writing this! I appreciated it and the discussion it's sparking. 

1. ^{^}

   I'll stress a few qualities of the post (not an exhaustive list) that I particularly appreciate: the post is generally really thoughtful and nuanced — you communicate uncertainty and you note stuff like "the best ideas are certainly going to be specific to your team or organization's goals and existing culture", I like that the focus is on culture (vs hard-to-fake signals), I love the productive spirit (suggestions!), specific examples, shared lessons from Wave (and potentially even better — sharing uncertainties about Wave), etc.

2. ^{^}

   Here's an older list of "what stops EA-aligned people from spending money on themselves."

I'm confused about what this post is suggesting should be the principle that determines which perks are acceptable and which are not. For example, you say "(We might use money in various ways—to make our work relationships stronger or stave off burnout—but we aren't profligate.)" What counts as profligate here? Everyone already agrees that we shouldn't be profligate, but I take it that this just means that we agree that the benefit of the perk outweighs the cost. Is it ever worth it to pay for a perk in order to save people time? You say that business class flights are never acceptable. What about getting flights that take 5 hours longer in order to save £100?

In the Oxford office, we have a small gym, on-site vegan caterers, snacks, drinks and a nap room. I would guess that you think these are unacceptable perks? Firstly, people in the Oxford office by my observations, work extremely hard, especially relative to the non-profit sector. I don't see much indication that this is leading to a cushy lifestyle and lack of seriousness. Secondly, the nearest gym to the office is about a ten minute cycle, so not having a gym would cost about 2.5 days per person of possible work time (assuming someone goes 3x a week for 45 weeks a year). 

Some of the signals you think that perks send out seem to me to be good or justified. 

• We desperately want to keep you around

This just seems good to me. We do want people to stay around if they are doing a good job. (Whether we want to be desperate is another matter, but this feels a bit like rhetoric to me.) It also just seems like a different way of framing another principle you endorse "We invest a lot in our people and their relationships, and act to preserve that value". 

Then:

• You are free from menial tasks.

One option in EA offices and other offices would be to have the people at EA orgs clean the toilets and the office. These are menial tasks that staff at EA orgs (and other offices workers) are not expected to do. Does this mean we should get rid of our dishwashers? Should people buying new office space not get dishwashers?

• Your time is worth a lot of money

This just seems to be true for a lot of people doing EA work, whether it sounds nice or not, and you yourself explicitly endorse it. I don't know whether you're saying that it is true but we shouldn't say it or signal it, or whether you are conflicted on whether it is true. And it basically seems to follow from the "We're normal people who have chosen to take on especially important work" principle that you endorse. If it's important then our time is worth a lot of money. 

Ultimately, some perks may sometimes not be worth it, but a blanket ban on perks that most people class as 'nice' doesn't seem justified. 

Q: Perks are tax efficient: paying someone $150k plus $50k in perks is more 'take-home value' than straight-up paying them $200k. How should I think about this?

It's a small factor. I don't think you should let tax efficiency override a potentially high-value cultural decision. I would usually rather pay more than offer more perks but I can see the tradeoff going other ways in some situations.

Being more explicit about how this interacts with another downside of perks, where some people will take the perk who don't actually benefit that much from it. A toy example:

• You decide to offer free high-quality coffee ($5/serving)
• Employee A loves this coffee and gets the full benefit
• Employee B isn't picky, and would be very nearly as happy with cheap coffee ($1/serving)

You're spending $10 to effectively give $5 to A and $1 to B tax free. The overall tax rate is about 40% (federal + state + payroll; plausible), so this example is a wash. Real examples can go either way, depending on the costs involved and how many A-like vs B-like people you have.

Thanks for writing this out and distinguishing between workplace perks and personal spending.

This movement is always going to have a cultural clash between the social pressures of class status and the demandingness of charity as explained by philosophers like Parfit, Singer, and Unger. Lifestyle creep is pernicious, and EAs are excellent at rationalizing luxury spending. SBF's billionaire lifestyle is an extreme example.

It seems that many EA orgs are modeling themselves after bay area tech companies which are peculiar elite workplaces with massive compensation packages that tend to wrap around and cater to the employee's entire life. That is not the norm in other high productivity analogous workplaces, like in academia, labs, or non-profits.

I like the proposal of having employees pay for any perks they enjoy beyond what is strictly necessary for job function (computer, workspace, healthcare/retirement in the U.S.). Maybe occasional lunches and a coffee machine. If people think an expensive perk makes them more productive - great! Buy it yourself, and if it really does make you more productive, you'll get rewarded for it at your performance review. It's not hard to have people pay for on site perks.

Most of my experience is in the AI Safety sphere, and for that, I think perks and high salaries are critical. I'd love to see Alignment orgs with more of these things. The issue is we need high talent. And that high talent knows their worth, especially right now. If they can get Business Class working at Meta AI, I'd want to offer them First Class. If you have the money to make it happen, outbidding talent and being a talent attractor is important. Perks signal a job is high status. Retreats in luxurious locations signal high status. High status attracts high talent. I can't ask everyone with great talent to work on safety just out of the goodness of their hearts.

I agreed with most of the beginning of the post, but the specifics of where to cut perks seemed highly context-specific and I think readers should beware that.

For example, in the Bay, a lot of community “perks” like the former Lightcone coworking space are much less perky than they may appear because people live in rented rooms in group houses and don’t have stable jobs. They made the community in the Bay much more possible. High salaries are often a must not only because of high cost of living but to compensate for not offering benefits and low job security.

I guess what I’m saying is let’s not stigmatize the appearance of nice things when there are lots of tradeoffs in different org/community circumstances.

This resonates. As a minor but pretty unambiguous example, I found it uncomfortable that at EAGL there was basically unlimited free wine. That seems like it would have cost enough to save at least a couple of AMF-lives, or allowed a few extra people to attend the conference, or whatever counterfactual seems apt, and it's hard to imagine what version of the 'it marginally improved my productivity' argument would be convincing.

Thanks for this fantastic post I love it!

Even though this has been discussed a reasonable amount., I think there's continuous need for discussion and iteration around topics like perks, salaries and work cultre.

I think on the work retreat front there are so many options which are far cheaper than the bougie hotel one for remote workers that you could explore. Perhaps hire a simple but nice Air B&B for the team near the beach, or find a simple girl guide/boy scout retreat center which can host people really well, and at a fraction of the cost often with nice outdoor and indoor activities around (table tennis/pool/ropes course/river etc.) 

My point of disagreement will be on the salaries which I think should also be lower, but that's kind of aside from the article's main point. I also think (although not sure) I find myself in the minority on that front on the forum here as I seem to take both a karma (which I don't understand) and an agreement (which I do understand) hammering when I mention it ;).. However I LOVE your comment here about salary tradeoffs

"I don't have a strong general opinion about this. The only clearheaded point I can make is that overpaying and underpaying both send powerful signals; sometimes those signals are what you want to be sending and other times they're really not. Carefully consider what you're signalling with your pay structure, e.g., high salaries might say: "everyone is equal" or "we hire only the best" or "we expect you are compromising your values to work here". And low salaries might say: "everyone is equal" or "we're all here because we care so much" or "we don't value your work"."

I also think Greed may habe also been an underrated corrupting force within Effective Altruism within recent scandals, although its difficult to tease out from other forces like lust for power. I might have a go at writing about it soon.

Thanks for writing this! I'm not sure how I'd feel if orgs I worked for went more in this direction, but I did find myself nodding along to a bunch of parts (though not all) of what you wrote.

One thing I'm curious about is you have thoughts on avoiding a "nitpick" culture, where every perk or line item becomes a big discussion among leadership or an org, or the org broadly - that seems to me like a big downside of moving in this direction.

Just because, things I especially liked:

1.

We should try to be especially virtuous whenever we find ourselves setting a moral example for others

(Though sometimes/often I think the excellent thing to model for others is "yes, I am really going to do this weird / not-altruistic-looking thing because it is the right thing to do)

2. Bringing in services to make them convenient but then asking people to pay sounds like a bit of a boondoggle but also really clever - I don't think I'd encountered this kind of compromise before. I'd be interested in more of this form!

Thanks for writing this. It resonated with some of my feelings.

One thing I've noticed about getting a lot of perks is, for some reason, it makes me feel "safe"; in a way that a high salary doesn't. Probably because I would just save most of the high salary, but perks force me to live like a rich person. And therefore, make me feel like a rich person. This, therefore, makes me feel that my job security/life is better/safer than it actually is. I would always prefer cash compensation. Cash doesn't distort my thinking (as much), and it helps me weather possible unemployment. Therefore, I would be much sadder to lose a highly-paid job than a high-perk job. However, feeling rich does have its benefits. It makes me more willing to take risks in my work and behaviour. Another problem with perks is the psychological confusion of seeing so much money being spent by a charity. This wouldn't apply to a for-profit. Also, some perks, like a PA, are a much clearer signal that "we value your time". Other perks, like a super fancy resort, seem morally weird coming from an "EA non-profit". 

I'd be really curious what sort of impact perks have on the cost of an employee at typical EA orgs. Is the difference on the order of 5% or 30% of an employee's salary? I mostly feel like I don't have a sense as to whether cultural / signaling considerations or cost considerations are primary.

I'm specifically confused about business class flights being a no go at your company.

I work for the British civil service. We're not allowed to expense tea or coffee, except if we have an external visitor, or to fly within Britain unless we get special permission - but we are allowed to fly business class if it's a longhaul flight.

I think it's the sleep, or possibly the privacy while working, that tips the scales.

Anyways, surprising difference!

Interesting read. 

I have no clue what typical salaries or perks are in the EA community, and how they compare with similar jobs in similar locations, or how people react to them. So I won't even try to express an opinion on the content itself. But it shows a very healthy self-awareness that this discussion is actually happening! 

Ultimately, for most people, I would imagine the single biggest "perk" of EA work is to be able to work on something they really care about. And the downside to this is that they probably work far harder than they are required to, because they see this as more than just a job. 

 

I made a poll of this post

Poll: https://viewpoints.xyz/polls/why-altruists-cant

Analytics: https://viewpoints.xyz/polls/why-altruists-cant/analytics 

The highest paid/prestige CB role is 100k on the century fellowship is 100k a year and was explicitly made as a prestige shield for community building so I doubt people have "way more lavish lives than the vast majority of Google workers". 

[Deleted this comment. I am confused about why my memory differs so much from what others are saying here and I don't want to look foolish.]