Joel Tan🔸
Bio
I run the Centre for Exploratory Altruism Research (CEARCH), a cause prioritization research and grantmaking organization.
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Topic contributions1
Thanks for the thoughts!
(1) I'm in strong agreement with worries over people leaving/disengaging from EA due to applying for a huge number of jobs and getting disillusioned when not landing any. From my conversations with various EAs, this seems a genuine problem, and there are probably structural reasons for this: (a) the current EA job market (demand > supply); and (b) selection effects in terms of who gives advice (by definition, us EA folks at EA organizations giving advice on EA jobs, have been successful in landing a direct EA job, and may underrate the difficulties of doing so).
(2) On whether the average early career EA should try for E2G - I'm not sure about this. It's true that they've been selected for, but they're still fundamentally at a big disadvantage in terms of experience, and I'm seriously worried about a lot of selection into low career-capital but nominally EA roles that disadvantage them later on, both in terms of impact and financial security.
In any case, at EAGx Singapore last weekend, I did a talk to a crowd of mainly these early career EAs on having impact with and without an EA career, and I basically pitched trying for an EA job but also seriously considering impact by effective giving in a non-EA job as a Plan B. I think it's especially relevant for LMIC EAs, who cannot move to the UK/US for high-impact roles (or find it harder to do so).
Hi Alex. It's a great idea to have this AMA! Hopefully it helps raise more awareness of earning to give as a potential path to impact for more people.
Two questions that I'd be keen to get your views on, and which may be of interest to the community:
(1) How do you balance your earning to give/effective giving commitments with your family commitments? (e.g. in my own experience, one's partner may disapprove of or be stressed out by you giving >=10%, and of course with a mortgage/kids things get even tougher)
(2) Would you say currently, the median EA should consider trying some E2G (or at least non-EA work while giving significantly) early on in their career?
The main considerations, as far as I see, relate to: (a) the EA labour market (where currently, demand for jobs outstrip supply - so chances of landing a job are low & counterfactual impact relative to next best hire is small); (b) whether money is the bottleneck for EA (it does seem so, at least for GHD/AW - and importantly, you can't always choose to work at the most effective charities but can choose to donate to them); and (c) miscellaneous issues like financial stability, building career capital, and ability to switch career paths (traditional work in finance/consulting/tech for 1-3 years of E2G seem to be stronger on all three counts, relative to the marginal EA job that a fresh grad is likely to land)
Cheers,
Joel
My own experience, and my sense from talking to other organizations, is that management time is a significant opportunity cost, while the benefit (the work done by the intern) is both highly variable in quality and potentially not that great in expectation - not just because interns may be less experienced, but also because you probably put in fewer resources into the selection process, commensurate to the expected duration, cost and amount of work the intern puts in (all low relative to a full hire).
Some organizations leverage internships better, typically in roles that require time but not a lot of experience/expertise, and that require minimal supervision - but precisely because of that, the internship because less valuable from a talent pipeline perspective (since by definition you already have an existing source of free labour).
I generally agree, and CEARCH uses geomeans for our geographic prioritzation WFMs, but I would also express caution - multiplicative WFM are also more sensitive to errors in individual parameters, so if your data is poor you might prefer the additive model.
Also general comment on geomeans vs normal means - I think of geomeans as useful when you have different estimates of some true value, and the differences reflect methodological differences (vs cases where you are looking to average different estimates that reflect real actual differences, like strength of preference or whatever)
Yep, the idea is more the former. And While GWWC is mainly OP funded, that's not entirely the case (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/a8wijyw45SjwmeLY6/gwwc-is-funding-constrained-and-prefers-broad-base-support), and could expand on the margin with individual donor contributions.
The point isn't specific to GWWC though - rather, I think it's potentially promising that cause-neutral effective giving organizations have the potential to effectively launder GHD dollars into AW dollars, by persuading GHD donors to support GHD effective giving (rather than persuading them to support animals, which is presumably harder).
This is somewhat offtopic, but getting GHD donors to give to GWWC and other GHD-focused effective giving orgs that also fundraise for AW, is effectively turning GHD dollars (from people who are emotionally uninvested in AW) into AW dollars for ACE et al.
And through this method, no appeal to animals is needed.
Intersectoral reallocation of resources doesn't mean an overall increase in demand, and hence even influx of labour and capital into YIMBY-initiated housebuilding won't cause higher inflation economy-wide - if anything, it pushes it down due to expanded supply bringing down rents, and as you note housing is an important part of PCE.
Generally, you would prefer lower interest rates from the perspective of LMICs, because you risk debt crises when high US interest rates intersect with LMIC dollar denominated debts, plus everything from food subsidies to investing in health/education/infrastructure becomes far more difficult.
Hey Ozzie - the MCF runs biannual grant rounds, and this round also seems to have moved less than the average so far (e.g. see the winter 2023 round which moved about 700k and summer 2024 which moved 2m). In general, I would expect the average annual amount moved to be higher than what was granted this time, but Joey would know more than me.
I know a couple of MCF members, and I understand some are "2nd tier" members - they have access to the applications but I'm not sure if they commit to the annual 100k. @Joey ?