It's a super interesting topic, and here are a few things that I was wondering about lately:
1) Trying to base salary ranges on the market is very difficult, e.g., I work in comms, let's say that in London, the average Communications Manager salary is £45,000 - £70,000; however, to work in comms in an EA context, you need a lot of knowledge and context, e.g., being able to understand philosophy, basic economics and organizational landscape, so to be good at EA comms you need at least few years in this context, hence you are not just random comms person from the market, you're context-specific expert. OK, so maybe you want to look at the 80,000 Hours job board, where you can see some AI orgs paying $150,000 for comms jobs, and some animal orgs paying $35,000. Do you just take the average of that? :) I am very curious about how one can make a decision on this part of the framework.
2) In the formula itself, let's say we have location-based salaries, so, e.g., if I live in London, I earn less than if I were living in a small town in Poland. But then, let's say I don't come from a wealthy background, and by moving to a small city, I could save some money to secure my retirement. Should I be punished and earn less after the move, or should it be dependent on something else?
3) This leads to an important question: Should salaries in ethical organizations, which are proud of being mostly driven by utilitarian ethics, ignore "needs" in the salary setting? Should a single, unwealthy mother with 3 kids earn the same as a person who is wealthy and has a secure future? Should there be no element of: if you don't have a support network, or wealth, you should get a bit more supportive salary than people who don't need as much? I have no clue how to incorporate this into the formula, but it worries me that we're completely omitting the "needs-based" salary aspect.
On 1 - I guess the most direct way to measure this is candidate quality - e.g. if the ad is attracting candidates you're excited about? But it definitely doesn't feel perfect. I think often organizations have some rough sense of if they are advertising in the right range (now that salary ranges are legally required to be shared in ads in many US states) because they see the ads of peers too.
2. I guess from the organizational perspective, there is another question too — should they pay more for someone who lives in a more expensive city that they don't care about?
3. Yeah, this also feels tricky. I think my view is that organizations (relative to what seems typical) should generally hire fewer people and compensate them more, which would naturally help with this somewhat. I guess it also gets into legal questions at times (e.g. in places where discriminating based on family status, etc. might not be legal)?
1. I still think it's extremely tricky to benchmark salaries in EA, and decide if people should be paid market rates, less or more. Animal orgs tend to pay below market rates, meta orgs pay at market rate or above, and AI orgs have super-inflated salaries. I don't see a clear logic behind those decisions yet.
2. A tricky one, because there are often dependencies - partner job, family, opportunities spectrum if you loose current job.
3. I think legal vs. ethical are hard questions, but probably if we wanted to implement something, we could, via stipends, benefits, etc. It just seems a bit weird not to pay attention to varied circumstances.
It's a super interesting topic, and here are a few things that I was wondering about lately:
1) Trying to base salary ranges on the market is very difficult, e.g., I work in comms, let's say that in London, the average Communications Manager salary is £45,000 - £70,000; however, to work in comms in an EA context, you need a lot of knowledge and context, e.g., being able to understand philosophy, basic economics and organizational landscape, so to be good at EA comms you need at least few years in this context, hence you are not just random comms person from the market, you're context-specific expert. OK, so maybe you want to look at the 80,000 Hours job board, where you can see some AI orgs paying $150,000 for comms jobs, and some animal orgs paying $35,000. Do you just take the average of that? :) I am very curious about how one can make a decision on this part of the framework.
2) In the formula itself, let's say we have location-based salaries, so, e.g., if I live in London, I earn less than if I were living in a small town in Poland. But then, let's say I don't come from a wealthy background, and by moving to a small city, I could save some money to secure my retirement. Should I be punished and earn less after the move, or should it be dependent on something else?
3) This leads to an important question: Should salaries in ethical organizations, which are proud of being mostly driven by utilitarian ethics, ignore "needs" in the salary setting? Should a single, unwealthy mother with 3 kids earn the same as a person who is wealthy and has a secure future? Should there be no element of: if you don't have a support network, or wealth, you should get a bit more supportive salary than people who don't need as much? I have no clue how to incorporate this into the formula, but it worries me that we're completely omitting the "needs-based" salary aspect.
I definitely agree about these being tricky!
On 1 - I guess the most direct way to measure this is candidate quality - e.g. if the ad is attracting candidates you're excited about? But it definitely doesn't feel perfect. I think often organizations have some rough sense of if they are advertising in the right range (now that salary ranges are legally required to be shared in ads in many US states) because they see the ads of peers too.
2. I guess from the organizational perspective, there is another question too — should they pay more for someone who lives in a more expensive city that they don't care about?
3. Yeah, this also feels tricky. I think my view is that organizations (relative to what seems typical) should generally hire fewer people and compensate them more, which would naturally help with this somewhat. I guess it also gets into legal questions at times (e.g. in places where discriminating based on family status, etc. might not be legal)?
1. I still think it's extremely tricky to benchmark salaries in EA, and decide if people should be paid market rates, less or more. Animal orgs tend to pay below market rates, meta orgs pay at market rate or above, and AI orgs have super-inflated salaries. I don't see a clear logic behind those decisions yet.
2. A tricky one, because there are often dependencies - partner job, family, opportunities spectrum if you loose current job.
3. I think legal vs. ethical are hard questions, but probably if we wanted to implement something, we could, via stipends, benefits, etc. It just seems a bit weird not to pay attention to varied circumstances.