I guess my points were a little too obtuse. People with even a handful of these skills get paid a lot more than you’re offering (e.g. school teachers have curriculum design and teaching experience, and generally make much more than $36k/yr). Clearly, stating the salary is “upfront” about the salary, but that wasn’t my complaint. My complaint was that it appears that by offering a well below market salary you’re looking for a fellow traveler/true believer/movement participant who is so highly dedicated to the cause that they are willing to sacrifice a good chunk of their potential earnings to advance SIAI’s goals. If that’s the case, then you should state it directly. If it’s not the case, then another possibility that comes to mind is that you’re hoping to exploit the passion of a young person who feels strongly about the cause but doesn’t realize what they’re worth on the open market.
My concern is that by not stating anything about this obviously (to me) below market salary, you’re leaving your motivations open to serious question. I think it better to lay out some sort of reasoning behind it than to leave it ambiguous.
The motivation is simply that we need help now, that we do not have budget now, that SingInst’s experience suggests that at least some skilled people are willing to work for such money (e.g. me, Carl, Michael Anissimov, Lukeprog), and if rationality org’s efforts are successful we will probably have more money for skilled people in the future.
There are several reasons someone might apply, given that. The ones that spring to my mind are:
This sounds like a fun job where they could learn a lot over the next year. (I’ve learned a huge amount, working here.)
At their present stage in life, they don’t need all that much money. (No kids, etc.; I’ve been living comfortably on the SI standard salary, and am probably happier here than I would be making more money doing something less varied where I didn’t get to learn from the folks here)
Someone may be passionate about rationality education (either for itself, or because they expect it to help with existential risk) (this is the possible reason you list)
Someone may think we have a good chance at creating, over the next year or two, the sort of “rationality org” that could afford to pay people market wages, and may be willing to take a risk for the next couple years in order to be part of that.
However, our current low salaries are not a sneaky attempt to obtain only dedicated idealists; they are just an attempt to launch a rationality training effort with the budget we currently have, making the best use we can of our donors’ dollars. I’m a little confused as to why this caused so much offense. The job is surely not right for some people, such as people who care a lot about present salaries, or who have high current income needs; but we posted the salary so that people could see for themselves whether it might work for them, and so that folks it might be right for could contact us.
Nonprofit salaries are typically lower than salaries for comparable work outside of nonprofits; start-up salaries are typically low with the potential for more later on. Rationality org at the moment is perhaps somewhere in between.
I’m sorry if I came across as overly critical. I had a flashback to the job ad that EY promoted in September of ’10 which came off in a similar way to me (though, clearly, this one has much more detail), and that probably drove the tone of my posts. I’m certainly not offended.
Now, that being said, I’ve noticed that there are a number of young idealists in this community, and I think it would be good if we could help them understand what they’re getting into. We have a responsibility to help the up and coming among us to make good decisions. Making it clear that the SIAI “standard” salary is way under market for skillful people and that applicants should understand the opportunity costs associated with working for a non-profit for a period of time should be part of the job description when it comes a rationalist source to this audience. I presume that EY knows this, and so I attribute the lack of it to something being fishy. If nothing’s fishy, then this discussion let us clear the air.
They’re offering 150% of the average US income during a recession with 9% unemployment as starting salary for a potentially entry-level position doing satisfying creative work for an organization that could actually improve the world. I like money as much as anyone else, and I would fight for this job if I weren’t otherwise engaged. If my hunt for residency positions this summer falls flat, I might still try to fight for it.
There’s no indication that this is entry-level. Also, if you look further on that page, you’ll see that the median full-time employed person over 25 years of age with a Bachelor’s degree in the US makes $56k/yr. My read of the position description leans towards college grads given some of the qualifications that they want. If you look at overall median household incomes in the Bay Area, you’ll see that they top $74k/yr depending on the county of choice. Given the way that full-time vs. part-time seems to skew the data, I still say they’re undershooting for their area of the country.
Don’t sell yourself short. Unless you’re willing to forgo income now for the possibility that the movement needs you now, perhaps it will be better off if you go and make a lot more money with your skills, improve the world through some different work, and give as much of your income as you don’t want or need to SIAI instead.
FWIW, I disagree with bbarth’s assessment of your prospects. SIAI seems to do good things to bright folks like yourself, and I think you’d both benefit from the arrangement.
It’s not a question of SIAI not being good enough for Yvain, it’s a question of whether they might both do even better if he pursues something else. It clearly sounds like he’s pursing a different path than joining SIAI now, so he must have done at least some of the math. He’s in med school according to his webpage, so I suspect his prospects for helping the cause might be higher if he does well as a doctor and sends every dime he doesn’t need (say his salary as a doctor less $36k/yr) to SIAI. It certainly seems like it might be a waste of his current efforts to drop his medical aspirations and become a curriculum producer at SIAI, but I might be suffering from a form of the Sunk Cost Fallacy here.
Thanks to the magic of guilds, all new trainee doctor jobs in the US start on July 1st*. If I don’t get a job by then, I will probably have to wait until next July and find something to occupy me and provide me with money for a year. Hence my comment that I would be interested if my job search fell flat.
Even though it doesn’t look like it sometimes, I do give at least five minutes thought to most of my major life decisions.
*which is why some people have very reasonably argued that you should avoid hospitals at that time of year.
Ooh, my wife was just talking about a large study that apparently did not support this claim (using administrative data, I think). I’ll find out the title when she wakes up and post a link.
Lots of writers and philosophy postgrads get paid less than this. I don’t mean to discourage people with fewer qualifications—a PhD is not required—but we posted a Craigslist ad recently for a different potential position, at a similar salary, and got applications from PhDs with 3 years experience. In any case, we shall see what the market thinks of our offer, and I see no reason for you to take offense at it a priori.
It occurs to me that the qualifications are framed as skills rather than (in some cases) expensive credentials, and this might make a lowish salary make more sense.
I guess my points were a little too obtuse. People with even a handful of these skills get paid a lot more than you’re offering (e.g. school teachers have curriculum design and teaching experience, and generally make much more than $36k/yr). Clearly, stating the salary is “upfront” about the salary, but that wasn’t my complaint. My complaint was that it appears that by offering a well below market salary you’re looking for a fellow traveler/true believer/movement participant who is so highly dedicated to the cause that they are willing to sacrifice a good chunk of their potential earnings to advance SIAI’s goals. If that’s the case, then you should state it directly. If it’s not the case, then another possibility that comes to mind is that you’re hoping to exploit the passion of a young person who feels strongly about the cause but doesn’t realize what they’re worth on the open market.
My concern is that by not stating anything about this obviously (to me) below market salary, you’re leaving your motivations open to serious question. I think it better to lay out some sort of reasoning behind it than to leave it ambiguous.
The motivation is simply that we need help now, that we do not have budget now, that SingInst’s experience suggests that at least some skilled people are willing to work for such money (e.g. me, Carl, Michael Anissimov, Lukeprog), and if rationality org’s efforts are successful we will probably have more money for skilled people in the future.
There are several reasons someone might apply, given that. The ones that spring to my mind are:
This sounds like a fun job where they could learn a lot over the next year. (I’ve learned a huge amount, working here.)
At their present stage in life, they don’t need all that much money. (No kids, etc.; I’ve been living comfortably on the SI standard salary, and am probably happier here than I would be making more money doing something less varied where I didn’t get to learn from the folks here)
Someone may be passionate about rationality education (either for itself, or because they expect it to help with existential risk) (this is the possible reason you list)
Someone may think we have a good chance at creating, over the next year or two, the sort of “rationality org” that could afford to pay people market wages, and may be willing to take a risk for the next couple years in order to be part of that.
However, our current low salaries are not a sneaky attempt to obtain only dedicated idealists; they are just an attempt to launch a rationality training effort with the budget we currently have, making the best use we can of our donors’ dollars. I’m a little confused as to why this caused so much offense. The job is surely not right for some people, such as people who care a lot about present salaries, or who have high current income needs; but we posted the salary so that people could see for themselves whether it might work for them, and so that folks it might be right for could contact us.
Nonprofit salaries are typically lower than salaries for comparable work outside of nonprofits; start-up salaries are typically low with the potential for more later on. Rationality org at the moment is perhaps somewhere in between.
I’m sorry if I came across as overly critical. I had a flashback to the job ad that EY promoted in September of ’10 which came off in a similar way to me (though, clearly, this one has much more detail), and that probably drove the tone of my posts. I’m certainly not offended.
Now, that being said, I’ve noticed that there are a number of young idealists in this community, and I think it would be good if we could help them understand what they’re getting into. We have a responsibility to help the up and coming among us to make good decisions. Making it clear that the SIAI “standard” salary is way under market for skillful people and that applicants should understand the opportunity costs associated with working for a non-profit for a period of time should be part of the job description when it comes a rationalist source to this audience. I presume that EY knows this, and so I attribute the lack of it to something being fishy. If nothing’s fishy, then this discussion let us clear the air.
They’re offering 150% of the average US income during a recession with 9% unemployment as starting salary for a potentially entry-level position doing satisfying creative work for an organization that could actually improve the world. I like money as much as anyone else, and I would fight for this job if I weren’t otherwise engaged. If my hunt for residency positions this summer falls flat, I might still try to fight for it.
There’s no indication that this is entry-level. Also, if you look further on that page, you’ll see that the median full-time employed person over 25 years of age with a Bachelor’s degree in the US makes $56k/yr. My read of the position description leans towards college grads given some of the qualifications that they want. If you look at overall median household incomes in the Bay Area, you’ll see that they top $74k/yr depending on the county of choice. Given the way that full-time vs. part-time seems to skew the data, I still say they’re undershooting for their area of the country.
Don’t sell yourself short. Unless you’re willing to forgo income now for the possibility that the movement needs you now, perhaps it will be better off if you go and make a lot more money with your skills, improve the world through some different work, and give as much of your income as you don’t want or need to SIAI instead.
FWIW, I disagree with bbarth’s assessment of your prospects. SIAI seems to do good things to bright folks like yourself, and I think you’d both benefit from the arrangement.
It’s not a question of SIAI not being good enough for Yvain, it’s a question of whether they might both do even better if he pursues something else. It clearly sounds like he’s pursing a different path than joining SIAI now, so he must have done at least some of the math. He’s in med school according to his webpage, so I suspect his prospects for helping the cause might be higher if he does well as a doctor and sends every dime he doesn’t need (say his salary as a doctor less $36k/yr) to SIAI. It certainly seems like it might be a waste of his current efforts to drop his medical aspirations and become a curriculum producer at SIAI, but I might be suffering from a form of the Sunk Cost Fallacy here.
Thanks to the magic of guilds, all new trainee doctor jobs in the US start on July 1st*. If I don’t get a job by then, I will probably have to wait until next July and find something to occupy me and provide me with money for a year. Hence my comment that I would be interested if my job search fell flat.
Even though it doesn’t look like it sometimes, I do give at least five minutes thought to most of my major life decisions.
*which is why some people have very reasonably argued that you should avoid hospitals at that time of year.
Ooh, my wife was just talking about a large study that apparently did not support this claim (using administrative data, I think). I’ll find out the title when she wakes up and post a link.
Lots of writers and philosophy postgrads get paid less than this. I don’t mean to discourage people with fewer qualifications—a PhD is not required—but we posted a Craigslist ad recently for a different potential position, at a similar salary, and got applications from PhDs with 3 years experience. In any case, we shall see what the market thinks of our offer, and I see no reason for you to take offense at it a priori.
Like I said in response to Anna, I’m not offended. I just think you could have done better in setting expectations.
It occurs to me that the qualifications are framed as skills rather than (in some cases) expensive credentials, and this might make a lowish salary make more sense.