Median household (not personal) income in the bay area is well under $200,000, so I disagree that $600k is not doing "extremely well".

However, I personally believe that most EA executives earning in the mid six figures could easily earn even more if they were to move to the private sector.

Just a note that in 2013, Google's headcount was a little less than 50,000 people, so we are talking about a completely different scale from any EA or EA-adjacent organization. When you are hiring at scale, you can afford to take more risks on any given hire.

Personally I don't think Sam Altman is motivated by money. He just wants to be the one to build it.

I sense that Elon Musk and Dorio Amodei's motivations are more complex than "motivated by money", but I can imagine that the actual dollar amounts are more important to them than to Sma.

TBH my sense is that GiveWell is just being polite.

A perhaps more realistic motivation is that admitting animal suffering into GiveWell's models would implicitly force them to specify moral weights for animals (versus humans), and there is no way to do that without inviting huge controversy leaving at least some groups very upset. Much easier to say "sorry, not our wheelhouse" and effectively set animal weights to zero.

FWIW I agree with this decision (of GiveWell's).

The numbers are definitely high in absolute terms, though I would guess they are low in comparison to what these people could earn in the private sector. The founder-CEO of an investment firm the size of GiveWell would expect to have compensation in the millions.

I think we should be careful not to forget Dan Palotta’s advice. One of the appealing things about earning to give is that nobody will hassle you for making too much money.

Who is to say that Rob Mather doesn't enjoy a shrimp cocktail now and then?

Serving my fellow man has always been a major source of personal meaning for me. I guess that makes me a do-gooder. From late childhood I had already committed myself to giving 10% of my income after taxes, but at a certain point I realized point that actually money is probably one of the greatest things I had to offer was money (and probably the greatest thing I have to offer strangers). I have the luck and privilege of having more money to offer than most, and its decreasing marginal utility means I can help others without making a big sacrifice myself.

I still donate blood, and might donate a kidney someday, but I suspect that when I look back on my life I'll count my cash donations among my proudest accomplishments.

There's not much to disagree with here, but I downvoted this anyway because it feels uncomfortably close to in-group cheerleading.