I recently accepted a new software engineering role for which I negotiated a higher salary. I plan on donating much of the increase I negotiated and this made me wonder if a scheme could be set up which offers salary negotiation services in exchange for a pledge to donate some or all of the extra salary to charity.
There seems little to no information on salary negotiation in an earning-to-give context (see https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/ for an exception).
This scheme would have a very low cost with back-of-the-envelope calculations roughly as follows:
- Cost - The only cost for this would be the time of the career coaches. If these coaches are professional (which I suspect would not be the best path), the cost seems to be $130 or so an hour (all that should be needed). This could be reduced with pro-bono work or by volunteering from non-professional coaches (such as previous scheme participants, other EAs in similar roles)
- Benefit - This would need more data to back up, but increases of 10-20% seem feasible. In engineering salaries, this boost could be in the region of $5,000 - $40,000 depending on seniority and location. This benefit would also be compounding, affecting future salaries and income for every year to come (although this may not all end up in donations).
Assuming an average boost of $5000, half of which is donated, this gives us an estimated 1:25 cost-benefit ratio, excluding compounding benefits.
It might also make more sense to provide lower cost materials such as pointers to blog posts, podcasts and books as this might have similar benefits with near zero cost. This might be the best place to start before evaluating the scheme to see if it is worth expanding.
Other things to consider would be how well this translates outside of engineering roles. My strategy worked partly because my role is in high demand in the current market. Other professions might not be as suited to negotiation. However, even if this only suits engineering, this could still prove a useful scheme given how many EA engineers there are.
I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on how they think this scheme would work best. Some questions I have:
- How complex should the scheme be? At the simplest end, a webpage of resources with a feedback survey could work. A more involved approach would involve coordinating/hiring coaches.
- How well does this work across sectors/roles? How does the advice need to be tailored differently for different people?
- Could this have any negative effects? e.g. An aggressive negotiation could result in a retracted offer (unlikely, but conceivable)
- How many (qualified) people would be willing to volunteer some time to offer coaching?
- How would you ensure people stick to their promise to donate and don't just use the advice/time for non-earning-to-give causes.
Hi here,
Sorry I'm new to this forum and to effective altruism so I will probably just raise questions you have seen thousand of times.
Moreover I'm not a native english speaker so I'm not sure all my words will make sense.
Still I think I can benefit from your thoughts or maybe you can point to me some other threads that deals with my questions.
I have the feeling that if I get paid more from the same job, the extra money doesn't appear from nothing. I get it from the community and it means there is less for the others.
And even if I give all this extra money, I will still have benefit through the "pride" of giving more and through the power to choose who I give this money to.
More over if I have some high skilled job, the principle of concurrency will contribute to raise the salary of other people that have the same job, and of people higher in the hierarchy that will want to earn more than me (and that won't necessarily give this money).
I have the impression that if all members of developed country were willing to be effectively altruist, they should lower all their salaries in order to make the currency of all poor countries relatively higher.
Of course it is not a real case and I can understand that, as the number of people trying to be effectively altruist is low, it is more effective to try to earn more, so that we can give more to things that we think are important (like robin hood ?).
I say that because I remember of a documentary that was presenting a hacker to steal money (from honest people) for a living and that was considering he was a good man because he was giving more than half of the money he steals. And that story has disturbed me by making me understand that (earning X + Y and giving Y) or (earning X) for the same job is not the same thing.
So I wonder if there has been some studies or articles about that and that may try to see what percentage of population willing to lower their salaries it would require to have a positive impact.
But maybe my reflections are totally flawed, don't hesitate to correct me where you see I'm wrong.
Thanks a lot for the responses, I agree that giving the same salary to everyone is probably not a good idea, and you are right that if some one pay you higher it's is because he estimate you provide him more value. Of course the interest of the one that pays you may not be correlated to the global interest but I better understand the logical at saying that the best effective way to do good can be to earn as much as we can in order to give more, and it doesn't imply that what we do in our work is necessarily the best for the society in itself.
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