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.
So if I consider that as an Effective Altruist I have some power to judge which use of money is more important, asking for a higher salary seems in a certain way to be asking for more power to judge what is more important.
Of course the rest of the society is not forced to give me more money and I agree that in practice I may have a better use of that money but still theoretically I have the impression that asking for a better salary it is saying that what I do is more important that what others do and that I can judge better than them what we can do we that money.
Personally I don't think that income taxes are is the same that reducing salary inequality. If some one earn 100 times more than another one, he will thinks his work is 100 times more important even if taxes take 50% of it. And he will have the impression to contribute more to the society because of the taxes. If in an other society he does exactly the same job, have exactly the same amount of money to live with, we tell him that half of what he is earning is in deed financed by the society to help him, I don't think he will have the same opinion on the rest of the society.
I have the feeling that if we accept to leave in a society where the salary is more based on our capacity to negotiate it than the work we produce, we accept to raise inefficiency and inequalities in a certain way.
It's a personal feeling but it seems important to me that what we earn in a society is based on the importance of our contribution to that society, which of course is not currently the case. And we have too much well paid jobs that are really harm full to the society.
But of course it is just moral issues, it doesn't prove that the more effective way to improve current society is not to try to earn more in order to give more.