Switch "watching children" with "working as an assistant" and you'll see why I don't think travel /activity expenses is at all a valuable payment method, even to people who would otherwise enjoy those activities.
Just a note that standard practice on these kinds of jobs is that you get a credit card to make purchases with, and are never using your own money that is later reimbursed.
A big reason for this is the massive mismatch in what money is worth. Employers might think covering a $100 grocery trip until you get reimbursed is not a big deal, but to an employee that might have been their own food money or rent.
The standard answer is you either let your employee borrow your credit card, or you give them their own credit card. You can put a lower limit on it to prot...
This got a lot of upvotes so I want to clarify that this kind of arrangements isn't UNUSUALLY EVIL. Nanny forums are filled with younger nannies or more desperate nannies who get into these jobs only to immediately regret it.
When people ask my opinion about hiring nannies I constantly have to show how things they think are perks (live in, free tickets to go places with the kids) don't actually hold much value as perks. Because it is common for people to hold that misconception.
It is really common for parents and families to offer jobs that DON'T FOLLOW pro...
Also children and sometimes bosses do not understand that sometimes you are off the clock and not working. So children will want your attention and engagement if you are around even when you're "off", and bosses might not respect your time off and ask you to do little tasks or last minute jobs when you aren't working.
If you were away at your own house, then your time off is completely yours, but if you're a live in then they might pull stuff like "Hey could you watch the kids for half an hour so I can run pick up some milk?" and next thing you know they consider your "time off" to be just a suggestion.
I do not think it is necessarily morally wrong to try to find a win win situation where you employ someone who really just has a passion for travel. But I think it is a generally bad idea. That situation tends towards exploitation, and it is hard to see it when you are in your own point of view.
This job also required that a young person just out of college choose to spend over 80% of their "income" on a luxurious travel budget.
Yes, but also there is a similar issue for live in nannies, where a professional live in nannies will not charge that much less hourly even when room and board are provided by the family. (They will charge slightly less) This is because it is not actually fun or nice to live with your bosses, and having a live-in is considered more a perk for the FAMILY than the nanny.
Meanwhile many well-meaning but uninformed bosses think their room is worth a lot of money to the nanny because it is expensive to the family.
For example, I live in the Bay and I would RATHER...
Also children and sometimes bosses do not understand that sometimes you are off the clock and not working. So children will want your attention and engagement if you are around even when you're "off", and bosses might not respect your time off and ask you to do little tasks or last minute jobs when you aren't working.
If you were away at your own house, then your time off is completely yours, but if you're a live in then they might pull stuff like "Hey could you watch the kids for half an hour so I can run pick up some milk?" and next thing you know they consider your "time off" to be just a suggestion.
Agreed. If you're calculating equivalent compensation, you need to apply a steep discount to work-provided perks to adjust for the restrictions. That said, it also makes sense to take into account the benefits of networking/career capital in order to figure out whether the whole deal offered is fair. I'll leave that for others to debate, was just trying to get clarification on your specific point.
Disclaimer: Previously interned remotely at Non-Linear
Can confirm. In the family assistant type professional sphere, travel is generally considered a drawback that needs to be highly compensated in order to do.
I'm a professional nanny and I've also held household management positions. I just want to respond to one specific thing here that I have knowledge about.
It is upsetting to see a "lesson learned" as only hiring people with experience as an assistant, because a professional assistant would absolutely not work with that compensation structure.
It is absolutely the standard in professional assistant type jobs that when traveling with the family, that your travel expenses are NOT part of your compensation.
When traveling for work (including for families that tra...
This got a lot of upvotes so I want to clarify that this kind of arrangements isn't UNUSUALLY EVIL. Nanny forums are filled with younger nannies or more desperate nannies who get into these jobs only to immediately regret it.
When people ask my opinion about hiring nannies I constantly have to show how things they think are perks (live in, free tickets to go places with the kids) don't actually hold much value as perks. Because it is common for people to hold that misconception.
It is really common for parents and families to offer jobs that DON'T FOLLOW pro...
Just wanted to ask a quick question: It sounds like you’re describing the conditions when someone who normally works with a family is asked to come on a trip with them, rather standards terms for nanny’s travelling with digital nomad families? (Which may not be common enough to be a thing).
I guess the reason I’m asking is because those are two quite distinct asks: one is asking you to uproot your normal life, with the nanny still presumably having to pay rent on their usual place.
In contrast, the other ask is looking for people who are keen on a particular lifestyle and who can avoid paying rent altogether.
Anyway, please let me know if I’m wrong here.
In my reading of the post and the appendix, the point Kat seemed to be making was not that professional assistants would be cheaper, but that professional assistants would have a better upfront idea of what they were getting into, and therefore be less likely to retroactively feel that this was a bad decision. This is consistent with the idea that having that upfront idea could also come with demanding higher compensation upfront before entering into the arrangement; what Kat was trying to guard against was regretting it after agreeing to it.
In a section o...
Where do you hire from?
16:58: Elie: College grads who go to top 25 schools
In case you were wondering why people find you elitist.
Take the opportunity! As a girl, it's not that I WANT to take the child, it's that other people rarely step forward, and I think the parents deserve some time to participate.
It's totally not weird for a guy to take the baby. Children are pretty hardy. You're unlikely to break one. Parents are usually pretty expert at calming their kids down, so if something DOES happen, you have a parent right there.
(Note: Currently I'm the nanny to the only child who ever comes to meetups, and I'm fine with being the person responsible for taking THAT SPECIFIC baby for a bit, because I know I'm going to have a much easier time with him than anyone else. My comments are in regards to other instances.)
I would like to see both the rationalist and the EA communities be more welcoming of families. However, at the same time I often dislike when children are present at meetups. (not that I ever express this, since I most emphatically do NOT want to discourage parents)
The biggest reason for this is the gender imbalance of these groups. As a female who is good with children, I know that when a child shows up that I will be the one (and probably the only one) who will be helping to take care of the child, and so missing out on the activity that I actually came there for. OTOH I'm perfectly happy to see children at SCA (medieval recreation) events, where the distribution of responsibility is much more widespread.
I was involved in the initial facebook thread on the topic. At the time, I made less than 30k, didn't ever expect to make much more than $30k (I'm a nanny), and was highly turned off by the conversation.
Two cross-country moves later, I have actually doubled my income, but I still am highly turned off by elitist EA conversations that assume that all the readers are high-potential-earners in their 20s with strong social safety nets.
It would have been much easier to convince me to donate 10% of a $30k income, than to upend my life in order to make some kind of career change.
Given it's history, I'm not surprised that the EA movement is currently primarily non-religious people. But I am surprised that no one has tried talking to/at churches, which could be very useful, if it worked. I would guess that some denominations would be more open to it than others.
...The war on environmental degradation has a powerful new ally: Pope Francis. Prompted by a Joint Workshop of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on sustainability that was convened in May 2014, the Vatican has articul
How can we submit a draft to be published? I don't see a way to send private messages to individuals, and I don't have your email (I had seen a facebook post where you said we could email you drafts). Here's the draft if it's visible to anyone with a link.
FYI: When I log in on my android phone (but not on my chromebook) it sends me to the google search bar page. Then if I navigate back to the forum (but not by hitting the back button) I am logged on.
I totally agree, Michael!
There are also decisions that are: hard, important, you don't have enough information, AND the cost of getting more information is too high. Especially if you did this thought experiment: If I tried to optimize every decisions of a similar level of importance as this one, how much would I actually accomplish?
Even for career decisions, once you've narrowed it down to a handful that meet your criteria, there needs to come a time when you just pick one and run with it. Especially considering that a lot of the information that is very important is also very hard to get (It's hard to know how good of a fit you can be for a job until you've actually done it for a while)
Hi, I'm Erica. I'm a New York nanny (so obviously not EtG :P), and I lean towards poverty reduction and animal activism. I got into EA through the LW/CFAR route, and am relatively active in those communities.
Other interests include: many various styles of dance, self-improvent, community organizing, board games, and trying new things. I recently joined the choir for the local Sunday Assembly, which is an organization that I highly recommend as a welcoming community of people who are into applying reasoning to things, AND doing good.
Thanks for this post, Jess! I agree that these are important issues.
Personally, for uncertainty and decision anxiety, there are a couple of ideas that actually do help me stop that cycle when I think of them:
1. Hard decisions are (usually) the least important- "Do I want to eat or do I want to slam my head against that wall?" is an easy decision because there is a big difference between them. "What should I order off this menu?" is a harder decision because they have almost exact expected payoffs (eating delicious food. Anything on the...
Hard decisions are (usually) the least important
A decision can be hard because the possible outcomes are finely balanced in expected payoff, or because you are quite lacking in knowledge about the possibly outcomes and/or their likelihood. If it's the latter then it can be hard and matter a lot! For effective altruists there can be a bit of both. "Should I buy this pen or this other one? A better pen might help me write more effectively!" is probably the former, but "What career should I choose?" is probably the latter.
Plus, the latt...
Charity ain’t giving people what you wants to give, It’s giving people what they need to get.
-Terry Pratchett, "Hogfather"
This is very valuable to me! Thank you!