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I guess we have to emphasize "you do not need all of these skills simultaneously" even harder than bolder text. And stating standard salary straight out is upfront.
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.
In response to
POSITION: Design and Write Rationality Curriculum
The salary for this position seems off by a factor of between 3 and 4 given the sort of background you want. You're asking for someone with professional level design skills coupled to the skills of a university professor or really good high school teacher or video game designer (depending or your perspective). People with these skills get paid a lot more than you're offering. $36k/yr isn't going to get you a bright recent college grad, especially if they have to live in the Bay Area.
It seems to me that you're more interested in hiring folks that are deeply dedicated to the movement so that you can pay them a sub-market salary than hiring the best person you can find. Which is fine, but you should be upfront about it.
People don't typically get trapped in Scientology by trying it out either.
But if you try a cigarette there's some risk you'll want to smoke another and then another.
I'm confident smoking is a bigger danger to me than Scientology.
Agreed. I just sounded like this discussion was trending into hyperbole about the dangers of smoking.
Surely more people die from it.
I don't think people become addicted by TRYING a cigarette. It takes several if not dozens or more. The physical dependence is acquired and comes by degrees.
I would guess that, at least for the right person, it pays more.
My apologies, Anna, I didn't know that you worked for SIAI until I was browsing the site this morning for a better hint about this job. I didn't realize that you were likely operating on inside information.
It's not necessarily in Eliezer's interest to make the job ad as useful to those who don't know him as those who do.
If only Eliezer's friends apply, great, that means someone more likely to also be a supporter/funder of SIAI ends up getting this well-paying job.
(I for one have never met Eliezer in person, but I've observed him and his associates over the net for about 10 years now, which allows me to read quite a lot between the lines of this job ad.)
I'll also explicitly note that I don't consider it to be unfair of EY that only some readers get the full benefit of this job ad. It's a free extra service, throwing this info out here; he's under no obligation to spend more time making the use of this information easier.
That's awfully parochial of you. Also, that puts me firmly in the "this shouldn't have been promoted camp."
If the rationality community is going to grow, it would behoove it to be more open not less. It's a bit surprising that you would advocate for insular and incestuous hiring practices given the hurdles that this community has to overcome if it wants attract more members.
I guess you'd need to trust EY's judgement a bit if you're gonna apply. Don't apply if you think he'd do this with a fishy employer/"employer".
Also, did a rationalist just ask me to take something on faith? ;)
I guess you'd need to trust EY's judgement a bit if you're gonna apply. Don't apply if you think he'd do this with a fishy employer/"employer".
Here's the thing: Consider the circumstances of a potential applicant who makes $X and live in Texas. If applying to this job is going to be worth their time, they need to know that it's worth at least f$X where f (greater than unity) is a conversion factor for the cost of living in Texas vs. the Bay Area. If the only job pays, say 0.5 $X or less, then it's probably not even worth the applicant's time to update their resume. Additionally, if the applicant is already employed, then they'd need to have some confidence that the application process would be handled confidentially lest they be exposed to their current employer and put in a difficult situation.
Nothing in EY's post gives any confidence for either of these factors. He's made no effort to signal that this is on the up and up. There's no way to know whether there's positive utility to be gained by applying. It's a complete and utter crapshoot. The ad says no experience required, but is that their preference? It reads partly as though they're looking for a visionary but partly as though they're looking for a newbie. How is anyone supposed to make out what's wanted from the ad?
Additionally, as best I can tell, most people on this forum don't know EY personally. Saying trust him, he's a good guy is like asking you to trust me. I haven't given you any reason to do so, and (especially to a person new to the site) the thread of comments here about whether or not to promote this story might make one think that EY is a bit of a loose cannon.
It's clearly within EY's power to update the job posting with a better description of the job and a salary range. He should also state some anonymous facts about the company in question (order of magnitude number of employees, industry, public or private, order of magnitude market capitalization, etc.). Finally, he could also state that he is personally in control of yaunshotfirst@gmail.com so that folks know that they're giving their info over to him and not some random entity on the net.
Edited to remove asterisks which apparently put the font into italics....
I would guess that, at least for the right person, it pays more.
And you would guess that why? The post is almost entirely evidence free. If you know something that can shed some light on the situation, please share it! Anything else is rank speculation.
There's no data in this post that makes it clear that it's at all safe to send my resume (with some personal data on it) to what appears to be a throwaway gmail account. Job descriptions usually come with more data. Even if there's a recruiter in the middle, at least the recruiter has you contact them directly. Here, EY is asking us to contact an anonymous email address. This makes it seem really fishy.
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Am I the only one who thinks $3k/month is actually a lot of money?
I don't know what others think (besides myself and thomblake, clearly), but I think it's between 3 and 4x under market for a person with those skills in the Bay Area. It's between 2 and 3x under market in a place like Austin, TX, depending on experience.
People with experience doing the things listed above make high 5 and low 6-figure salaries plus benefits (medical, 401k with some matching, etc.) in industry jobs, or they are university or secondary school teachers who have reasonable salaries, health care, and other benefits like tenure not available to industry workers.