Benjamin Todd

Should you earn to give?

Earning to give has been one of our most memorable and controversial ideas, attracting media coverage in the BBC, Washington Post, Daily Mail, and many other outlets.

For this reason, many people think it's our top recommendation.

But it's not.

We see earning to give mostly as a baseline.

It's a path that many could pursue and do a lot of good, on the scale of saving 100 lives or more, as we just argued.

But we think that most of our readers can have an even greater impact again by pursuing one of the other approaches below.

Overall, for people we speak to one-on-one, we only think about 10% should earn to give.

In fact, in 2022, Jeff left his high-paying job at Google.

He's now a researcher at the Nucleic Acid Observatory, building a wastewater monitoring system that he hopes will help detect pandemics before they start.

Jeff and Julia are still going to donate over 30% of their income, but given Jeff's lower salary, they expect most of their positive impact to come directly from their work.

When is earning to give especially promising?

You're a good fit for a higher-earning option, like Jeff was for software engineering, and you're not a good fit for other impactful options.

Definitely don't become a software engineer if you'd hate it.

There's a particular job you really want to do for other reasons where you think you can make significant donations.

For instance, you might be someone who's always wanted to be a doctor, or you might need a higher-earning job to support your family.

You think a higher earning option will be good for building skills for use in more direct work later on, and earning to give could help you to stay engaged with social impact while you do so.

For example, working at a tech startup can help you learn organization building skills that are useful when running non-profits.

In the next chapter, we explain why it's important to gain career capital.

you're very uncertain about which problems are most pressing.