“Offering higher salaries than social-sector peers” by Seema Jayachandran

My - purely anecdotal - sense is that GiveWell pays more than many of its social sector peers. I imagine for many employees, their compensation at GiveWell exceeds what they'd earn if they took the next-best available job (as judged by the employee), which is often also in the social sector. This would create some "job lock" where people will stay at GiveWell even if they think they can do more good elsewhere; that extra good is outweighed by their higher material well-being if they stay at GiveWell. I wish nonprofit salaries were uniformly higher, but since they aren't, when one org has higher salaries than its peers, that has both pros and cons, from the vantage point of social good. The pros include (1) attracting people into the social sector whose counterfactual job was not a socially-minded one (2) for the org, attracting talent away from other social sector orgs that it can use better than peers would. A con is the golden handcuffs, when the opposite of (2) holds: Some people forgo the chance to do something higher impact to stay at GiveWell. GiveWell isn't the only org in the social sector that [...] --- First published: December 23rd, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uFcqxL9GAYRzjbM54/offering-higher-salaries-than-social-sector-peers --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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