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"Earning to give" is highly unlikely to work unless you're a very strong willed individual (in my opinion). We're social animals, so if you decide to focus on a

"Earning to give" is highly unlikely to work unless you're a very strong willed individual (in my opinion). We're social animals, so if you decide to focus on a "high earning" area you land-up working with others who are focused on their earnings. This leads to a focus on life-style (as life-style always expands to meet earnings), relative position in the group, and other values. Over time we tend to adjust our values to the social group we're in, so values other than "making a social difference" are likely. Clayton Christensen's book "How will you measure your life" mentions this social dynamic (http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ http://www.claytonchristensen.com/books/how-will-you-measure...) - lots of his peers started out meaning to make a difference but got sucked in. It's a fantastic book for thinking about your life in a well-rounded manner, and not too long! Aside: Did anyone else think the title was odd? I initially thought it meant "how to have a good career", when it means "how to make a difference to the world".

BenjaminTodd 10y ago
That's what we expected, but actually today hundreds of people are doing it and sticking with it. I think the key things that have changed include: 1. The existence of a community who earn to give, which makes this effect work in the opposite way. (You can also seek out firms with a good culture.) 2. People making public commitments of their intentions to donate e.g. through Giving What We Can, or Founder's Pledge if an entrepreneur, or simply telling their friends.
- bpchaps 10y ago
  My method for "earning to give" was to push my career and learning as quickly as possible so that I always have a way to fallback if things go south. It worked pretty well, and I got to take the past six months off to work on some really fun and potentially impactful civics-oriented projects. Well, things kinda went south, and if things go well I'll be back in the job fold in the next month. The break wasn't as as long I was hoping, but it was a great chance to learn some amazing things around civics, data and security. Hopefully the six months will make any future 'good' work take a LOT less energy. I highly recommend others do it. You don't need huge amounts of income or massive amounts of stored cash to do it.
- slgeorge 10y ago
  Hmm, interesting. Perhaps involvement in a community of 'givers' and making a public statement, counter-act the 'values erosion' of working with people who are more focused on themselves.
morgante 10y ago
I don't think it requires extraordinary strength to earn to give. Yes, lifestyle inflation is a real problem. But it's certainly not universal. Plenty of people maintain high savings rates instead of consuming excess income. The discipline required for early retirement communities isn't very different from that required for earning to give. That being said, I have found that it helps to maintain a diverse social sphere. The majority of my friends make far less money than me, so it's easy to match my lifestyle to theirs (in fact, a bit better) while having plenty left over for donations.
- slgeorge 10y ago
  I guess that the 'diverse social sphere' helps. I'm sure there's a real term for what I'm trying to describe. I've found our opinions and values change slowly, over time as we interact and take on new experiences. We think we're more fixed than we really are. Often, that's a good thing - "When the facts change I change my mind what do you do Sir". But, in the same way that only seeing news of one political kilter can subtly reinforce our views, interacting with people who have one set of values has the same impact. Professions tend to filter for values that people care about and that reduces the 'diverse social sphere', it's the real-life version of Facebook filtering news feeds! Perhaps I should add I'm thinking "in the long term", so comparing working directly in a charity for 10 years versus working as a trader and giving a high percentage of earnings to charity.
  - BenjaminTodd 10y ago
    I definitely agree people's values are influenced by the people they spend time with. We sketch some of the evidence for that here: https://80000hours.org/articles/career-capital-in-any-job/#why-networking-is-more-important-than-you-think https://80000hours.org/articles/career-capital-in-any-job/#w... It's just I think there's things you can do to counteract this problem, so it's not a decisive point against earning to give.
Kurimo 10y ago
Title was VERY misleading. And that whole earning to give notion is bull. You work at a non-profit or as a social worker and you have a DIRECT impact on people's lives. You donate to a charity and you have no idea where that money goes. Many charities are corrupt and don't use your dollars at a positive rate to help others and even those that do often find their donations ending up being misused or apprehended by crooks and tyrants. Earning to give is a way the wealthy ease their conscience (not unlike carbon offsets). It is not good advice to give people with the heart, courage, and strength to be one of those front line warriors at a non-profit or in social work and to claim otherwise is garbage. Nobody makes a bigger difference to the children and families who experience birth defects or childhood illness than the nurse in the children's hospital. Certainly not the rich goon who contributed the most money and got it named after him/her. Without that rich goon, a need would still be fulfilled by people whose lives were effected by the lack of such a facility coming together and pooling their resources to make it happen (the whole point of government, taxes, and society in the first place). Without that nurse, there's nobody to take care of those children post surgery and offer the love, support, and attentive care that only someone with that kind of courage and compassion can provide. No one says your mind and talents must be constrained to your job forever, but if you can do it you should. Superman DID run vaccines to people in ADDITION to saving the world from more petty (and also much more catastrophic) crime. So the example (which in the comic is hilarious and presented ironically) the article sets itself on is a false choice.
- cheetos 10y ago
  Good thing Bill Gates didn't follow this advice or he might be a nurse instead of starting the Gates Foundation!
  - Kurimo 10y ago
    Yeah, then he would've been a terrible nurse instead of standardizing the PC platform on a shoddy OS, creating the notion of "software that gets paid for forever", the windows xp hardware lockout, and ruining the educational system by promoting vouchers to private schools. Yay for Bill Gates! What a great guy!
- 10y ago
duaneb 10y ago
> I initially thought it meant "how to have a good career", when it means "how to make a difference to the world". This only makes sense if you read "good" as an adverb rather than a noun.
- robertwiblin 10y ago
  Yeah we use the expression 'do good in your career' because it requires few characters, and in titles we often have to explain what we are about in under 60 characters! As dianeb says, I think how to have a successful career would actually be 'how to do well in your career'.

BenjaminTodd 10y ago

That's what we expected, but actually today hundreds of people are doing it and sticking with it. I think the key things that have changed include: 1. The existence of a community who earn to give, which makes this effect work in the opposite way. (You can also seek out firms with a good culture.) 2. People making public commitments of their intentions to donate e.g. through Giving What We Can, or Founder's Pledge if an entrepreneur, or simply telling their friends.

bpchaps 10y ago
My method for "earning to give" was to push my career and learning as quickly as possible so that I always have a way to fallback if things go south. It worked pretty well, and I got to take the past six months off to work on some really fun and potentially impactful civics-oriented projects. Well, things kinda went south, and if things go well I'll be back in the job fold in the next month. The break wasn't as as long I was hoping, but it was a great chance to learn some amazing things around civics, data and security. Hopefully the six months will make any future 'good' work take a LOT less energy. I highly recommend others do it. You don't need huge amounts of income or massive amounts of stored cash to do it.
slgeorge 10y ago
Hmm, interesting. Perhaps involvement in a community of 'givers' and making a public statement, counter-act the 'values erosion' of working with people who are more focused on themselves.

morgante 10y ago

I don't think it requires extraordinary strength to earn to give. Yes, lifestyle inflation is a real problem. But it's certainly not universal. Plenty of people maintain high savings rates instead of consuming excess income. The discipline required for early retirement communities isn't very different from that required for earning to give. That being said, I have found that it helps to maintain a diverse social sphere. The majority of my friends make far less money than me, so it's easy to match my lifestyle to theirs (in fact, a bit better) while having plenty left over for donations.

slgeorge 10y ago
I guess that the 'diverse social sphere' helps. I'm sure there's a real term for what I'm trying to describe. I've found our opinions and values change slowly, over time as we interact and take on new experiences. We think we're more fixed than we really are. Often, that's a good thing - "When the facts change I change my mind what do you do Sir". But, in the same way that only seeing news of one political kilter can subtly reinforce our views, interacting with people who have one set of values has the same impact. Professions tend to filter for values that people care about and that reduces the 'diverse social sphere', it's the real-life version of Facebook filtering news feeds! Perhaps I should add I'm thinking "in the long term", so comparing working directly in a charity for 10 years versus working as a trader and giving a high percentage of earnings to charity.
- BenjaminTodd 10y ago
  I definitely agree people's values are influenced by the people they spend time with. We sketch some of the evidence for that here: https://80000hours.org/articles/career-capital-in-any-job/#why-networking-is-more-important-than-you-think https://80000hours.org/articles/career-capital-in-any-job/#w... It's just I think there's things you can do to counteract this problem, so it's not a decisive point against earning to give.

Kurimo 10y ago

Title was VERY misleading. And that whole earning to give notion is bull. You work at a non-profit or as a social worker and you have a DIRECT impact on people's lives. You donate to a charity and you have no idea where that money goes. Many charities are corrupt and don't use your dollars at a positive rate to help others and even those that do often find their donations ending up being misused or apprehended by crooks and tyrants. Earning to give is a way the wealthy ease their conscience (not unlike carbon offsets). It is not good advice to give people with the heart, courage, and strength to be one of those front line warriors at a non-profit or in social work and to claim otherwise is garbage. Nobody makes a bigger difference to the children and families who experience birth defects or childhood illness than the nurse in the children's hospital. Certainly not the rich goon who contributed the most money and got it named after him/her. Without that rich goon, a need would still be fulfilled by people whose lives were effected by the lack of such a facility coming together and pooling their resources to make it happen (the whole point of government, taxes, and society in the first place). Without that nurse, there's nobody to take care of those children post surgery and offer the love, support, and attentive care that only someone with that kind of courage and compassion can provide. No one says your mind and talents must be constrained to your job forever, but if you can do it you should. Superman DID run vaccines to people in ADDITION to saving the world from more petty (and also much more catastrophic) crime. So the example (which in the comic is hilarious and presented ironically) the article sets itself on is a false choice.

cheetos 10y ago
Good thing Bill Gates didn't follow this advice or he might be a nurse instead of starting the Gates Foundation!
- Kurimo 10y ago
  Yeah, then he would've been a terrible nurse instead of standardizing the PC platform on a shoddy OS, creating the notion of "software that gets paid for forever", the windows xp hardware lockout, and ruining the educational system by promoting vouchers to private schools. Yay for Bill Gates! What a great guy!
10y ago

duaneb 10y ago

> I initially thought it meant "how to have a good career", when it means "how to make a difference to the world". This only makes sense if you read "good" as an adverb rather than a noun.

robertwiblin 10y ago
Yeah we use the expression 'do good in your career' because it requires few characters, and in titles we often have to explain what we are about in under 60 characters! As dianeb says, I think how to have a successful career would actually be 'how to do well in your career'.