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.

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.

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/#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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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'.

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.

We agree many charities aren't effective, so you can't just earn to give to random organisations. You need to spend time working out where the donations can be most effective.

I think GiveWell is a good starting point: http://www.givewell.org/giving101

Though there's a lot more to say: https://80000hours.org/2015/12/where-should-you-donate-to-ha...

Good thing Bill Gates didn't follow this advice or he might be a nurse instead of starting the Gates Foundation!

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!

I sorta agree with you, and have been cutting back on where I give (and now only work with places I trust and visit personally). But coming back to the nurse example, I could volunteer my time to be with the kids, use my very basic carpentry skills to do maybe a bed or two OR, I can do contract work for a few days and give enough that it pays for that nurse's salary. What do you think is best? Me spend 5 days doing 2-3 beds/playing with the kids or me working 5 days and with that money be able to pay for 10 beds + a nurse's salary at a worthwhile charity??

It very much depends on where your talents lie certainly. I could not be a nurse, I am squeamish and cannot interact with strangers positively. And so giving is better than doing. But the article expressly recommends people who CAN be nurses, doctors, surgeons, social workers, etc. instead pursue the most profitable jobs they can do instead. That is my disagreement with it.

Using the superman example: despite Superman's obvious aptitude and passion for fighting crime the author would prefer he spend his time turning a crank to make more money to donate to crime fighting efforts. I think that is terrible advice. Further, while SMBC is trying to be satirical (and succeeding I think), the author of the article crops the comic hiding the personal cost to Superman the comic expresses in later panels. And then to get REALLY nerdy with it, if Superman isn't fighting crime in the DC universe, no amount of free energy would matter because Darkseid or Lex Luthor or somebody else only Superman could stop would probably have either conquered or destroyed the earth.

My life has recently been impacted multiple times by talented doctors and nurses who could certainly have done something more profitable with their skills and so I am perhaps reacting more emotionally to this article than is necessary. But telling people not to be doctors and nurses and instead pursue something more profitable because "Money is better than doing good things yourself!" Sounds like the kind of bullshit Lex Luthor tells himself as he vaporizes a small city to ransom Superman into letting him be President.

We don't recommend that - the article covers 4 paths to doing good including "direct work" as well as earning to give.

Choose between those two options based on which you'd be best at and the needs of the problems you want to focus on.