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Comment by adamzerner | Hacker News Reader

This talks about aggregate earning rather than earning per unit of time. I think the latter is what people are/should be interested in, and from what I understand, startup employees put in a lot more hours.

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Well, it depends on what you're trying to achieve. There are legitimate reasons to try to achieve the highest possible pay per year, no matter how many hours in the year you have to work in order to get it. In the case of 80000 hours, the goal is to donate as much money to charity as possible, and, if I may put it somewhat crudely, they would prefer you work as much as possible, only stopping work in order to eat and sleep, if that's the way to achieve the highest salary, since the noblest calling in their view is to dump as much money as possible into (the most optimal) third world charities, and 80000 hours has already taken the time to determine which charities maximize third world utility. (Technically, you need to deduct the negative utility to you from working increased hours, but your utility should be the same as a poor person in the third world, so that negative effect is minimal.)

Completely disagree. Even if you're maximizing for donations, any reasonable analysis would still have to privilege your own well-being as a giver. Lowering your burnout/regression rate from 25% to 5% by giving yourself a higher quality of life seems like one of the best investments you can make.

You don't need to expend wads of cash. But you don't need to be destitute as a software engineer to give effectively.

I actually agree with you. I was being a bit facetious - 80000 hours is somewhat infamous for a rigidly utilitarian view of effective charity and for optimizing for monetary means of increasing the effectiveness of said charities. But even they recognize the risk of burnout.

And you should give out of income not capital - you donate capital in your will.

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