Should I tell EA orgs I'll work for much less than advertised?

By Kaleem @ 2025-10-27T12:28 (+39)

Would I be doing something wrong significantly undercutting other potential hires ?

Some of what I’m thinking about is echoed in points made in this post previously, although I think my situation pertains more to the ethics of competing rather than the ethics of donating via salary-sacrifice. While @ElliotJDavies’s post makes a strong case for EAs considering lower salaries as a form of donation, I’m trying to find answers to the specific ethical and practical questions around how to navigate this during the hiring process, especially when I’m able to dramatically undercut other applicants.

Context:

Thus far in my life the most important things to me about work are not compensation - things like novelty, intellectual stimulation, working on high EV projects, and career capital are. Compensation has been more important to me in the past than it is now: I’m super fortunate to be able to live super comfortably for ~$15k net per year at the moment in Johannesburg, whereas it’d have cost me ~$90k net to live similarly in Boston ^[1].

This means that many jobs I’m looking at applying for these days offer $40-100k per year, and I’d be willing to significantly undercut most other interested hires. My main interest at the moment is doing something! - I really want a job/project to work on now (I’ve effectively been off work for ~10 months and I’m starting to lose my mind). I think my main weapon/ace-up-my-sleeve in my current search is that I can work for very little (i.e. one of you has the chance to hire someone with experience doing high-level, full time work for ~$100k, for less than $15k), and maybe this is also a strong signal of alignment/commitment, but I am worried I’d be doing something bad by trying to undercut other potential hires at high-impact/cost-effective orgs. ^[2]

In regular industries/economies this seems like it's fine. But in the EA-ecosystem/non-profit industry, being willing to do this has added moral dimensions. E.g. It’d be saving money/allowing for funds to be redirected to more cost-effective uses.

Questions (mostly for people making hiring decisions):

Is it wrong to mention in cover letters/job apps that you’re willing to work for way less than the comp indicated in the posting ?
- Is it wrong to other applicants, is it wrong to bias/influence the people reading the app ?
Is it better to take the min of the specified salary range and then donate the excess to effective charities ?
- I.e. should I be skeptical that the excess budget previously allocated to hiring me will be well-used by the org subsequently ?
Will this create a race to the bottom which would favor wealthier/more privileged people (i.e. will it cause EA to miss out on some talented people)?
- (e.g. how only v rich people can do unpaid internships or fellowships needed in some fields).
Does it unfairly make you less likely to get fired/retrenched compared to similar employees?
- Will it make your employer dislike your higher-paid colleagues more ?
Salary range sometimes is used as a proxy for how important or difficult a job might be - maybe I’d be less appealing to some orgs if I’m willing to do their 100k job for 10k? Maybe they won’t view me as competitive or competent as other applicants?

Scenarios I can see my situation being publicly known being a positive:

Someone knowing that I’m available to do full-time work ahead of writing a grant proposal might take the project from being too expensive to being worth a punt (from the perspective of a grant maker)
An org might be able to make two hires (me and someone else) for a position which would still be bottleneck their ability to scale or maximise cost-effectiveness if they only hired one person

I'm Really interested in hearing what people think / open to advice etc.

^{^}
This is independent of the adjusted cost of living between Boston and Johannesburg. If I was looking for a non-EA/non-impact-optimised job at the moment, I’d want something closer to $50k/R900k.
^{^}
To make it clear - I haven’t tried making this pitch yet

Tobias Häberli @ 2025-10-27T14:37 (+9)

Interesting question. Some potentially tangential considerations:

Many organisations have salary policies that could prevent flexible setups like this.
Some organisations adjust salaries for cost-of-living (e.g. GWWC adjusts 50% of the salary). The metrics for these adjustments are often uncertain and may not reflect the true local cost-of-living. If you can show that their adjustment is too conservative, you might convince them to lower your salary while keeping with their salary policy.
Some organisations might have a setup that allows a voluntary salary reduction.

Patrick Gruban 🔸 @ 2025-10-27T18:09 (+7)

As an employer, I would not want to rely on an employee taking a below-market salary. Otherwise, I might be incentivised to keep someone on the team even if they are underperforming, undermining the work of other team members. I would want to hire for talent first and leave salary discussion for the last step, to avoid bias.

That being said, there might be good cases for early-stage orgs that might otherwise not be able to hire, or for positions that might open because of the low salary requirements. At Successif, we recommend that job-seekers use informational interviews with potential employers to explore these kinds of new roles.

ethai @ 2025-10-28T04:28 (+2)

in addition to everything already said, I think this can be bad from an organizational sustainability perspective—if you decide to leave / get hit by a truck / etc, the organization now doesn't have the budget to hire someone new to do the work, meaning that some commitments will need to be dropped. Some funders will see this type of thing as a bad signal about the management of the organization.

Another way of leveraging your relative class privilege could be taking a part-time job and doing impactful volunteer work!