Sadly enough, independently wealthy people are virtually the only ones who could actually publish consistently and thus possibly earn something out of the whole endeavour — under the assumption that any single book by an unknown / non-celebrity author has equal probability of being a hit.
Reality seems to be that most books are failures, publishers prefer celebrities as that reduces marketing costs, and they prefer established audiences.
This is a good read on the topic: https://www.elysian.press/p/no-one-buys-books
A rebuttal to that article.
Hahahahaha… no. You can argue that the wage gap is an imperfect metric and that it can't take into account certain advantages but it has not ever been in favor of women.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/01/gender-pa...
If 10% of the gap is explained by women having lower paying roles then that's good. Women aren't getting paid (that much) less for the same work. But it doesn't fix the issue of women systematically working lower paying roles or roles typically held by women being seen as less valuable.
The straight wage gap has never been in favor of women. "Men and women make the same when you control for the variables that cause them to make less" isn't as applicable when you're talking about group dynamics.
My mother's a secretary (they call them administrative assistants now to be correct). She could advance her career by becoming a clerk, which mostly does more of the same, only more. Instead she's happy where she's at
I used to work for Microsoft. I left for a startup (peerdb) & while my pay didn't go down, that meant leaving behind >50k USD in unvested stocks & my salary growth at Microsoft was pretty fast (hired as junior in 2019, was one promo away from principal when I left in 2023) which I don't expect a startup environment to match
I'm broadly unfamiliar with Microsoft's promotion culture, but this strikes me as incredible. But in the "something seems incorrect" sense of the word. Were you hired at an incorrectly low level, were you a one-in-a-million talent, or is there huge title inflation at Microsoft now?
Had ~10 years of experience working at small companies (pointerware, mldsolutions) after dropping out of college (had internship with pointeware where I correctly guessed they'd hire me if I dropped out). Interviewed at Citus a week before they announced being acquired, got shooed in. Junior pay at MS was still 2x salary increase
It's really clear when someone is invited to step up in their job and refuse because it would entice more working hours, but it happen as much when people leave full time position because it doesn't give them enough time.
About two months into this job, they offered me a promotion since "you would be perfect for this position." I looked at the schedules of the people who also had that job and they were booked solid all week. It was pretty obvious to me that it would be basically 40+ hours/week of meetings and tons of stress for pretty much the same pay. The bonuses were probably higher, but nothing about it was worthwhile. Yeah, I like money but you'd probably have to double my salary for me to even think about it.
Had two successive managers suggest the job to me. After about a year, the newest one finally took the hint and left me alone.
Took a 40k/yr paycut, but I knew my income after the experience would be higher.
We have 4 mortgages on 2 properties, by no means we have 'enough' (whatever that means). QOL is for me by far of important metric, especially with kids.
My wife is an artist with a marketing degree. I love programming. Swallowing trash at work just feels less painful to me.
If I think the same of women, I do not believe that we would typically look down on them or consider them bad people in the same way for being somehow deficient in capability (IE; "a loser") or shirking responsibility if they decided to do those things.
In this sense, those opportunities can be considered effectively closed to them.
I admit I don't know too much about the house-husband or the creative endeavor.
Is your notion then that you did not face social stigma? That would be an interesting counter-anecdote to what I said, may I ask where you live?
But it's a much more competitive option for men than it is for women. (That is, a man attempting to fill this role will face much tougher competition than a woman trying to do the same thing. It's not that the option is competitive with other options.)
Of course you will find some outlier situation where one gender can do the same as another. This is not helpful and not the course of discussion. We're talking about what actually happens statistically, now and for generations.
Men are not the same as Woman, they aren't now, never have been and never will be.
What I agree though is that if they do chose a low-paying job, it might be more difficult for them to find a partner, which is not necessarily true for women. We are still by and large living in cultures where the male has to bring home the bacon ("a real man knows how to take care of his family") and it will take decades for it to change, if ever.
If all your friends and acquaintances look like you and don’t have differing perspectives, then you should totally widen your social circle.
Speak less, learn more. Ask questions.
Break out of the loop. Say no to the algorithm.
Just ask your average gigging musician, writer, designer, and so on.
People who run "lifestyle" business and refuse to grow them outside a living income.
People who opted out of the rat race, from the start, or mid-career, and downsized, without being rich, to have more time with family, reduce stress, etc.
useless swipe and naive advice, especially in this day and age. I can barely make friends who share my hobbies, what hope do I have in breaking the ice with someone completely different? I'm not going to specifically crash other meetups just to "expand my horizons".
>Speak less, learn more.
yes, that's why inroverts dont make as many friends, and are instead arguing with each other on Hacker News.
I think I'd be super happy with like, 10% of your buzz for my game's release (whenever that is, I'm only working on it part time), but it's a fairly small puzzle game (and still only programmer art at the moment) without a strong hook (it's just a sequel to an old free game of mine that did well in the past), so it has nowhere near as broad of an appeal, so it's to be expected.
What's your situation that allowed you to be able to go full time on the game?
https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/comments/1bu3hlv/how_i_w...
I agree with the point, though. It's more socially acceptable for a women to choose a lower paying job that she prefers.
Skilled labor does not outdo the decades of gender conformity expected from these jobs.
This on it's own may be a correct statement however as you phrase it makes it sound like this this is the defining reason.
It's not, there are anecdotes of (insecure) men not wanting this dynamic, but a majority of cases the opposite is true. Women seek men of higher value (earning potential), not less. Men seek youth/beauty.
>women don't want to be in relationships with men who earn less, not because men don't want to be in relationships with women who earn more.
It is sometimes presented under the myth of "men threatened by women who have a big career", but I have never seen researches supporting that. Men don't care if women earn a lot, note that they don't prefer it, they literally don't care. It is not a criteria when choosing a partner. Women do care a lot though about finding a partner who earns more than they do.
Very easy to be an aspiring author/painter/singer/etc when you have a partner to pick up the bills with a "real job".
People only demand data and statistics and deny lived experience when the shared lived experience goes counter to what they want to believe.
>a lot of x often involves y
is a broad claim which warrants more than a few anecdotes. GP may have an unpleasant tone but they're not wrong for asking that a sweeping generalisation come with something more solid than 1 person's perspective.
I don't like the "educate yourself" dismissal for answers like these, but the divides in income and gender isn't exactly a niche topic. If you can believe that women often won't date men who make less and that women more often become stay at home parents than men, you can derive why woman may be more likely to pursue passions that pay a pittance compared to men in a relationship.
If any of those 2 points feel contentious, all I'll say is Google it. I'm not interested in digging up such common facts for someone else.
Right now she's making a little over 1k/month with her fiction writing (and just recently started offering editing services on the side, which she's gotten a few customers already), so it's definitely been shock to our finances ($140k -> ~$12k), and our emergency savings have been steadily draining every month, although we have been able to tighten the belt on several things so it hasn't been as steep as it would if we had maintained the same lifestyle.
But she's a lot happier, and she's very talented, and she's had multiple millions of page reads on Kindle unlimited already and her books are highly rated, so hopefully this takes off (there are writers in her genre making hundreds of thousands, including a couple writers she's friends with, maybe she'll become one herself, although I'd be happy if she can get it to the point where it's like $60k/year).
I also wouldn't mind a break from my own corporate job so I can hopefully work on my own creative works fulltime as well (I code video games and design board games in my spare time), but obviously we can't both afford to do this at the same time, we'd be homeless pretty quick.
But yeah, in the meantime, I'm 'swallowing the trash' in a corporate job.
That might be more difficult than becoming a runaway success. I don't think the distribution of author earnings peaks in the middle.
And if not, it's not like she lost her ability to do proposal management. If it gets to that point, I'm sure she could find a well-paying job again if need be.
She's got a lot more practice with those interviews than I do, in fact, since she would interview when recruiters contacted her with a potentially better-paying job even if she wasn't really looking at the moment, whereas I tend to ignore recruiters when I'm not actively looking (or at least debating if I should start looking).
The “great” thing about cutthroat paring down by groups like private capital in management is all genders get downgraded at the same rate. So equity will even out in the race to the bottom, and we can enjoy more balanced stories of men contributing less to the household income.
That's not true, the oft-touted statistics are "77cents on the dollar", which is taking median women's earnings when employed with median men's earnings when employed, without regard to hours worked or responsibility[0].
In fact when accounting for hours worked, years of experience, responsibility and before maternity age women typically out-earn men[1][2], though mostly in large urban environments.
I don't think anyone is blaming women here, but I think we should speak with factual information, lest we continue to propagate myths or erroneous talking points.
Please keep in mind that women seem to be disproportionately disadvantaged after having children, which is what the study from pew research concludes after noting the early advantage for women.
[0]: https://now.org/resource/the-gender-pay-gap-myth-vs-fact/ -- "By comparing differences in annual earnings between men and women, we find that there is about a 23 cent difference per dollar according to the Census Bureau."
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-e...
[2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/young-wome...
That’s because children are a full time job — the hours, the energy required, but especially the cognitive load. If the woman takes on some or most of that responsibility, then any other job she has becomes a second job.
If you don't like swallowing corporate trash, don't. If you want to bring somebody along on your quest for enrichment, recognize that your choice there is yours.
women, to put it crudely.
>in which case you should elaborate.
what's to elaborate on? Women are much less likely to "date down" econmically than men. Hence, women are less often the "breadwinners" and as such may be more likely to either spend their time as a full time parent or chasing jobs for passions over compensation. These aren't novel phenomenon.
I literally lack the time and energy for free labor. I looked into it a bit last year and honestly, what I saw in the community was depressing. lots of healthcare for sick (often terminal) elders, homeless soup kitchens, and lots of work with kids (I hate kids). Maybe I'd help make the world a little better but I'd lose myself in the process.
The previous comment wasn't a personal reflection, I know I'm not viable for modern dating and I'm not puting myself out in the market. I was simply pointing out a persistent societal statistic. It's not really one localized to any location, demographic, or time period. It's always been true.
You asked "who cares", and I answered "women" because sadly, yes. Financial status is a bigger barrier for men dating women than women dating men, which may affect why women feel less pressure to pursue a non-profitable passion when in a relationship. It's an answer that invites more and more questions, but I don't necessarily want to turn this into a modern dating thread.
don't love IT, but one of us needs to get enough cash to live.
When people talk about the gender wage gap they're not usually talking about the overall average, but rather doing like for like comparisons.
It feels like you're suggesting your sister chose to give up sales for fiction because there were other factors at play such as quality of life, that that is a decision men would be less likely to make, save therefore her actions have tipped the scale towards "women earn less."
But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title. So the comparison would be made between your sister and other men in sales, or between her and other men who left that career to go into fiction writing. In most cases the woman still earns less despite doing the same work and having the same work life balance (in theory; in effect she'll almost certainly be doing more additional domestic and other unpaid labour).
IIRC if you look into it it's mostly a maternity penalty anyway.
Climbing the ladder has inertia, anyone taking a sabbatical will be hugely adversely affected.
We should however destigmatise men taking parental leave in order to readjust this.
I will point out, however, that our society still prefers that men pay more than their share and many women have reported being uncomfortable out earning their partner. Obviously these conditions cannot coexist.
Artificial protection and gatekeeping by ordinance are there to protect those who got there first. Then we can blame others: women or immigrants etc, for wage depression. Unions do this less but still favor those who organized first.
If capital gets to hire for less, say that. Maybe the opportunity was an increase in certain pop segments, but they dont make wages go down. The people who pay wages do.
Balancing that out gives one less reason to favor one gender over the other when it comes to hiring and assigning a salary.
If it does, then the goal of that kind of equality is a false goal.
If not, then you’re right.
Right now, there isn’t really choice, because few countries have had equal leave rights, and those that do have had them for such a relatively short amount of time that we have no idea. So we haven’t been able to test any sort of hypothesis at all. All we have is culturally bound gut feelings, but if we just listened to those then we would still think that there are only four elements, that the earth is flat, etc.
And in the US we don’t even have legally mandated paid maternity leave, so even that would be a start.
In this case, we are asking whether two hypothetical people who are completely identical in every way except for their genitals will receive the same opportunities, rewards, and treatment from their employers and their peers.
It is not for public policy to speculate on which parent will produce more value for the baby or the household by staying at home. The point you were responding to originally was this: If you mandate more parental leave for women than for men, you end up creating an incentive for employers to hire men instead of women (or choose to let women go when layoffs come around), because their benefits cost less.
That is the type of gender inequality we are talking about, and I hope you will agree that fixing it is not a "false goal".
Shinjirō Koizumi caused controversy when he took two weeks of his family leave as a minister because Japanese men never take it due to cultural reasons even though they are legally entitled to a full year of paternal leave. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/16/asia/japan-koizumi-paternity-...
And he was the son of a former prime minister, so even he was not powerful enough to be immune from criticism of this kind
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gender-pay-difference-field-d...
Do you have a real article with real data? This is just a post by some person on LinkedIn. It doesn't provide any background or support for the claims given. It even misuses the aggregate wage gap number from the BLS to apply at the job level...
"The term “gender pay gap” describes the disparity between what men and women earn in the workforce. Women earn, on average, 82% less than men do in the same job in the United States."
Perhaps you have some data from an authority like the BLS?
I'm not sure where the "anyway" comes from in your last statement. The reasons for the disparity don't affect the reality that it's there.
I'm my experience, people usually confuse the two. There's rarely anyone pulling up BLS data for a specific job. We've even had presidents use the aggregate numbers misapplied to the specific level.
And they have to remember to avoid comparing the per hour earning at all cost.
On the contrary, I find that most data shared about this gap are just a lazy average of all men and all women earnings without controlling for stay-at-home parents, experience, diplomas, fields, etc.
If you didn't win the birth lottery that allows you to open door #1, you're stuck with the second option. Moving furniture or going up on a ladder aren't terrible when you're fresh out of high school. They are when you're 50, and you're going to be one of those that takes Social Security at 62, possibly after multiple spells of unemployment as you approached retirement.
> Roofing is an incredibly simple job to learn for instance, and it pays little better than minimum wage.
I can't speak to your area, but doing roofing on tall houses/buildings with a steep slope here pays much better than working on relatively flat roofs or one-story houses.
Skill does tend to get some reward; I think I'd be inclined to go electrician if I had to. I think if one wanted to get paid the most, I'd look at plumbing because it both takes some skill (despite the "3 rules" joke) and is literally shitty. Personally I enjoy a bit of carpentry work now and again, but my skill is nothing compared to my brother, and he was never really able to put together a comfortable living despite his ability. Fortunately, he was able to get an engineering job (not the software kind) fairly recently and was amazed at the idea of getting paid for a day off once in awhile and having health insurance.
In the meantime, there's nothing inherently wrong about choosing to make less money in order to have a job that doesn't make you miserable. Or to put it a different way: there's nothing inherently virtuous about minimizing your happiness in order to maximize your wealth.
Even if technically true a single income household is rarely discussed as “one partner subsidizing the other” but once the other partner is earning something it’s a subsidy.
And please do not argue "she is happy with her choice" and on antidepressant at the same time!
I take them to manage anxiety caused by my wife metastatic breast cancer (at least it's was only oligometastasis and she had a complete response to treatment that she has to continue as long as the disease doesn't come back) and parkison disease.
But my argument is about broad statistics, single case does not prove anything.
Incidentally this also holds for some engineering metrics. Some error metrics stop making sense after a certain threshold. E.g. if a certain error becomes disqualifying, doubling the error changes nothing.
My sister says something like this. She is horribly depressed and 'loves her job' and doesnt want to be like her dad who had a great paying job and retired in his 50s.
Humans are adaptable. Sales are a bit immoral, there are plenty of jobs that arent immoral.
My tuition was 400 euros per year for undergrad and master's.
My wife never completed undergrad. Worked her was to director level in the insurance industry. Hated it, got a masters, pivoted to something g she likes without any real pay cut (maybe for a year or two, but she’s now earning more than she ever would have in her first career).
I recently asked my Greek teacher about if 2008 was as bad in Greece as American media portrayed. She said things were definitely not good from an economic perspective but life kept going on. Even though people had no jobs, you couldn’t find an empty seat in a taverna on the weekend. She pointed out the biggest difference she notices living in the US is that people prioritize money above all else. In Greece they prioritize having a good time. It really changed how I viewed the crisis and reminded me that cultural differences bias our judgements.
Something Jerry Seinfeld (yes, the comedian) recently observed:
> SEINFELD: In the seventies, this is the tragic turn of American culture. And this was explained to me by Mario Joiner who cracked this puzzle that I could not figure out what the hell happened. That money became everything. What happened because it was not like that in the seventies. In the seventies, it’s how cool is your job? How cool is what you’re doing? If your job’s cooler than my job, you beat me.
> BRENNAN: And no one said, how much are you making?
> SEINFELD: Oh, you’re doing okay. You’re making this? Yeah. Who cares? And Mario Joiner explained this to me. He said the eighties was the first time that young guys could make a lot of money fast.
> Never existed before. Rich guys were Aristotle Onassis, Andrew Carnegie, shipping, iron. You couldn’t make a lot of money fast in those days.
> And it has poisoned our culture to this day. It’s poison.
* https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/05/seinfeld-on-when-mo...
I imagine a part of this is (among many factors) impacted the US very strongly due to the "out of the nest" mentality. If you were 18 and still in your parent's house, you were doing something wrong. And that mentality has only very recently started changing as university costs skyrockted (and thus commuting has risen) and rent became untenable for someone making minimum wage.
It may not be the only measure, but it is a very important part:
> One could draw a snap judgment from this analysis and conclude that money, in fact, simply buys happiness. I think that would be the wrong conclusion. Clever sociologists will always find new ways of “calculating” that marriage matters most, or social fitness explains all, or income is paramount. But the subtler truth seems to be that finances, family, and social fitness are three prongs in a happiness trinity. They rise together and fall together. Low-income Americans have seen the largest declines in marriage and experience the most loneliness. High-income Americans marry more and have not only richer investment accounts but also richer social lives. In this light, the philosophical question of what contributes most to happiness is just the beginning. The deeper question is why the trinity of happiness is so stratified by income—and whether well-being in America is in danger of becoming a luxury good.
* https://archive.ph/4ofJ6 / https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/happiness-...
The ROI explores that to some extent. You are right though, as long as you are happy that is what matter in life. Setting yourself up for long term happiness sometimes means forgoing some up front happiness though.
Many people would take less money to do a job they enjoyed more. My older sister "gave up" a sales "career" to become a fiction writer. It's enough to pay the bills, but pays less than she could have had at a corporate job. She got an English degree and couldn't be happier with her choice.
My younger sister got a Theater degree and is a "struggling actress". Same deal: she's happy with her choice.
ROI is important for some aspects of the discussion. But it is not the whole story.