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Comment by timmg | Hacker News Reader

One thing that I think doesn't get enough attention in these types of discussions -- not just this article about ROI, but also earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups -- is that income isn't the only measure of happiness.

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.

View on HN

I don't know your sister so I won't comment on her particular case. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of these "quality of life" career choices often involve a partner - men, more often than not - swallowing the trash in a corporate job.

> swallowing the trash in a corporate job

My wife is an artist with a marketing degree. I love programming. Swallowing trash at work just feels less painful to me.

I doubt he disputes that men can love their work. It is just they have fewer options if they do not.

What options are closed to men?

Looking pretty and finding a sugar-mommy?

It is an option; I remember an article on HEMA that mentioned a participant who was idle and supported by his wife.

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.)

I think it's well understood yes. When an option is only available to 1% of the population I believe it is fair to say that it's not really an option.

These types of discussions where people are very careful to be politically correct seem to always break down.

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.

I think men are looked down on if they go back to study, take an unpaid internship, become house-husbands (IE; non-breadwinners), exclusively attempt a creative endeavour (high risk enjoyable pursuits are seen as self-indulgent and lazy) or if they change career later in life (after 28~).

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 went back to study, took on an unpaid internship, and changed careers later in life. It was awesome and it seems to make a lot of people who stuck to their first career jealous. You may look down on men such as me, but most people appear not to do so.

I admit I don't know too much about the house-husband or the creative endeavor.

I don't look down on you, I consider myself a bit more egalitarian in my principles than that.

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?

I disagree. Granted, they are less likely to earn money on OnlyFans etc., but apart from that they can do the same things: they can be artists and do low paying jobs that they like.

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.

The phenomenon is cross cultural, meaning it's biological not cultural. Women tend to prefer men who can provide. Men tend to prefer women who are young fertile caregivers. Mythological stories across cultures reflect this general tendency. It's not something we made up recently or locally. It's a global timeless phenomenon.

Sad but true. The publishing industry (think Penguin books) is full of independently wealthy white women - “This unpaid internship is a fantastic career opportunity!”

Edit: disregard the comment.

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

https://slate.com/culture/2024/04/book-sales-publishing-indu...

A rebuttal to that article.

Very interesting, thank you for the new knowledge!

Historically and today, a sought-after job for a young woman out of college who has majored in, say, English with wealthy parents is in publishing/media in NYC, with the parents paying the bills (publishing doesn't pay very much at the entry level). It's a genteel job that the parents can tell their friends about, and the daughter can meet suitable men; the classic marriage among these types has the husband working in finance and the wife in media.

Or possibly financial assistance from the Bank of Mom and Dad.

Aka non-state welfare.

This is my experience as well.

How often do you actually see people go „oh we have enough, we’re going to take lower paying jobs”? People work these jobs regardless of their partner's income.

I recently switched from a 15 year programming career to becoming an apprentice woodworker at an architectural millwork shop, and I could do it because I have a partner with income that can support us both. Might not be often, but it certainly happens

My father took a 1 dollar pay cut from 16 CAD/hour to 15 CAD/hour. Working in furniture repair he wanted to transfer from house calls (driving everyday) to in-shop repairs

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

> Junior in 2019, was one promo away from principal when I left in 2023

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?

Incorrectly low level (tho I'd like to think I'm uniquely talented too)

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

That choice happens all the time, it's wild to me you never had it come up irl.

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.

Many promotions are actually pay rate cuts for salaried jobs. My job wanted me to work a 13% hour increase for a 7% raise.

Yup.

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.

Probably not that wild - we may live in different bubbles.

I did this when I switched from Real Engineering to Programming.

Took a 40k/yr paycut, but I knew my income after the experience would be higher.

I am planning to switch to 90% allocation from next year, which effectively means cca 50 days yearly of paud vacation.

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.

I can’t say I have heard of or know of a man who has done a “quality of life” career without either inheriting or getting rich first.

Widen your social circle

Underrated comment and great advice.

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.

To be a little more helpful, I'll add that people DO take “quality of life” careers "without either inheriting or getting rich first".

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.

>Underrated comment and great advice.

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 know of one or two supported by a high earning wife. But it seems rare.

I started a video game company. We are making kingmakers now.

Best of luck with your upcoming release. It looks pretty fun. You seem to be getting some pretty decent buzz as well from a couple things I've seen elsewhere. You definitely have the hook down (modern guns versus medieval battles).

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?

I actually did a write up on this exact topic recently.

https://www.reddit.com/r/indiegames/comments/1bu3hlv/how_i_w...

Best of luck. I'm planning on doing the same in the near-ish future, without anywhere near as much buzz and no staff. I accept that I'll probably need to step back into industry if I don't make a huge splash. It's a rough industry.

I know someone who was a great EE and quit at about 30 to become a park ranger. He was even better at that and is still doing it 30 years later and he couldn't be happier. He always had a bohemian & ecological mindset so it didn't seem like a surprise when he made the shift.

Pretty much every faculty member at any university has chosen quality of life over getting rich. Most of them did not inherit or start out rich.

It's easy to find examples within a career though, if you find that relevant. I'm a (US) physician that chooses to work a federal government job rather than private / for-profit sector, making about half as much money in exchange for numerous QoL benefits.

Reminds me of Max Shulman's advice to aspiring authors: "Marry money"

[]

Men aren't supposed to make more money and the wage gap is in favour of women when you look at recent male vs female graduation rates simply because there are more educated women.

> wage gap is in favour of women

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...

I saw stats in the UK that for women who had not had kids yet the average pay was slightly higher in the same job than for blokes. Kids are the main thing that makes the difference.

You're talking about the adjusted wage gap, not the wage gap. The adjusted wage gap measures sexism on an individual basis — all else being equal. The wage gap measures sexism on a societal basis, this is where the "explained" parts fall away.

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.

Not sure why your valid point is being downvoted. You also brought a source which most people don’t bother. Kudos!

Interestingly, for my older sister, the answer is yes. For my younger sister, it is no.

I agree with the point, though. It's more socially acceptable for a women to choose a lower paying job that she prefers.

Yeah, I'm a man working a low paying job that I enjoy. Almost everyone I know seems to look down on me for it. 'When will you get a real job', 'when will you start your career?'

Sorry to hear that. Does it affect your dating life too?

What dating life? I was at a grocery store today and wound up flirting with a cutie, but I don't make enough money to pay for myself to go out for dinner more than once a month. The expenses a typical woman expects (from my experience) are beyond what I can afford.

go for hippie chicks who like doing acroyoga in the park, they're cheap dates :)

Good for you! You should do what makes you happy and revel in the knowledge that you provide many different kinds of value and you yourself extract value from something you like doing in multiple ways. The way I think about it: no one else has to be me and work my job. Since im going to so the work then I will choose how and what I do so long as I can. It took time for me to build the emotional strength to do what I love and not care about what others think but working on that intentionally has brought so many unforeseen, manifold benefits that I wouldn’t change that path for any other opportunity.

Is it in Europe? I feel people would like it if you tell that you like what you do.

No, the midwest.

It has nothing to do with "socially acceptable", I think the parent was simply talking about even having the option of doing it.

Very easy to be an aspiring author/painter/singer/etc when you have a partner to pick up the bills with a "real job".

I want to find the equivalent of HN for healthcare, where I think you’d find a ton of women MDs and highly specialized nurses who are women expressing frustration with their adjunct or artist men. This community is not the whole story.

I had a minor procedure a while back - enough that I had to be put under - and asked my nurse if she was happy with her job. She said yeah, she loved it, but she made more money as a barkeep! I was completely shocked, especially considering the hours nurses are expected to work. This was a real nurse, not an aide. I think healthcare is a not-so-great career anymore, again because corporate profits are all that matter.

Oh yeah. Nurses and MD's are night and day in compensation. And I'm sure you've heard the teacher salaries as well by this point.

Skilled labor does not outdo the decades of gender conformity expected from these jobs.

Was she hot? You can make a ton of money as a bartender if you're an attractive woman.

Given that women generally avoid dating lower-paid partners, there's a good chance you wouldn‘t or that those people would be outliers.

Such relationships exist. But in no way are such anywhere as common as those relationships in which men earn more than women. And that disparity is primarily because, as IdiocyInAction said, 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.

"because men don't want to be in relationships with women who earn more."

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.

You misread me. I wrote

>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.

Good luck finding that. Women tend to not be interested in men who earn less than they do. I think the closest you may find are women temporarily supporting their husbands while they finish their degree or something like that, but again, the plan is for the husband to become the main earner.

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.

Yep, at least in my case. My wife is able to pursue her fiction writing career full-time right now because I'm still working a corporate job. Just before deciding she was too burnt out and had to quit she was working a 130k/year proposal management job and self-publishing a book a year on the side.

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.

> 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)

That might be more difficult than becoming a runaway success. I don't think the distribution of author earnings peaks in the middle.

I can see that. A lot of things tend to be bimodal in their distribution. Let's hope she becomes a runaway success then :).

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).

Wow this tuned into a different narrative quickly. The above comment did not blame women for men’s plight but did not compare apples to apples. Gender pay gaps usually involve different wages for same work, not downgrades that all genders do.

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.

> Gender pay gaps usually involve different wages for same work

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...

> Please keep in mind that women seem to be disproportionately disadvantaged after having children

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.

It should be noted in this context that women are individually more likely to have children then men. Men with multiple children with multiple women do not generally spend the same amount of time as the sum of all the women.

bro your comment hits a bit too close to home. my partner took her master's degree yet she couldn't find a matching job in our area. at the very least, she now has better grasp on some things that actually matter to our life and her input is really valuable for me. so all in all, it's fine I guess.

Well, my brother is a musician and rents a room in a large house. He doesn't have a sugar mama/papa, music pays the the bills because he's actually frugal. For decades my dad implored him to "get a job" but in his mid-40s he's still is still happy with his life. Some other working musicians have partners with a higher income, but many don't; it's more common for them to be happily single or coupled with other musicians.

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.

To chime in, I see a lot of women supporting their men as well, probably more often tbh. But yeah, one stressed out breadwinner, one struggling x isn’t that uncommon. For some reason I’ve seen a lot of breadwinners go into the trades rather than corporate

This point would have been better made without involving gender. Who cares if it’s more often than not the man? That’s completely irrelevant. Unless your point really was about the gender, in which case you should elaborate.

>Who cares if it’s more often than not the man?

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.

You may want to try widening your social circles if this is a recurring theme in your life. Making friends as an adult is hard and making intimate connections sometimes even harder. The best thing I did for myself and my dating/personal life was get involved in charity work. You get to give back, meet people and improve your community. Who knows —- you might even fall in love with your community.

I am currently celebrating one year since my last layoff with no real job lead in site. Plenty of dead end interviews despite 8 years of experience. I have some part time freelance work but it is not sustainable.

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.

I’m aware of this but I still don’t understand what your point is. Some men are hard done by because they allow their partner to pursue a career which is unlikely to be economically fruitful? I want you to elaborate on what exact message you’re trying to deliver. I’m not being facetious, I really don’t get it.

There's not really a larger point. You asked for a clarification from the comment upchain (which by the way, was not me), and I explained the reasoning that may have it come up. It was a small aside, but the comment's main point was gender-agnostic: it's easier to pursue low paying passions when you have a safety net. Be it a spouse, parents, or a small loan of a million dollars.

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.

Not necessarily a partner, parents are often where the extra income comes from. Though I suspect parents are more likely to support a grown daughter than a grown son.

yup. currently paying those bills now, or rather, every month.

don't love IT, but one of us needs to get enough cash to live.

> income isn't the only measure of happiness.

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.

> She pointed out the biggest difference she notices living in the US is that people prioritize money above all else.

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 figured it was the exact opposite. It was the very slow start of when life started to get really expensive. by the 00's there was no time to just go out and pursue your passions, you needed to pay rent the next month.

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.

If your good times cause a crisis with long lasting consequences, that isn’t exactly a good thing. I could list a hundred example situations but there’s no need, is there?

> […] is that income isn't the only measure of happiness.

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-...

I’m very curious - is your sister single? I ask because often low wage earners are being subsidized by their partner.

It could be looked at that way, or as a single-income house where the other partner is doing some supplementary income.

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.

That's true. I feel like the important bit is covering the essentials. 2x more is not 2x better, but you need to get above a certain threshold.

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.

Some study released years ago gave a USD value for the salary that was the happiness asymptote. Recent inflation has likely demolished that number, and I think it is an important one to know. It did not speak to the case of not needing a salary at all. The ability to be idle, or seelf direct however you want is very enticing, but I could see it going badly in a number of ways.

I think I have read that, IIRC it was around 150k?

When I read it it was 75, so maybe they did do the study again.

> earnings disparities between (e.g.) genders and other groups

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).

At least the version I hear most often about is a gross disparity between the genders without taking anything into account.

IIRC if you look into it it's mostly a maternity penalty anyway.

Which is also why a lot of the latest policies are to provide equal maternity and paternity leave. Which is pretty good anyways, why shouldn’t fathers be able to take as much time off?

I strongly support (m/p)aternity leave equality, but I can think of lots of reasons new mothers should be able to take more time off.

If your goal is gender equality, though, it needs to be equal, and we should encourage fathers to take the full time off as well. Otherwise, from an employer's perspective, women are ultimately lower-value employees, because they have an additional pool of time off they can utilize, while men do not.

Balancing that out gives one less reason to favor one gender over the other when it comes to hiring and assigning a salary.

One thing is the leave shouldn’t be “all at once or lose it” but a bucket that can be drained over time. The mother can use it very early and the father later which provides the best experience for everyone.

What if women are higher-value stay-at-home parents than men? Then maybe the optimal equilibrium is reached by more maternity leave taken on average by women than paternity leave taken by men… which produces an inverse result in the workplace.

This is contrary to the goal of equality.

It all hinges on whether or not sex/gender (and everything that comes with it) makes you more likely to enjoy and/or excel in certain roles. My gut feeling is it does.

If it does, then the goal of that kind of equality is a false goal.

If not, then you’re right.

It would be best if we gave parents the choice to determine what split is best for children themselves.

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.

Tell that to the women who are made to feel uncomfortable in their chosen work environments by men whose gut tells them they shouldn't be there.

No, that is not the kind of equality this discussion is about.

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".

I read the thread more closely and, you’re right, if men are not allowed to take the same amount of paternity leave as women, then that should be changed so that any person can take the same amount of parental leave. I didn’t realize that was not the case (I don’t live in the States). I was responding more directly to the notion that men should be encouraged to take the full leave / same amount of leave as women.

There is a lot of cultural pressure around men taking leave even if it is available.

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

While the details differ, the social benefit are mostly similar for both maternity and paternity leave. It create a better bond between parents and child, resulting in children that grow up more healthy and productive for society. Parental bonding take times.

In the news I mostly see or hear about the non-adjusted gender pay gap (women earn 17-21% less than men). The adjusted pay gap, which takes hours worked into account, is only 1-5% [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap

And that's across all ages, but as you go younger the wage gap actually reverses and women make more than men.

I think the argument is that women should be paid the same for doing the same jobs regardless of their age.

the issue is that if you are 10% less experienced than someone else because you took a year out of your career (imagining two people who started working 10 years ago), it is hard.

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.

There's one thing you're missing here, and that is as women make up a larger percentage of an occupations' workforce, the wages start to go down with it, which is what happened or is happening with e.g. doctors and teachers.

Do you really expect employers to use their increased bargaining power in favour of workers? Of course doubling the number of workers in an industry is going to lower wages.

How are you relating this to the thread? Maybe you mean it takes time for capital to lower everyone’s income when market competition increases, the actual details of the excess humans matter less and less each year.

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.

If you're talking about the difference at the aggregate level, it's mostly a difference in selected job types (eg STEM vs social sciences).

I'm talking about e.g. within STEM where a gap of both pay and position remains.

I'm aware of the pipeline issues for many STEM positions. Do you have any data on the pay gap by industry for the groups within STEM?

Which group would you like to start with? Data science?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/gender-pay-difference-field-d...

I'd perfer to see many positions within STEM so neither of us can cherrypick.

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 guess it depends what you're reading, but the point remains that there's likely gender based pay gap within any given field/position.

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.

It’s both actually, and you can’t be sure which measure someone is talking about unless you ask them. It’s quite common to hear people suggest that the gender pay gap is due to the fields women enter, rather than a disparity between pay within the same field. As with anything, there are different ways to measure societal issues, both macro and micro. I would argue that both are valuable for understanding the context and scope of the issue.

No, that depends on the speaker. Some talk within a job but from my anecdotal experience most do not.

> But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title

And they have to remember to avoid comparing the per hour earning at all cost.

"But when people are talking about the gender pay gap they usually mean within a specific field or job title."

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.

I've never heard of the gender pay gap meant as this very granular, targeted comparison.

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.

and I know a ton of people miserable and stressed because they are buried in college debt. The fact the government has created a system where 18 year old kids can rack up massive debts that can't be removed via bankruptcy is insane. Changing that would instantly fix the system, colleges would have to prove ROI or it would go back to how it used to be for non-practical degrees(only rich kids wasted their time and money on them)

reading this makes me very happy to have done by university in France.

My tuition was 400 euros per year for undergrad and master's.

Or on this same point but from another angle, consider the ways you get into the higher end of the income distribution without a college degree. You either have family connections that let you take over a business, or you do something that comes with a big premium (walk on roofs, go up on ladders, move furniture, work construction).

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.

I didn't win the birth lottery on #2 either; I've got some physical disability, though I have still done a bit of that type of work and if you think it comes with a "big premium" then your experience is very different from mine. Roofing is an incredibly simple job to learn for instance, and it pays little better than minimum wage. From my actual experience (admittedly limited to the South Texas market), blue collar jobs still pay like crap. The toll taken on the body actually seems to be pretty individualized; I know some men who seem to have no problem working into their 60's and I think that keeping active within reasonable bounds actually contributed to that.

My point is not that you can make a good income doing blue collar work (you generally can't) but rather that some people do make a reasonable income doing that type of work, and in those cases there's a good explanation.

> 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.

Yes, my experience is generally residential, but it also tends to be that risk is just one of the costs that blue-collar workers are expected to take; there is little pay premium for it.

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.

The key in the trades is striking out on your own as rapidly as possible; if you don’t get to that tier you’ll end up with a moderate income.

Yes. Trades == business. If you want to make a lot of money, you have to become a business owner.

I don't get your point. Negative ROI means you will have to earn extra money to cover the shortfall through some other method. In other words, it is a rich people's game. You either have to be rich already, or become rich afterwards.

Going on vacation has a “negative roi” if you only look at it from a financial perspective. That doesn’t mean that choosing to travel is always a bad idea.

> 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 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.

Happiness is greatly impacted by the burden of large debts that hold you down. If you are not making enough to cover your expenses you will likely not be happy, even if your job is amazing.

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.

Irrelevant. The article is about ROI, not about happiness. Income isn't the only measure of, I don't know, longevity, calorie intake, hair color, number of children, etc., either, but we're not talking of any of those things.

There is a easy way to measure happiness. Record level of women are on antidepressants. And there is significant correlation with education level.

And please do not argue "she is happy with her choice" and on antidepressant at the same time!

There are many reasons why one takes antidepressant, I do yet I love my job and I am happy with my choice.

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.

I hope your wife recovers well.

But my argument is about broad statistics, single case does not prove anything.

Your premise assumes people on antidepressants are not like the GP's wife. We have no reason to assume people are less happy only on antidepressant subscriptions. It could be awareness boosts in mental health, it could be higher stressors because they have more responsibility.

This could go the other way though. It's not just that you spent $Y on the degree, you also spent X years on the degree, which are years you could've spent finding that enjoyable career.

The other part of the story is a Master's degree is a good segway to a career change. So what if the cost is too high. I need a career change.

I imagine that falls into the chunk that did have a positive ROI.

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).

Sensemaking is at play here too. Resilient individuals will (consciously and subconsciously) adjust and retell their narrative in a positive way. This is done in order to mitigate the distress of making choices that were less-ideal, in hindsight, but were made with the best information they had at the time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensemaking

That doesn't make a difference here, because it cuts both ways. Someone who gave up on a lucrative career in order to pursue their dream job might retroactively rationalize their decision as the best one, but also, someone who gave up on their dream job in order to make more money might also retroactively rationalize their decision as the best one.

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.

Your anecdote actually makes sense because she is pursuing a career in her degree. She didn’t get a degree in Sales.

Yes, indeed. There seems to be a gender disparity in those choices. ;)

this and also some people study simply out of curiosity about something.

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