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