4 ms·

It's worth asking why your wife doesn't switch to your job, to make 3x the salary. Either a) she couldn't do it, in which case by extension it boils down to s

It's worth asking why your wife doesn't switch to your job, to make 3x the salary. Either a) she couldn't do it, in which case by extension it boils down to supply and demand, or b) she doesn't want to do it, because she gets a whole bunch of joy from the job which is invisibly priced into compensation (and which indirectly goes back to supply and demand.) I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.

adamsea 8y ago
> "she gets a whole bunch of joy from the job which is invisibly priced into compensation" This is a pretty naive statement.
- ummonk 8y ago
  How so? Many people (women even moreso than men in my experience) prioritize fulfilling work over higher paying work. This is observable in, for example, people pursuing careers in saturated industries like journalism, art, or acting, as well as going for "more meaningful" startup jobs instead of FANG jobs. I personally switched from rocket science to tech and then to a FANG so I could get increased compensation and have a chance of catching up to Bay Area housing prices. My compensation increased 3x in the process. Most of my peers wouldn't do that.
- metalchianti 8y ago
  Could you elaborate? If not (b) then it seems she would certainly fall into (a).
athenot 8y ago
> I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure. What his story underlines is that teaching young human beings about navigating life is rewarded 3x less than churing out code that fits some business objective. The market doesn't care about people, it cares about profit. In that system, human life is only important to the degree that it helps market dynamics.
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  The main problem with teaching is that there's many people who can do it. If you compound the issue with paying teachers $150k a year, not only would the cost of education skyrocket, you would be running into more and more people unemployed but with a degree specifically meant for teaching. I'm not saying everyone can teach equally. I'm saying most everyone can become qualified to teach. Please don't accuse me of saying teaching is easy. At the very least, a much larger subset can learn to teach than can learn to code.
  - beefalo 8y ago
    Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business. Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.
    - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
      >The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse. This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk about testing teachers in some way. I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of standardized test. If you can take those into account, as long as a teacher comes into work on time I'm not sure how you could differentiate the good from bad. An example I like to use is my AP Calc teacher from highschool, who had an average score of 4.7 for her students on the AP test. The average in 2012 was a 2.9 (the year I took it, it seems to be higher now, I can't say to as if they made it easier or if people got better though) [1]. In many school systems though, if your teacher has an average score below the national average, you can't do anything about it. [1] https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/AP-Exam-Score-Distributions.php?year=2012 https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Servi...
magduf 8y ago
I think there's a big problem with this whole comparison here. You're comparing a career which is almost entirely private-sector (programming) to one which is almost entirely public-sector (teaching). Teachers are mostly employed by local governments, after all, so that profession isn't subject to the market forces which affect private-sector jobs. The reason teachers aren't paid well isn't because there isn't much demand for them, it's because the local governments choose to pay them poorly, and then they wonder why they can't find enough good teachers. Companies that don't pay programmers handsomely will soon find themselves without programmers (or with really lousy ones), and then they'll go out of business. This doesn't happen with public schools.

adamsea 8y ago

> "she gets a whole bunch of joy from the job which is invisibly priced into compensation" This is a pretty naive statement.

ummonk 8y ago
How so? Many people (women even moreso than men in my experience) prioritize fulfilling work over higher paying work. This is observable in, for example, people pursuing careers in saturated industries like journalism, art, or acting, as well as going for "more meaningful" startup jobs instead of FANG jobs. I personally switched from rocket science to tech and then to a FANG so I could get increased compensation and have a chance of catching up to Bay Area housing prices. My compensation increased 3x in the process. Most of my peers wouldn't do that.
metalchianti 8y ago
Could you elaborate? If not (b) then it seems she would certainly fall into (a).

athenot 8y ago

> I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure. What his story underlines is that teaching young human beings about navigating life is rewarded 3x less than churing out code that fits some business objective. The market doesn't care about people, it cares about profit. In that system, human life is only important to the degree that it helps market dynamics.

ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
The main problem with teaching is that there's many people who can do it. If you compound the issue with paying teachers $150k a year, not only would the cost of education skyrocket, you would be running into more and more people unemployed but with a degree specifically meant for teaching. I'm not saying everyone can teach equally. I'm saying most everyone can become qualified to teach. Please don't accuse me of saying teaching is easy. At the very least, a much larger subset can learn to teach than can learn to code.
- beefalo 8y ago
  Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business. Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.
  - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    >The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse. This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk about testing teachers in some way. I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of standardized test. If you can take those into account, as long as a teacher comes into work on time I'm not sure how you could differentiate the good from bad. An example I like to use is my AP Calc teacher from highschool, who had an average score of 4.7 for her students on the AP test. The average in 2012 was a 2.9 (the year I took it, it seems to be higher now, I can't say to as if they made it easier or if people got better though) [1]. In many school systems though, if your teacher has an average score below the national average, you can't do anything about it. [1] https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/AP-Exam-Score-Distributions.php?year=2012 https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Servi...

magduf 8y ago

I think there's a big problem with this whole comparison here. You're comparing a career which is almost entirely private-sector (programming) to one which is almost entirely public-sector (teaching). Teachers are mostly employed by local governments, after all, so that profession isn't subject to the market forces which affect private-sector jobs. The reason teachers aren't paid well isn't because there isn't much demand for them, it's because the local governments choose to pay them poorly, and then they wonder why they can't find enough good teachers. Companies that don't pay programmers handsomely will soon find themselves without programmers (or with really lousy ones), and then they'll go out of business. This doesn't happen with public schools.