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There has never been a 1:1 relationship between how essential a job is, nor how difficult it is, and the pay. It's mostly about a) the barriers to entry, which
by pc86 5y ago
There has never been a 1:1 relationship between how essential a job is, nor how difficult it is, and the pay. It's mostly about a) the barriers to entry, which can be academic (law, medicine), regulatory (law, medicine, probably finance?), institutional (finance, tier 1 law), or just how grueling it is to get through (definitely medicine outside of some specialties like family med or peds, probably tier 1 finance/IB too); b) leverage/BATNA. A is more systemic - it drives wages up or down as an industry and is why a family med doctor makes $200k/yr but a radiologist makes $600k/yr. B is more localized, if I have a lot of leverage or my BATNA is "sit on a beach and drink" I might pull a $400k TC instead of $300k simply by waiting around for a better offer. The more people in my field have that opportunity, the more of a systemic pressure this has on wages.
Anyone can be a teacher. The certification requirements are low. The academic requirements aren't anything more than most kids are getting anyway (a degree in anything will qualify you in most US states). Most teachers need to work so their BATNA is "work someplace else doing the exact same thing for roughly the exact same amount of money." What's more (and I didn't really mention it above) is that you can't tie teaching directly to income. Not that you should be able to, but if you're a quant at an HFT shop you can probably draw a line with a pen from your code to tens of millions of dollars in profit that's there this year that wasn't there last year. Do that year over year and it's hard to argue against you getting paid $800k-1M/yr in cash and bonuses. Helping one of your students read a little better, or finally understand linear algebra, isn't going to increase your personal bottom line at all.
- cm2012 5y agoFor most non stem teachers, teaching is the best paid job they could possibly get once you account for pension, etc
- pc86 5y agoYes even in US public schools, and even for relatively new hires, the benefits can be pretty great. Time off, retirement, etc. And it's still possible to get into administration and make what an entry-level SWE makes. Hell, when I was in HS in the very early 00's there was a big scandal in my area because we found out the district superintendent was making $200k/yr. For context, most of my friends' parents worked blue collar and manual labor jobs. Teachers averaged $44k/yr or so back then.
- cm2012 5y agoNot to mention that for most teachers you're going to draw a pension for 20 years after you retire at 3/4 of your max salary, so all salaries are 75% higher than the listed number.
- gonehome 5y agoImo this is related to value provided. It’s why an excellent tutor can make serious money and be hired by wealthy families to teach kids. Good teaching is a scarce resource. Many (most?) teachers are bad and the existing incentives don’t require them to be good. It’s hard to fire them and public schools have issues which limit selection and competition. Perhaps harsh, but some of the dimmest people I knew in highschool became teachers and some of the meanest adults I’ve ever interacted with were teachers too. Obviously great outliers exist, but I’m skeptical they’re the norm. Most jobs that have high demand, real evaluation of skill, and limited supply of people that can do it well (for whatever reason) pay well in capitalist markets. The exception I can think of would be something like social work, where demand is high, costs are high and it’s mostly government funded.
- pc86 5y agoI don't think that's an exception, as government funding and capitalist market are more-or-less mutually exclusive, even in capitalist countries. Nobody in a state government makes more than the governor, nobody in the federal government makes more than the President, etc. And for social work specifically, "real evaluation of skill" is going to raise more than a few eyebrows.
- gonehome 5y agoYeah, I think these are all fair points.
- Oregon893 5y agoI think you forgot what has been the single largest driver of salaries for most Europeans, unions and legistlation.
- pc86 5y agoI'd rather be a software developer in the US than a teacher in Europe.
- seoaeu 5y agoSure. And I'd rather win the lottery than have socialized healthcare. Obviously it is better to be the beneficiary of income inequality in a country with large disparities of income than it is to work a "normal" job in a more equal society.