231–240 of 242 posts
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"Don't pay women less for being women" is unenforceable.
Not true: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633
This is terrible and unjustifiable, but that is how it is.
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Hmm. It's a bit suspicious that communism/socialism isn't part of the argument here. Seems pretty obvious to me that in a free market, doctors would always be highly paid as they take years to train and everyone, rich or poor, needs them. But in a non-free market where they can't demand their true price, who would want to be a doctor? I'd expect that is a much bigger factor towards it being low status than the fact t…
Russia hasn't been communist in that sense for decades. There are plenty of professions there that have become exceedingly wealthy in that time, but doctors have not. So to make your case, you'd need to demonstrate 1) that specific ongoing regulatory burdens in Russia have served to suppress physician pay, and 2) that the persistence of those particular burdens in Russia's era of deregulation is not linked to gender…
Regardless, I'm not going to go digging around for evidence. My point is that the post above and the linked article did not even address the socialism aspect, which is a huge warning flag.
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No, I understand that. What I'm saying is that I have no "calling" and do not expect to ever have a calling. I do development work because it makes me money, I am very good at it, and solving solvable problems feels nice, but if you dropped 10 million in my lap I doubt I would ever touch a line of code again. Barring the vicissitudes of fortune, I'd spend the rest of my life relaxing, spending time with people I like…
So if I said I'd pay you x more amount than what you're currently making, to don a rubber smock and pack pickles for a living for the rest of your life, is it just a question of what x is?
But since X is probably about ~25k (which is what I'm shooting for as a developer anyway within the next 5 years), and I already make more than the average pickle-packer, I don't think that's going to happen. :)
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The concept of a vocation is a fairly recent invention, mostly arising out of the Protestant brand of Christianity. Work has been disdained throughout most of history [1]. Therefore, I would say that liking your work or finding your calling are not things that everyone can even do or has to do. The idea of a vocation strikes me more as intellectual rationalizations arising in tandem with the current economic mode of…
That's very interesting. I suspect folks like Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tze, Socrates, Murasaki Shikibu and their ilk knew what a "calling" was long before there was a word for it.
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I don't understand what you mean. A business has to produce output that others are willing to pay for. Sitting around reading and spending time with a girlfriend are not things most other people will pay you for. It's easy to value a person as an individual - it's quite another thing to take money out of your pocket and give to everyone you 'value' because they are individuals.
Oh, sorry. I'm from a tradition where "read a lot" means expanding your mind. (I'm assuming you're not reading pointless romance novels, and such.) My response was predicated on the idea that your employer was not valuing intellectual/cultural education. (If that doesn't apply, then I'm doubly sorry.) EDIT: I now realize this comment may sound ridiculously smug, but I'm not sure what to do about that. I do realize th…
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So if I said I'd pay you x more amount than what you're currently making, to don a rubber smock and pack pickles for a living for the rest of your life, is it just a question of what x is?
Yes, absolutely. Indeed I was slightly happier back when I was doing menial physical labor, since it left my mind free to think, and when I got home, I was physically tired but not mentally exhausted like I am from days of coding binges and context switches. But since X is probably about ~25k (which is what I'm shooting for as a developer anyway within the next 5 years), and I already make more than the average pickl…
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Not true: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633
It really is true, because you can say anything you want (or nothing) about the reasons why you did it, and get away with it. You have to be a total moron not to get away with it. This is terrible and unjustifiable, but that is how it is.
If the law says you cannot lie about your reasons and that you must have them, then there is a means to enforce it. I mean, I could say I didn't rob a bank and get away with it due to lax laws and inadequate technology, but that doesn't mean it is impossible to protect banks from robbery. It means you reform the processes.
For instance, if employers went through independently regulated agencies to conduct hiring/firing/pay, then they wouldn't be able to make decisions like that and get away with it.
There will always be people who think "that guy sits around all day and earns twice as much as me while I work my ass off" rightfully or out of ignorance. This puts the boss/dept. manager in a weak position.
I mean, if employees can hurt your business just by knowing how it works, then you're fucked anyway.
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You don't. You assume that, innate talents being equal, women are equal to men in terms of productivity. I mean, this is the stated intention of the Feminist movement in a nutshell, yes? And then you take a look at the other stats (as I mentioned, females take more leave. And females are more likely to have a child and stop working [1]. And there are the liability issues, ironically caused by the Feminist movement.)…
Given that employees only stay for a couple years on average anyway these days, you're far more likely to lose either a male or female employee to a job switch than to lose a female employee to maternity leave. It's a highly overestimated risk. Not to mention extremely unfair to women who don't have kids.
All 8 people on my team have been around longer than that. I've been there 8 years, and the other senior person has been around slightly longer. Our boss has been with the company for I think 17+ years. (And our old boss, who took the other half when the team got split in a reorg, has been with the company for 30+ years.)
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http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm says: """The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.6 years in January 2014, unchanged from January 2012"""
"""In January 2014, median employee tenure (the point at which half of all workers had more tenure and half had less tenure) for men was 4.7 years, unchanged from January 2012. For women, median tenure in January 2014 was 4.5 years, about unchanged from January 2012. Among men, 30 percent of wage and salary workers had 10 years or more of tenure with their current employer, compared with 28 percent for women. (See tables 1 and 3.)"""
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That's very interesting. I suspect folks like Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tze, Socrates, Murasaki Shikibu and their ilk knew what a "calling" was long before there was a word for it.
I agree with GP - that's quite anachronistic. I can't speak for Murasaki Shikibu, since I haven't read her, but I think the idea is quite discordant with the published thoughts of the others you mention. Socrates, for example, might have believed he personally had a specific purpose in the world, but he would have understood that in a very different way than our conception of a vocation.