Do engineers really make better spouses? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#111

Post by mduerksen » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

RankingMember wrote: post #97

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #13

I'm reminded of a scene from Scrubs where Turk tells JD: "I love how kids of divorced parents swear they have the market cornered on family dysfunction...". Point being - I don't view "not divorced" as a significant metric for a successful / happy marriage.

Louis CK has a good bit about this too: "Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it's true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. That would be sad. If two people were married and ... they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times."

He is wrong about this one.

The quality of marriage is neither binary nor one-dimensional, it varies over time, and most importantly, can be influenced for the better or worse.

Its graph over time is also also not monotonic decreasing.

I fear that some marriages get divorced at a local minimum.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#112

Post by randomdata » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 3:34 PM UTC

lolipop12 wrote: post #42

Engineers have engineering degrees. Programming != engineering. Just like MCSE != engineer. Just like 'helpdesk engineer' != engineer.

The list includes "construction equipment operators". Which degree do you need for that?

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#113

Post by vfrogger » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 3:53 PM UTC

RankingMember wrote: post #97

Disruptive_Dave wrote: post #13

I'm reminded of a scene from Scrubs where Turk tells JD: "I love how kids of divorced parents swear they have the market cornered on family dysfunction...". Point being - I don't view "not divorced" as a significant metric for a successful / happy marriage.

Louis CK has a good bit about this too: "Divorce is always good news. I know that sounds weird, but it's true because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce. That would be sad. If two people were married and ... they just had a great thing and then they got divorced, that would be really sad. But that has happened zero times."

In college I had a sociology class where the professor had studied happiness in marriage. He ran a survey asking how happy people were with their marriage. 5 years later, he ran a follow up survey to people who said in the first survey that they were unhappy in their marriage and the only reason they would not get divorced was because of (children, religious doctrines, etc).

He was shocked to find, that of these marriages that were the least happy, something like 20% went ahead and got a divorce anyways, but, of the other 80%, their happiness scores were no different from the general population.

Moral of the story, perhaps people are a little too quick to pull the plug on a marriage.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#114

Post by alanctgardner3 » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

Fuxy wrote: post #69

alanctgardner3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, in your view women: don't work, can't be engineers, always want to be in a relationship, and are terribly unfaithful and will leave you for somebody with more money? Also, maybe stop calling adult women "girls".

I use the terms interchangeably. I know there is a subtle difference mostly of maturity but don't care enough to pay attention. No need to get offended over every little thing.

There's a big difference, calling someone "boy" or "girl" instead of "man" or "woman" is demeaning. How often do you honestly refer to male engineers as "boys"?

> don't care enough to pay attention

Surprisingly, it doesn't matter how much you care.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#115

Post by dcherman » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 4:08 PM UTC

Fuxy wrote: post #62

balabaster wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also... there's a huge assumption that more money equals less financial problems. One thing I've learned from the experience of my own finances is that the times in my life when I've been flat broke, I had less financial problems than in times when I've been flush with cash. The higher your income, the higher your debt load - and this is caused by easy access to credit, social conditioning to chasing the dream, climb…

I don't have a credit card for this exact reason. I get at least 5 invitations by mail every week but i don't really need it. Spend the money you have not the money you can get.

If you treat a credit card the same as cash, then there is literally no difference in how much you should be spending, but you need the discipline to actually do that.

There are a number of benefits to using credit cards that cash doesn't have:

1. Build a credit score

2. Fraud protection

3. Related to 2, but if I lose my card it's not a huge deal, cancel it and get a new one. If I lose 300$ cash, it's just gone.

4. Rewards! ( 1-3% back on 20K spending per year is a few hundred bucks )

5. Extended Warranties. Often times, you can get an extra year or more on warranties through your credit cards. That's why I put my new kitchen appliances on my Amex.

6. Free loans! I re-did my kitchen last year at about a 10K cost. Although I had the cash to do so, I instead signed up for a new card with 18 month 0% interest. That gave me another year and a half of saving before paying that off, so it's less of a hit to my balance at once. IMPORTANT I would not have done this if I did not have the cash to pay this off at any point in time.

It's really, really simple too - just pay off your statement balance in full each month and you'll never pay interest. I can count on one hand both how many times I've paid interest, and how much I've paid in interest. All of them were due to my own screw ups with scheduling payments ( off by a day - oops! ), however I've benefited far more from the cards than I've ever paid out. In most of those cases, the banks waived the fees anyway since there was a track record of 3-5+ years of never missing a payment, always paying in full.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#116

Post by cafard » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

Very odd. The list concludes with three skilled trades that share the name engineer, but don't have the same requirements for education and certification as (say) civil or electrical engineering. Now, I expect that the insurance companies see to it that all of those working as locomotive engineers have more rigorous training than many of us working as software engineers, and the same may be true for some operating engineers. Still, the list suggests a certain carelessness.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#117

Post by robotcookies » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 4:18 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #58

Without having read the original study, it would be worthwhile to see if the there was any attempt to normalize by education level, income and age. It's likely that these are more salient factors and profession is acting as a proxy for these.

I know that the most common reason cited for divorce is finances. So it may indeed be that higher income professions in general have a lower divorce rate.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#118

Post by bryondowd » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #39

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2.Financial stability means that even if the woman is unhappy in the relationship she is more likely to stick around because it offers stability. There's so many assumptions made in that sentence... 1) Women care about money more than happiness 2) Engineers are awash with money 3) Women aren't engineers 4) Men are engineers.

Also... there's a huge assumption that more money equals less financial problems. One thing I've learned from the experience of my own finances is that the times in my life when I've been flat broke, I had less financial problems than in times when I've been flush with cash. The higher your income, the higher your debt load - and this is caused by easy access to credit, social conditioning to chasing the dream, climb…

A higher income means more options. Yes, you have more options to get yourself into trouble, but you also have more options to keep yourself taken care of.

I was making about $12/hour before I finished my CS degree. I had no debts and some money in the bank because I had no real expenses.

Now I make about twice that, but I got my own place with my fiancee and raked up far more debt (on top of student loans) than I can afford to pay at my current salary. My quality of living has actually been decreasing.

Does this mean I have more financial problems than I did before? No, not really. I have plenty of options now that I didn't before. In the worst case scenario, I can declare bankruptcy and start from scratch, where I'll have no debts (aside from student loans) and still have twice the income I would have otherwise, and be able to find a maintainable quality of life significantly higher than I would have with the lower income.

A low income doesn't mean you have less problems, it means you have fewer options and have to simply accept a worse outcome.

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#119

Post by lucozade » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 4:24 PM UTC

oldmanjay wrote: post #106

halcyondaze wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a great communicator != never lying.

well and let's undercut the ridiculous conceit directly, being an engineer also cannot be equated to never lying.

Maybe they're all lying about their marital status?

Re: Do engineers really make better spouses?

#120

Post by anonymous8616 » Tue, Apr 14, 2015, 4:32 PM UTC

My own completely made up supposition:

Engineers are more likely to take a pragmatic approach instead of a sentimental "Oh no! He/She doesn't have exactly the same taste in vacations/home decor/friends/whatever, we must not be soulmates after all!"