These findings might also be useful for choosing between high-variance and low-variance careers, insofar as you are able to predict how much better at each of these skills you are than average.
For example, engineering is a field where most people earn a decent wage and some people earn a very decent (but not obscene) wage. I think the average salary of an engineering graduate is about $58,000, with the vast majority of that made up by people working in the $30,000-$50,000 band with a couple of hotshots pulling down six-digit salaries and almost nobody grinding out a subsistence wage. By contrast writing a book is a field where one or two people become megastar billionaires like J K Rowling or John Grisham and everybody else earns practically nothing. Pretty amazingly (I think it’s amazing) the Bureau of Labour Statistics reckons the average wage for a writer is almost exactly the same as the average wage of an engineer ($56,000), but it seems likely to me the median salary is much lower than in engineering (maybe something like $15,000-$25,000) with the mean heavily skewed by the handful of super-rich authors.
What this suggests is that you can – on a probabilistic basis – determine whether you are likely to end up at the top or bottom of the income distribution of your chosen profession. If you know your political knowledge and skills are weak, it would be a good idea to pick engineering over writing (assuming you are equally good at both) because you are more likely to end up earning $30,000 than $100,000. If you are excellent at office politics you are much more likely to form the sort of connections that give you a bestseller, and so writing might offer you the highest expected earnings even though the average salary in both professions is (nearly) identical.
This is complicated by the fact that ‘political knowledge and skills’ are not consistent between careers (the most insensitive politician is likely to be far more manipulative than the smoothest political operator in database administration), but I think it is probably possible to allow for this and still have more information about career choice than you did before.
Pretty amazingly (I think it’s amazing) the Bureau of Labour Statistics reckons the average wage for a writer is almost exactly the same as the average wage of an engineer ($56,000), but it seems likely to me the median salary is much lower than in engineering (maybe something like $15,000-$25,000) with the mean heavily skewed by the handful of super-rich authors.
Ah yes, this makes a lot of sense and explains my earlier confusion; although it may still be true that there is a high variance in income between novelists, not all writers are novelists (for that matter, I suppose not all novelists are writers, at least as far as the BLS will bin them). I think that indicates my illustrative example is flawed, although I hope the wider point still stands.
Per the BLS site, “Writers and authors develop written content for advertisements, books, magazines, movie and television scripts, songs, and online publications....Writers and authors work in an office, at home, or wherever else they have access to a computer. Most work full time. However, self-employed and freelance writers usually work part time or have variable schedules. About two-thirds were self-employed in 2012.”
In other words, a lot of writers are neither struggling along at $15,000-$25,000 nor making John Grisham levels of money. Some even collect salaries and benefits. I made a pretty good living as a fulltime writer for about 12 years, during which time I wrote essentially no fiction.
Your criticism is absolutely correct; not all writers are novelist so even if novelists show the income variation I assert, that wouldn’t show up on the BLS statistics. I think that shows that my illustrative example is flawed, but I hope it doesn’t undermine the main conclusion too much.
This is complicated by the fact that ‘political knowledge and skills’ are not consistent between careers
Also (and I suspect even more importantly) by the fact that the impact of political knowledge and skills may be different in different careers. Not only because some careers simply have more room for variation, but also because some careers have more scope for effective evaluation on non-political factors.
I suspect that both engineering and novel-writing have lower impact-of-politics than average, but even though novel-writing is higher-variance I suspect that there’s more scope to turn political skill into career success in engineering than in novel-writing.
the most insensitive politician is likely to be far more manipulative than the smoothest political operator in database administration
I think this is a slightly misleading way of putting it, for a couple of reasons. I would expect the average political skill level among full-time politicians to be pretty high, but mostly because politics is almost as high-variance a career path as writing or music: for every full-time legislator or lobbyist, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of low-level organizers, party functionaries, and so forth, all the way down to campaign workers and school board members. It’s just that most of the lower-level people in politics are doing it as a hobby or sideline, and getting paid part-time if at all, just like most musicians have day jobs.
Also, I think you’re probably underestimating the amount of political skill that can be applied to technical jobs—though many people with more political than technical savvy drift into management at some point.
These findings might also be useful for choosing between high-variance and low-variance careers, insofar as you are able to predict how much better at each of these skills you are than average.
For example, engineering is a field where most people earn a decent wage and some people earn a very decent (but not obscene) wage. I think the average salary of an engineering graduate is about $58,000, with the vast majority of that made up by people working in the $30,000-$50,000 band with a couple of hotshots pulling down six-digit salaries and almost nobody grinding out a subsistence wage. By contrast writing a book is a field where one or two people become megastar billionaires like J K Rowling or John Grisham and everybody else earns practically nothing. Pretty amazingly (I think it’s amazing) the Bureau of Labour Statistics reckons the average wage for a writer is almost exactly the same as the average wage of an engineer ($56,000), but it seems likely to me the median salary is much lower than in engineering (maybe something like $15,000-$25,000) with the mean heavily skewed by the handful of super-rich authors.
What this suggests is that you can – on a probabilistic basis – determine whether you are likely to end up at the top or bottom of the income distribution of your chosen profession. If you know your political knowledge and skills are weak, it would be a good idea to pick engineering over writing (assuming you are equally good at both) because you are more likely to end up earning $30,000 than $100,000. If you are excellent at office politics you are much more likely to form the sort of connections that give you a bestseller, and so writing might offer you the highest expected earnings even though the average salary in both professions is (nearly) identical.
This is complicated by the fact that ‘political knowledge and skills’ are not consistent between careers (the most insensitive politician is likely to be far more manipulative than the smoothest political operator in database administration), but I think it is probably possible to allow for this and still have more information about career choice than you did before.
Are you sure about that? http://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/writers-and-authors.htm reports only the median not the mean (good for them), at $55k, and in a tab gives an idea of the tails:
Most people who write for a living are not novelists, they are marketers, technical documentation authors...
Ah yes, this makes a lot of sense and explains my earlier confusion; although it may still be true that there is a high variance in income between novelists, not all writers are novelists (for that matter, I suppose not all novelists are writers, at least as far as the BLS will bin them). I think that indicates my illustrative example is flawed, although I hope the wider point still stands.
Writers != Novelists
Per the BLS site, “Writers and authors develop written content for advertisements, books, magazines, movie and television scripts, songs, and online publications....Writers and authors work in an office, at home, or wherever else they have access to a computer. Most work full time. However, self-employed and freelance writers usually work part time or have variable schedules. About two-thirds were self-employed in 2012.”
In other words, a lot of writers are neither struggling along at $15,000-$25,000 nor making John Grisham levels of money. Some even collect salaries and benefits. I made a pretty good living as a fulltime writer for about 12 years, during which time I wrote essentially no fiction.
Hi elharo,
Your criticism is absolutely correct; not all writers are novelist so even if novelists show the income variation I assert, that wouldn’t show up on the BLS statistics. I think that shows that my illustrative example is flawed, but I hope it doesn’t undermine the main conclusion too much.
Also (and I suspect even more importantly) by the fact that the impact of political knowledge and skills may be different in different careers. Not only because some careers simply have more room for variation, but also because some careers have more scope for effective evaluation on non-political factors.
I suspect that both engineering and novel-writing have lower impact-of-politics than average, but even though novel-writing is higher-variance I suspect that there’s more scope to turn political skill into career success in engineering than in novel-writing.
I think this is a slightly misleading way of putting it, for a couple of reasons. I would expect the average political skill level among full-time politicians to be pretty high, but mostly because politics is almost as high-variance a career path as writing or music: for every full-time legislator or lobbyist, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of low-level organizers, party functionaries, and so forth, all the way down to campaign workers and school board members. It’s just that most of the lower-level people in politics are doing it as a hobby or sideline, and getting paid part-time if at all, just like most musicians have day jobs.
Also, I think you’re probably underestimating the amount of political skill that can be applied to technical jobs—though many people with more political than technical savvy drift into management at some point.