Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Scores go out tomorrow and I need a mantra

I missed this thread when you originally posted, btw. As I read your comment above, it reminded me of the comments recently made by the CEO of Microsoft. Satya Nadella-Good Karma

Even though he later apologized for his remark, I think the sticky residue of what was said is not going to go away.

Being there early for your children is priceless, as I suspect you know; but I agree that women are still being fed the line that helping for the sake of helping should be enough and somehow asking for money casts women in a bad light.

Welcome back!

Oh gosh, that was a whole OTHER thing, but not surprising coming from Microsoft. Talk about a toxic corporate culture!

But that's off-topic... I really just want to be able to encourage my kids and not feed them a line.

As it ended up, she did exceptionally well, over 99th% in both subject tests and 145 IQ in COGAT math, 140 in logic, but effectively scored a 90 IQ verbally, so oh well. She's been recommended this year and now I have that whole thing to think about. Sigh.

At least with my second, who is really bright, I won't have this issue since she's in bilingual schooling which has turned out to be very challenging and very intellectually stimulating. The teaching team there is incredible.

just re the to tell/not tell what the test was for etc, what worked for us was telling DD4 that most schools were made for square pegs, some were for circle pegs and there were some for triangle pegs. She figured out she wasn't a square peg on her own, the test was to see if she was a triangle or a circle. We explained to her that even though she's a triangle she'll be going a square school because there aren't enough triangles to make a whole school in our town, BUT there are some very special teachers who can help triangles and squares at the same time.

It helped with the yes you're different but no better / worse issue

binip, my husband and I both work in the public sector as well, and both of us make less than half of what we could in the private sctor. In both of our cases, though, we really don't want to do the work we would have to do to make that money (basically...sell out, in DH's case especially). I do understand the feelings you have a little bit; DH especially sometimes feels like his expensive liberal arts education went to pot, but OTOH, there are many good things about his choice. It sounds like you don't feel the urgency to stay in the public sector anymore. Is it really too late? Because, and I apologize if I am blunt, you sound far more bitter than my DH on the days when I say, "Let's reassess...should you ditch this job and consult for XYZ Evil?"

It seems like money is more important to you than you realized it would be. I have a friend who is a raging, highly active liberal but who grew up in a very economically unstable household. We all thought she would grow up to be a poor activist, but instead she is an extremely wealthy IT manager who does do political stuff on the side. She really, really needed an stable lifestyle. I don't judge her for it. I get it.

Getting into "college" in the U.S. is easy. Only a small fraction of schools are highly selective, and not getting into the Ivies/MIT/Stanford does not mean not getting into college.

When you control for benefits and job stability, I think people in the public sector are better compensated than in the private sector on average. Biggs and Richwine found this to be the case for public school teachers. I think sometimes an error is made in looking at the right tail of the private sector earnings distribution, which does not prove anything about the median.

I don't think what he said was unreasonable, but nowadays political correctness matters more than truth. "Why Men Earn More" (2005) by Farrell is a good, realistic book on the issue.

People always flog this horse about public sector benefits. My husband (in the public sector his whole working life) has excellent PTO, I'll grant you, but our insurance benefits are not great. Overall, our health expenses run us more than our mortgage payments every year (we have a cheap mortgage and some expensive conditions and prescriptions). Job stability--it is hard to get fired, I grant you, but not so hard to get laid off.

I and DH both chose the public sector for reasons of family friendliness, work life balance and personal integrity. On the whole, we have no regrets and like our jobs, and are perfectly sure We have made the right choice. But with DS2 born with major special needs, we currently need our parents financial support in order to keep up our lifestyle (which isn't extravagant in any way, but not frugal either). They do gift stuff such as family vacations we would not otherwise be able to afford, take us out to nice restaurants, provide free babysitting, pay for the kids musical lessons, have skipped in for private daycare etc...there is a lot of help that keeps us in decent comfort. We'd certainly have many moments of having to forgo things we'd like to do as a family or being able to offer our kids, and maybe I might feel bitter if I did.

The way it is, I do, occasionally, have moments of simple green envy. Because when I look at the private sector, I do look at the right tail of the earnings curve which is where we would both be according to our qualifications. I am not so unreasonable to think that I would have been able to raise the three kids I have the way I want to raise them and still be on that end of the curve - we do milk the public sector benefits in the possibilities for parental leave, part time work and job security for what it's worth. But don't you ever tell me that if I had given the public sector my all, worked full time at the highest level of government, the financial compensation including benefits, would have come in any way close to what I could have made in the private sector, selling my soul and billing somewhere around 5 to 10 times what I now make in an hour. I am not looking at the alternative career prospects of a social studies teacher.

Are you suggesting women shouldn't self-advocate or self-market in the same way that men have proven to do successfully?

Nadella's comment rather explicitly suggests that women do not merit equal voice in their career management, holding experience, performance, and qualifications equal, by dint of their being female. It's another strain of paternalistic anti-woman messaging, and subtly anti-freedom of speech. If he can't legally limit women through legitimate power, he'll exert his coercive and referent power to induce them to self-handicap by poisoning the work culture. Tone at the top is everything when it comes to anti-woman enculturation.

Don't for a second fantasize that Nadella's comments are in any way innocuous. To brush it off as an offense against political correctness is to give his statement tacit approval.

Here is the full quote from Nadella. It is certainly debatable, but I don't think it is outrageous, and it probably reflects what he thinks. It's not going to benefit women or men if people are only free to say what is politically correct. He's saying that demanding at each point in time the maximum compensation that your employer might give to prevent you from leaving can create "good karma". That is plausible. He has climbed to the top at Microsoft. Maybe he know something about how to scale the corporate ladder?