jobs – Page 2 – Sonya Ellen Mann

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Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

The Economics of Writing Online

Posted on November 25, 2015November 30, 2015 by Sonya Mann

“Failures in Self-Publishing” just went up on The Digital Reader, so now feels like a good time to post an elaboration on how to actually make money by writing online. (Scroll to the bottom for the other reason I’m putting this up now.)

As a person with many opinions but only moderate hustle, I’ve ended up writing for free a lot. Not just writing for free, but being published for free. I’m okay with that — I have a day job. I also understand supply and demand: personal essays aren’t scarce, so they’re not particularly remunerative. When I have been paid, the check was usually a pittance that amounted to minimum wage (and that’s before self-employment taxes!). I resented this when I was freelancing professionally, but now that I do it as a hobby, I shrug and tell myself, “This is what the market dictates.”

Price, after all — especially average price — is a number synthesized from the desires of the various players in a commercial endeavor. Customers want to pay less and merchants want to charge more. They agree somewhere in the middle, depending on which side has more leverage. Who is willing to walk away? Who is anxious to make a deal? If customers have many other merchants to choose from, the price is low. If merchants face a deluge of eager buyers, the price is high (*cough* iPhone 6s *cough*).

It’s not a new observation that this problem plagues digital media. Readers can easily jump from website to website without sacrificing anything. Publishers, on the other hand, need as many eyeballs as possible and therefore must be flashy and attractive, as well as careful not to alienate their audiences. Most website-owners are stuck in this game, straining to make a couple of advertising cents per reader. You can’t convince people to pay money for a subscription unless you offer unique, high-quality content, which is extremely hard to produce.

Writers have the same relationship to publishers that publishers do to readers — there are plenty of other fish in the sea, so unless you offer something very compelling that can’t be obtained elsewhere, you’re probably shit outta luck. Don’t get me wrong — there is money to be made in writing to entertain a general audience, but not enough for the amount of people who are trying to make a living at it. Incumbent media outlets and winning internet-age startups like Vox Media have flooded this territory.

There are several ways to deal with the evident economics of writing online. One is to be a typical professional from nine to five — in fact, being a smart and prolific blogger will get you a better job and a better salary than you would earn otherwise. It will also bring you surprising opportunities — I landed a copy-writing gig via Twitter recently. Good writing demonstrates key communication and analytical abilities, which are important to every kind of skilled labor. Does having a day job mean that you can’t devote most of your time and intellectual energy to writing? Yes. Such is reality. The other options are to 1) work for peanuts and write thousands of words per day or 2) develop expertise in a particular niche where there is a market for quality.

In closing, I would like to note that I owe a majority of the ideas in this piece to Ben Thompson of Stratechery. I highly recommend his blog and newsletter.

Additional note: I originally wrote this in late September and it was published on Samantha Bielefeld’s blog. I asked her to take it down because of this drama. Summaries of the situation can be found on Building Twenty and Analog Senses. I resent being duped and exploited, and I don’t want my name associated with someone who is essentially a fraudster. If you want to explore the whole brouhaha, you can read everything I’ve said about SB on Twitter (scroll down to September 25th and read upward) as an introduction.

Thanks girl @s_bielefeld pic.twitter.com/4eMpeuL4te

— Sonya Mann (@sonyaellenmann) November 25, 2015

Short Book Review: Scott Adams’ Success Secrets

Posted on November 1, 2015July 24, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Dilbert visits the park. Photo by Ol.v!er [H2vPk].

Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, is a weird dude. No surprise to anyone familiar with the comic strip. I just finished reading Adams’ autobiographical self-help book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. I don’t agree with all of his advice — do I really need to state that caveat? — but some of Adams’ concepts are interesting and even spot-on.

For instance, Adams asserts that systems are superior to goals. What he means is that it’s smarter, for example, to always be looking for a better job instead of following a five-year plan to attain a certain position. He lays out a bunch of principles along these lines that in his view should lead to success. His through-line is the idea that you should optimize yourself to take advantage of luck when it strikes.

The book is certainly interesting, and I think particularly useful to people starting their professional lives. Here are the two quotes I liked enough to write down:

“Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas. [After realizing that] I concentrated on ideas I could execute.”

“Reality is overrated and impossible to understand with any degree of certainty. What you do know for sure is that some ways of looking at the world work better than others. Pick the way that works, even if you don’t know why.”

I particularly agree with the second suggestion, that you should shape your paradigm to be productive rather than accurate. (This is basically what my therapist wants me to do.) If I dwell on the rottenness and chaos of the world, my realistic perception harms me; I become miserable and can’t get anything done. Far more effective to be an optimist without justification than a pessimist with plenty of proof.

(I like to call myself a cynical optimist. Is that annoying? It’s such a good phrase, and a decent representation of my personality.)

Dilbert visits the beach. Photo by Ol.v!er [H2vPk].

Keep Talking Pay (In California & Elsewhere)

Posted on October 20, 2015May 20, 2016 by Sonya Mann

Are you afraid to talk about your salary? Serious question. Imagine telling the person who sits next to you at work how much you make. Comparing your stock options and benefits packages. Does the idea of that conversation make you nervous?

Women pressers on strike for higher wages. Best sign: "We have been Santa Claus long enough." Photo via the Kheel Center. — Women pressers on strike for higher wages. Best sign: “We have been Santa Claus long enough.” Photo via the Kheel Center.

American culture stigmatizes open discussions of compensation, in the workplace as well as social settings. This harms laborers. Just look at Erica Baker’s experiment with salary transparency at Google. The company’s reaction was almost certainly illegal, but the only repercussion was moderately bad press. On the other hand, the employees who were discouraged from evaluating whether their salaries were equitable will be impacted for decades, if not for the rest of their careers. (I recommend Kara Swisher’s interview of Baker.)

“The fact is, companies are doing everything they can to increase their bottom line, and as such, they are actively trying to pay you as little as possible, with the understanding that if they underpay you too much, they will lose talent.” — Lauren Voswinkel in Model View Culture

People get uncomfortable when you choose to disclose the actual number of your salary. Those who share are judged as rude or feckless. I believe this is because salary disparities reveal unspoken power disparities — employees who get paid more are generally quite market-competitive, often because they have scarce skills. That means they have more power — they’re more valuable to the company in a very literal way, and they have more professional options outside of the organization. Having their place in the hierarchy revealed can make people squirm.

I have broadly decided to be transparent about my pay and financial situation because I don’t believe in keeping secrets for their own sake. Because having access to more information gives people more power, and redistributing information helps to redistribute power. I don’t believe that anyone is obligated to reveal these personal details if they don’t want to, but I do want to, and the information is mine to disclose.

Here’s an example of how salary-sharing can be useful: If you know that coworkers with comparable duties are being paid more (or less), you can go to your boss to find out why. You have more evidentiary material should you decide to advocate for changes, whether personal or systemic. It is illegal for employers to discourage this — either explicitly or implicitly. They often do it anyway because the consequence is a slap on the wrist.

Salary Negotiations: Illustration by Mike Kline — Illustration by Mike Kline.

Nevertheless, section 232 of the California Labor Code dictates:

“No employer may do any of the following:
(a) Require, as a condition of employment, that an employee refrain from disclosing the amount of his or her wages.
(b) Require an employee to sign a waiver or other document that purports to deny the employee the right to disclose the amount of his or her wages.
(c) Discharge, formally discipline, or otherwise discriminate against an employee who discloses the amount of his or her wages.”

Like most labor rights, these can’t be waived by signing a contract or an NDA. (Similarly, you can’t forgo overtime if you’re a non-exempt employee.) The National Labor Relations Act extends anti-pay-secrecy rights federally [PDF] to all non-supervisory employees who wish to discuss compensation information with their colleagues.

This is an essential labor protection, whether or not you want to unionize. The fact that management so often opposes pay transparency demonstrates that it gives employees an advantage — otherwise, why would bosses bother trying to squash those conversations? Cultural arguments fall flat; I have friends who definitely make more money than me, and it’s not an obstacle.

Disclosing your salary to others outside of the company is less clear-cut. David Peyerwold holds in Advising California Employers and Employees: 2015 Update that voluntarily disclosed salaries do not constitute trade secrets:

Is salary a trade secret?

And the First Amendment Coalition seems to concur (unsurprisingly). However, a white paper [PDF] by lawyers Douglas Exeter and Valerie Park asserts:

“A company’s secret information about its ‘pricing, profit margins, costs of production, pricing concessions, promotional discounts, advertising allowances, volume rebates, marketing concessions, payment terms and rebate incentives … has independent economic value because [it] would be valuable to a competitor to set prices which meet or undercut’ their own.”¹

Is this legit? Since I’m not a lawyer, I’m not sure. The Digital Media Law Project provides resources regarding what constitutes a trade secret in California and general claims of trade-secret misappropriation. Nolo also has an overview of trade secrets in California. Your mileage may vary…

Further reading for those who are interested: articles on NPR and The Atlantic.

"Somebody talked!" Poster by Canada's Wartime Information Board circa 1940s. Image via the Toronto Public Library. — “Somebody talked!” Poster by Canada’s Wartime Information Board circa 1940s. Image via the Toronto Public Library.

¹ Page 14 of the PDF. In the quote I pulled, Exeter and Park are citing Whyte v. Schlage Lock Co., 101 Cal.App.4th 1443, 1455 (2002). The white paper is distributed and copyrighted circa 2003 by Farella Braun + Martel LLP and Vaughan & Fleming LLP. Douglas Exeter is associated with the former firm and Valerie Park with the latter.

Planned Monthly Spending

Posted on October 9, 2015February 20, 2018 by Sonya Mann

A Mirror of Competing Beauties of the Green Houses by Katsukawa Shunshō (Japan, 1726-1792) and Kitao Shigemasa (Japan, 1739-1820) via Wikimedia. — Half of *A Mirror of Competing Beauties of the Green Houses* by Katsukawa Shunshō (1726-1792) and Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820) via Wikimedia.

I want to share my new personal budget. My salary recently jumped $25k — I graduated from $30k per year with no benefits to $55k per year with insurance and other benefits. This triggered the necessity of re-budgeting, in a wonderful way! Having more money is great.

You can check out the spreadsheet, but I’m probably going to adjust that over time, so here’s how I’m currently breaking things down in terms of approximate monthly costs:

Rent and utilities: $750 (I live in Richmond, CA; soon will be sharing a one-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend)
Car insurance: $84
Health and dental insurance: $300 (I elected to stay on my parents’ plan and receive a monthly credit from my employer)
Food: $200
Cell phone: $52
Netflix: $10
Internet: $17
Planned Parenthood donation: $10 (tax-deductible)
Saint James Infirmary donation: $10 (tax-deductible)
Stratechery membership: $10
Longreads: $5
The Marshall Project donation: $10 (tax-deductible)
Latterly: $2.67
Gimlet Media: $5
Instapaper: $2.50
BigCartel: $9.99
Vanguard Roth IRA: $460

Total cost: $1,938.16. Since I’m drawing $4,583 monthly (approximately $3,070 after taxes) there’s about ~$1,000 of room for me to give more to charity, spend more on media, and save more! Woohoo. I’ll have to figure that out. At the moment I particularly want to focus on charity — I’d like to increase my donations to Planned Parenthood and the Saint James Infirmary, but PayPal doesn’t offer any immediately obvious way to do this. I’m also considering Compass Family Services.

Frivolous possibilities: The Economist for $13.33/month and Stack Magazines for $8.30/month.

money to burn - illustration — Illustration by Michael Statham.

Edit: I posted an update, and then an article about why I choose to be financially transparent.

#LifeOn27 At Edelman’s San Francisco Office

Posted on September 28, 2015May 20, 2016 by Sonya Mann

party at the San Francisco Edelman office — Not visible in this picture, but the chandelier-gazing guy’s name tag said “Strong Male”. Unverified.

Last week the PR/marketing firm Edelman threw a party to show off their new San Francisco digs, which are on the twenty-seventh floor of the fancy skyscraper at 525 Market Street. Hence the hashtag #LifeOn27. I asked about the strategic value of this soiree at the entrance, and the door girls (who were employees) said it was a recruiting thing.

I was invited by a Promoted Tweet (Twitter’s ad unit). I would post a screenshot but I couldn’t find it again — maybe @EdelmanSF deleted the post? Or do Promoted Tweets expire and disappear? Anyway, the RSVP website was hosted on — I am not kidding — www.MarketStreetMustacheRide.com, which now redirects to www.SFEdelmanStudioTour.com. I did not witness any mustache rides, but I can’t promise they didn’t happen.

open bar at a party — “I done grew up ’round some people livin’ their life in bottles.”

There were three kinds of open bar: alcoholic, taco, and donut. I asked the guy slinging cocktails if he thought the party was as crazy as I did, and he was like, “This is NOTHING.” Apparently many companies are terrible at marshalling resources.

‘Cause look — it’s not hard to hire people. You throw an ad up on Craigslist and applicants start emailing you right away. I guess Edelman wanted to poach other companies’ employees, who wouldn’t be trawling job listings? Maybe this makes sense, but to me it seemed overly decadent. I’m not sure a superior class of candidates decides to attend a party because the Twitter ad mentioned free booze.

Here are the snapshots I took while Alex and I wandered around:

party in the Edelman SF offices — The crowd was extremely white, with a smattering of Asian people. I only noticed one dark-brown-skinned attendee. Generally not a good sign…

empty desks at the Edelman San Francisco office — Empty desks. You can’t see all the *Star Wars* merch but I promise it was there.

chalkboard drawing of a bunny — Alex drew a bunny on one of their chalkboards.

City lights through the window. The twenty-seventh floor is wayyy high up.

pretty chandelier at a party — A twin of the chandelier that “Strong Male” was examining in the first picture.

If you can explain the business utility of this event to me, please get in touch.

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