Ben Zweig

There's this wonderful paper that shows that the value of an MBA program is is much higher for women than it is for men.

And, you know, part of the reason why is that, you know, one factor that determines the gender wage gap among professionals is this concern that women may, you know, women tend to leave the labor force at higher rates than men in their, you know, in their 20s and 30s if a woman gets an MBA.

they're spending, you know, $200,000 on their professional career.

It's very costly.

And, you know, if someone is making that upfront investment, that is a credible signal that they do not intend to leave the labor market, the labor force in the foreseeable future.

So the idea is that signals really have to be costly.

A big tuition bill is one way to show that you can bear that cost or something that just takes a lot of time or is painful or, you know, is something...

unusual that, you know, imposes a cost on you and has real trade-offs, we probably should look for signals that actually can't be given out for free.

Like anyone could get some certification from whatever, you know, voodoo online college, but if those aren't costly, they're not going to send a strong signal.

Yeah, so one is really related to this technology that I think managing projects end-to-end is really important.

Just doing something...

That goes over the finish line, you know, finishing things, doing things that require coordination across a lot of different subtasks, I think is a strong signal and will get stronger.

So I think I think just taking on an ambitious project and just grinding it out and doing it.

I think that that is something that I think is not easy, but like will pay dividends.

The other is more generic advice, kind of evergreen advice, that it's about networking.

And, you know, every industry is a small world.

And, you know, get to know people, get to know how they talk, how they think, listen to podcasts on certain domains and figure out, like, how are people in this space that I want to be in?

How do they think?

How do they talk?

And, like, just engage with them.