Hurrah for Lilly Ledbetter!

I had my own Lilly Ledbetter experience a long time ago. I was working a job where I had been trained at the same time as another person (a guy) for the same position. Coming in to the job, I will grant that he had more experience than me and was probably starting out at a higher pay based on that. But we did the same job for a couple of years. I was told several times or it was implied that I was of equal and in some instances more valued. So one day my colleague (who was also a good friend) put in his notice to leave. Management decided that I would go ahead and be taking over all his assignments in addition to the ones I already had. My colleague came to me and said, “If I were you. I would ask for more money.” Good advice and I took it. They made a deal with me that at the end of three months I would receive a raise.

This operation was a small business and the owner was a not-so-nice person so I had concerns that they would “forget” about the raise. So at the end of that period I went in to remind my manager (who was a woman) that I was due the raise. She slipped and made a statement that yes, I would now make as much as my former colleague. Basically, my raise would raise me on par with the former colleague and I would still be doing both jobs. When she saw the look on my face, the look on her face told me she knew she made a grave mistake. And she did. I walked out of her office and immediately started looking for a new job.

Know your own worth and push to be compensated fairly no matter what your gender.

If you've used one of our tutorial Step by Step books in the past year, we have a few questions for you.

Email me at juliana.aldous@microsoft.com and let me know if you would like to participate. This is a quick set of questions to help us in planning the features for the next set of books.

Some titles published in our Step by Step series include:

• Windows Vista Step by Step
• 2007 Office System Step by Step
• SharePoint Designer Step by Step
• Word 2007 Step by Step
• Project 2007 Step by Step
• Excel 2007 Step by Step
• PowerPoint 2007 Step by Step

My favorite film quote of the year happens to be from the Joker in the Dark Knight. After the Joker suggests to a group of mobsters that he simply kill Batman, one of the mobsters asks, "If it's so simple why haven't you done it already?" The Joker replies, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."

I love that quote and I think it in my head whenever anyone suggests content created by a community or whenever I ponder the future of publishing and other media industries. Actually, the Joker isn't the first person I heard this from. I also heard it from a college instructor teaching a class on writing magazine articles. This was a few years before blogging, YouTube, etc., but his point was that as a writer--value your work. Makes sense--if every one is giving it away for free, then free becomes the accepted price. But then, I'm not sure you can put content back in the box at this point.

Well, I'm sure we'll iron all this out eventually.

In the meantime here is an interesting discussion over at Narrative on How Writers Make a Living. This from a very good magazine that is itself pondering and experimenting with the price of content.