Shownotes Transcript
Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money where we chat with brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. I'm a correspondent at Axios and co-host of Slate Money. And I'm here today with Daryl Fairweather. She is chief economist at the real estate website Redfin and her new book is called Hate the Game, Economic Cheat Codes for Life, Love and Work.
Welcome, Daryl. Hi, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you about your book because I don't often read like self-help career guides, I don't think. But yours is, it's like an economics lesson tucked into a memoir with career tips kind of rolled into that. It's like you're getting an economics lesson as you're sort of like learning about the career background of the chief economist at Redfin. So I really liked it. Thank you. So yeah, I want to talk to you about all of it.
And maybe if we have time, ask you about the housing market, since that's what you're thinking about all the time. That sounds great. And then we'll do all that when we come back on Slate Money. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. You earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase without limits. Visit apple.co slash card calculator to see how much you can earn.
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Okay. So in the book, you say you sort of stopped reading career books for advice and you thought like you said you read them for what they truly are, which is like memoirs with personal essays kind of written by authors who don't understand the economic context that led to their success. But your book, Daryl, it contains so much memoir coded stuff. So explain, explain how you differentiate.
I know. And I think that that format does work. Like if I am hearing people's advice, I want to know like the context at which they came to that advice. But I think the problem that I came up with books like Lean In or Never Split the Difference was that they could kind of pinpoint the things that led to their success, but they didn't understand how that might differ for somebody who's not in the exact same situation that they're in. So I still used...
the personal story memoir structure. But the difference is, is that it was a way to get to the economics. Like I have so much economics in this book. I think I have like 100 citations of theory and of research. So that was really what I wanted people to come away with is a better understanding of economics. And the personal stories are more like a way for people to get there in a more laid back, easy, fun way.
Yeah. Okay. So then I want to talk about maybe my favorite, or I don't know if it's my favorite, but the most intriguing anecdote in the book is to me when you're like putting together your resume. And so, okay. And so your full name is Daryl Rose Fairweather. My middle name is Rose too, by the way.
And you say you were named Daryl because it's a gender neutral name. And your mother thought that would give you an edge in applying for jobs because people wouldn't know that you're a woman. Yes. My mother has had many different careers. One of them was a freelance journalist and she felt
because of her female name, Kathleen, that her submissions were not being accepted. So when she was pregnant with me, she wanted to make sure that if I was a writer like her, that I wouldn't have that same disadvantage. So she gave me a boy's name, Daryl, but she added the rose as kind of like a way to give me the option to present more feminine, which was, I think, pretty clever of her. I mostly just go by Daryl Fairweather. Everybody calls me Daryl, but I do use that rose, especially when I'm interacting with people who,
like virtually or only in a written form to signal my gender and also like implicitly my race. Because the two main Daryls that people think of are Daryl Strawberry, the black professional baseball player, and Daryl Hannah, the white woman actress. So I also like have understood that when people think I'm a man, they also think I'm a black man. And when people think I'm a woman, they tend to think I'm a white woman. And the research shows there was this economic study from the National Bureau of Economic Research
Research that showed that when resumes are submitted, resumes from black men are accepted at a lower rate than resumes from white men or white women. There was this race penalty, but not the gender penalty. So I knew that if I put down the roads, it would probably give me an edge opposed to if I kept it off.
I just thought that was so smart and really like a twist from what your mom was doing when she went with the gender neutral name. My question for you was like, this is sort of a case where some people could read about your experience and be like, oh, I should do something similar. But some people can't. There's not much they can do about their name, right? I mean, so what is like the advice to take away? Well, I think we all...
Yeah.
So I think that if you're like a member of a disadvantaged group that gets discriminated against, you should be aware of that and try to navigate around it. I know that there's probably an impulse among some people to like not bend their presentation.
to appease other people. But I think most people understand that like that's something that you do every single day. It's the reality that you live with that like your choices impact the way that people perceive you. So I think being aware of it is a good thing. At least it puts you in control. And you also have a section where you talk about, I think you call it presentation, your presentation, your presentation effect.
how people see you and that could affect like a salary offer, for example, or a promotion opportunity or raise or something based on how you're looking. Like if you're looking like you have money, people will treat you differently versus not. It seems obvious, but you have this great example of haggling in China where you're dressed in jeans and you get a lower price than a colleague who's dressed more formally, right?
Yeah. So I went to China for a work trip to Beijing and I was with like a group of my colleagues. I was the youngest of my colleagues and we went to a shopping mall and split up to go buy souvenirs. And I went and bought some silk pajamas. The woman who was selling me them kept asking me if I was a student and I kept trying to explain to her that I wasn't a student, that I was there for work, but she wasn't really getting it. I think it was just like a language barrier there. But
I had a feeling that she was going to give me a low price because she thought I was some poor student. And then when I went to go check with my colleague who was older and white, he ended up paying like more than twice as much for the pajamas compared to me. So sometimes like, yeah, being aware of how you're being perceived can get you a deal. Incredible. Oh, and I wanted to ask you about
Well, Annette, let's see where this goes, because I wanted to talk about information as an advantage and maybe to start talk about someone who really, besides you, I think plays a big role in this book. And that is Beyonce. Yes. I love Beyonce. You use her a few times. Yes.
She's a great symbol. She works on a lot of different layers and she's been very savvy in her career. I use her as an example of somebody who has had to make career choices and I use Game Theory to kind of explain the choices that she made and why they were strategically wise to do it. Okay, let's unpack that. So first, what is Game Theory?
So game theory is this field of economics and math that tries to understand how interactions between like a limited number of players will go. Usually it's two players that are, you know, either working together or they're working against each other. They have goals that aren't quite aligned. And game theory explains how interactions like negotiations or
Or bluffing or other different game aspects might play out when you have these different structures and different goals that the players have. So it can be really useful for understanding interactions between a small number of people. Oh, and so part of that is there's like inside and outside options. And we'll get back to Beyonce, but it's just...
I'm just remembering inside and outside options. Like, could you explain what that is? Yeah. So this is this is one of the core principles in game theory that when a player has a choice, they're going to consider the inside option, like accepting the choice or the outside option, like doing something else. And whichever is largest is how that player will decide in that situation.
And if you understand the inside options and outside options of all the players involved, then you can start to deduct how a game will go and who's going to end up winning the game if it's a negotiation or any other kind of game. So in the context of a negotiation, an inside option is what you get when you agree to the terms of the negotiation. And the outside option is what you get outside of it, like if you just went out on your own or found somebody else to play with. Yeah.
So that's like if you're currently in a job and you're thinking about taking a different job. The different job would be your outside option and sticking with your current role would be your inside option. Yes. And usually what you want to do is compare your best available outside option to the inside option to determine whether or not you should stay with a job or you should quit.
The problem there is information asymmetry, right? So because you're in your current role, you might not actually know what your current employer thinks about you, what your value is to the company, but your employer does know. Yes.
You get into this too. You face some challenges there. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. So as an employee, your outside option is to quit your job and go work somewhere else or work for yourself. As the employer, as the boss, your inside option is to negotiate with your employee and get them to stay. Or you could let them quit, fire them essentially, and go find somebody else to replace them. And if you're going to be entering into a negotiation with your boss, it's really important to know what...
their outside option is and how much they value it. Where I got into trouble when I was first trying to negotiate with my boss, this is right out of grad school at a consulting job, is that I didn't really understand what my boss valued. I...
I thought that he would want to keep me in the role because I was taking on so much responsibility. I was working with clients directly and I was doing things that weren't originally part of my job description. So I went in thinking I deserved a raise. But what I had to learn was that what my boss really wanted was somebody who would just do the job, keep their head down, work hard and not
ask questions like, can I earn more money? So once I realized that, it was easy to conclude that I should not stay in that job because what my boss wanted was very unaligned with what I wanted for my own career. You went to him and asked, right? And he basically just said no? Yeah. I mean, I
The background is that I had been working in this job for two years. I just basically chose it based on the location. It was in San Diego and I really wanted to move to San Diego. I figured it pays well. I'll enjoy San Diego and the job, whatever it is, what it is. But then I just learned that how much – the job just started to affect every aspect of my life. I couldn't enjoy going to the beach because I was always stressed out about this job that had super long hours where there was this extreme level of perfectionism that just really –
did a number on my anxiety. So I was already like kind of in a bad place when I went to go ask for the raise. But as an economist, like when I think about quitting a job, I always think, well, how much would it take to get me to stay? And I should at least ask
before I quit to see if they'll give me enough to stay. So that's what I was kind of psyching myself up to do. I think I was really psyching myself up to quit, but this was a necessary step to get me to realize that that was what I needed to do was to just hear that I wasn't going to get a raise and that this is my role in the company and it's not going to change. Is the advice there then...
to quit or is it more like, okay, now you know what your inside option is. Now go explore your outside options and see if it makes sense to quit. I feel like it's the latter. I mean, I think it's always, I think it's always depends on someone's personal circumstances and also the circumstances of whoever you're negotiating against. That's why it's so important to get all the information and understand what your boss really wants out of you. What are their core
goals personally, and then you can decide, is there room here for a negotiation or is this negotiation just really not worth my time and I should just start the job search? Usually it's better to even go into negotiation knowing for sure what your outside options in. So doing the job search ahead of time can give you more of that information about what your next best option is.
But I think especially when you're a lower level employee, the step is probably to start looking for other jobs, not to start demanding more of your boss because lower level employees are easier to replace than higher level employees. And then you could take the job market into account also. I was just thinking back to...
to 2021, I did a story and I talked to a bunch of software engineers for this story and they were bombarded with calls from recruiters. They were naming their own salaries and getting them on the regular. But if you talk to them now, it's totally different. Their outside options have become very constricted. Yeah. So one thing I talk about in the book is understanding the economic context that you're in. And
the business cycle, whether you're in a recession or whether the job market is booming, is going to be a big factor in terms of what your outside options are. And one thing that I think kind of hurt my self-esteem early in my career was that I graduated college in 2010, which was a really bad time for the labor market. So I think I was kind of like
thinking lesser of my options at that point. It wasn't until I actually went out and started looking for jobs that I realized how many good options were available to me, even as kind of an earlier career person. At least I had some experience. I had an advanced degree. It was actually not as hard as I thought it was going to be. I'm not blaming myself here because I don't write these stories, but you'll see stories. There was like a headline in the Times and it was like...
employment rate for recent college grads falls by 30%. And then you look at the number and the employment rate for recent college graduates is like 2.9. I'm sorry, the unemployment rate is 2.9. So like 30% is not actually as big as you would think. I just feel like the framing is all wrong, but it definitely gets in your head when you're looking for a job and you're just fresh to the job market.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think like in this current economic moment, young people, they do have an easier time finding jobs than millennials did when they were first getting out during the Great Recession. It is a very different economy now. Yeah. I read another headline recently that said Gen Z is having like a really hard time getting jobs and it's a tough moment, which I guess it is. But yeah, compared to 2010, doesn't seem like it.
Yeah, it's all relative. I don't want to make Gen Z feel like they don't have it as bad as us. But I think especially when things are changing so rapidly, I think that's what's different now is that the economy maybe is stronger, but it's more uncertain. It's just hard to know where the job opportunities are and which ones are going away. Okay. So information as an advantage and Beyonce. Let's go. Let's get into this. You tell this great story about...
The breakup of Destiny's Child and how it teaches like a great lesson about information advantage. So can you walk listeners through that? Yes, this is important Beyonce history. Yeah.
After the first album of Destiny's Child, originally there were four members. It was Beyonce, Kelly, Latavia, and LaToya. They had a hit album with hit singles, but two members of the group were unhappy. Latavia and LaToya felt like Beyonce was getting all the attention, all the magazine covers, all of the interviews. And they thought that her dad being the manager, Matthew Knowles, was the reason why. So they issued an ultimatum to the group.
thinking that they were hitting them at this really inopportune time where they really wanted the group to succeed. So surely they would take their side and not want to have the group break up when they said that it was either them or Matthew Knowles. But instead, Beyonce and Kelly and Matthew said no. And those two members, Latavia and Latoya, quit or were fired. It's controversial what exactly happened as a result.
But I think what they misunderstood was what the goal of the group was, or at least what the goal was for Matthew and Beyonce, that she was always going to be the superstar. It was always going to be her that was going to break out. Like it was Diana Ross who broke out of the Supremes and Michael Jackson who broke out of the Jackson 5. And that was going to happen to Beyonce. But I think they thought that they were going to be equal members and not just one.
replaceable backup singers. And they had to like learn that harsh lesson the same way I had to learn that sometimes people don't view you as somebody who's going to be growing and be developing. You're just somebody who is more replaceable. So a harsh lesson to learn, but an important one. It is a harsh lesson. And I feel like for you going forward, and we can talk about this too, like things really turn around and you become very valued as an economist and you land increasingly in
higher paying jobs and all this and promotions. But for some people, they're always just going to be like the replaceable worker cog. What are they supposed to do? Well, I think
That's not necessarily true. Okay. I think if you feel like you are a replaceable cog, it's a good time to look at your outside options and see what else is out there. I definitely want people to have a growth mindset. But I also recognize that for a lot of people, maybe they don't have the time to be looking at new opportunities and they don't have the skills and it would take a long time for them to develop the skills that they need. And developing those skills is really expensive. And if you're in that situation where you feel like your job
situation is not going to change, then I think that you can focus on other aspects of your life that also are valuable to you. I don't think your value should only be in your career. I know this is a career book, but I'm definitely not a careerist. So yeah, I would say focus on those other aspects where you do have more self-direction and control over your life. I want to talk about your career and how you're not a careerist and you're into work-life balance. And also, it's
specifically how you negotiated your salary at Redfin. We can dig into all of that when we come back on Slate Money Talks.
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You do something kind of amazing in the book, which is you tell people how much money you make, which I feel like is pretty, it's still pretty unusual. There was like a trend a while ago where everyone was telling each other how much they made, but I feel like it's kind of faded out, but you are sticking with it. And I really appreciated your story. And it's basically, you were happy at the big tech company and then you get a call from Redfin and they're like, do you want to be our chief economist? And-
You tell them, I do, but I'll only do it. And you put out a number that was almost like double what you were currently making. Yeah, that's right. So that was like pretty brazen, I think. Or maybe, I mean, it was really smart. But I mean, what made you think you could do that? What information did you have when you put out that number? And like, what was the game theory there? Well...
What I knew was that they were going to take whatever number I told them in terms of what I was earning, and they were going to use that to index my next salary. That's what recruiters almost always do. They ask you, how much are you currently making at your job? And you don't want to lie. You don't want to not answer the question because you're at the very beginning of the job application. You don't want to get on the recruiter's bad side. So most people just say how much they're making. But instead of saying how much I was making at my current job, I said, I expect that
to make $400,000 in my next job. And for context, my expected salary at the time was around $200,000, but the stock price had gone way up. So I was expecting to make like $300,000 that year. So it was still a very big jump from 300 to 400 to ask for, but I knew I was going to have to ask for at least 400 if I wanted to like land somewhere in
like above $300,000, right? After 400,000, they'll probably come down by like 10%. And I'll still like, I'll still get that big raise that would make it worthwhile for me to leave my Amazon job and go take this new Redfin job. One of the things I talk about in the book is uncertainty aversion. It's the fear of the unknown, essentially, that doing something new is scary. And it's
since I didn't know anything about the Redfin job, it actually was working to my advantage to be averse to the uncertainty because it made me ask for more to overcome that uncertainty. Had I waited until after I had gone through the job application and I learned about how great this opportunity was and how much I wanted to work for Redfin, then I would have been too afraid to ask for so much money because I would have wanted the job too badly. So staying the number up front, I think just
just helped me like work up the nerve to ask for that number because it was still like this kind of scary, uncertain thing. And then also saying the number up front, it made it more easier when we went into negotiations to say like, hey, this is what I asked for. Like I said this up front, like you can't, you can't.
You can't undercut me now. Like, why did I go through this if you weren't willing to actually give me that much money? We ended up landing at around 360. So it was that 10% less than what I asked for. And it was enough to get me to happily leave behind the big tech company that I was working for.
Incredible. And then you wind up taking a pay cut to move and be remote? Yes. So during the pandemic, remote work became available and Redfin had this policy that, you know, you could go work remote, you just have to ask your manager and we're going to be adjusting pay remotely.
To your location. That was like somewhat negotiable. Like they didn't fully cut my pay all the way down to what the cost of living difference was between Wisconsin and Seattle. But I did take the pay cut to get to a place where I could be working remotely and
far away from the headquarters and the place that I wanted to live, which was my husband's hometown. And we had two young kids. Oh, they're still young. So it was like a really good place for me to be. And yeah, I think that leaving some money behind to have the lifestyle I wanted was well worth it. So what's the game theory there exactly? Because work-life balance is definitely a thread that runs through this. You mentioned that the consulting firm, like the job was perfectionist oriented. You're always thinking about it kind of like ruined your time at the beach.
How do you take those concerns into account? People are always sending me surveys that are like, people say they would take a 10% pay cut if they had work-life balance or if they had this and such benefit. Is there a way to quantify the value of those things or think about it? I mean, I think that just putting it in dollar terms isn't enough. You have to try to weigh...
those like non-monetary benefits because location isn't something you can just put a dollar amount on or your your value of living in a certain location or your value of working at home is going to be unique to you and different for other people so I think it's good to go through the exercise of like how much money would it like kind of like the would you rather like have this amount of money or do this but also I think sometimes you don't know until you try it either and
So getting over that ambiguity aversion, uncertainty aversion, and trying something new, you might find out that it's actually much more valuable to you than you realized. So I usually try to encourage people to like move in the direction of what they think would get them that better work-life balance. And then usually taking the risk is worthwhile. Did you initially then like rent in Wisconsin before you bought a house to try it out along those lines? Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of a wild story. So we were living in Seattle, kind of thinking about if we wanted to be there long term, given the new reality of remote work. But then a wildfire was happening in, I think, Canada, or maybe it was California. And all this smoke was blowing into Seattle. We were going to have a...
like a week to two weeks of really toxic air. Yeah, I know everyone in the country has experienced this by now. So we got in our car and drove because I was working remotely and we just didn't want to be trapped in our house, already trapped because of COVID. And once we got to Wisconsin, that's when we were like, oh, this is really nice. Like, why don't we live here? We were renting an Airbnb at the time, but...
But then once we realized we wanted to stay, we started looking at houses for sale. Oh, and you have, of course, you are the chief economist at a real estate site. So of course, like your housing stories are really good. One thing I wanted to make sure and talk to you about so readers could get this advice was when you're selling your house, don't look at like the personal notes that people send you. Yeah.
Yeah. That's so sad. People... You can read them after. There's all these stories about people writing like personal notes about why they need the house and like sending muffins or whatever, especially when you were selling your home, which was still... Well, it's still a good time to sell your home, I guess, but I'll ask you that in a second. But anyway, why don't you read the notes?
Well, they're just going to bias me. I mean, the whole point is to tug on your heartstrings so that you give somebody that you wouldn't otherwise give a deal the deal. And that ultimately is costing you money. If you're going to accept an offer that's less than the next offer because they have a compelling story or they have cute kids or they have anything else like that, one, you're just costing yourself money, but you're also introducing...
like your own bias into the marketplace, which could put people at a disadvantage. Like, I mean, oftentimes the cute family is the picture perfect family. And what about the family that doesn't fit the picture perfect norms that, you know, maybe has like a disabled family member or has a different racial makeup than what you're used to in your community. So that's why I advise against reading the notes because it's
probably just going to make you biased. And you might be thinking like, well, what I really don't want to do is sell to an investor. I'd rather sell to a family that's going to live in the house and be in the community. But that's like implicitly discriminating against renters because investors are often not keeping the home vacant. They're renting it out. And then they're
The kinds of people who can rent a home might be a different demographic, might have different citizenship, might have different income than the kind of person that can buy the home. So I just say don't read it all. Just go with the best offer. It's better for you. And it means you're not introducing any bias into the marketplace. That's a really interesting point about investors because every time – or not every time, but often if I ever write anything about investors buying single-family homes –
Or anything really about single-family homes, people, prices. People write to me and say, like, it's because of investment companies, these, like, private equity guys are buying up all the houses. They're making them more expensive. It's a real problem. And, like, advocates also, you know, send out notes complaining about that. But you're saying, actually...
Yeah. So investors, they allow homes that wouldn't otherwise be rentals to be available to be rented. And the kinds of people who can rent homes are usually not as wealthy as the kinds of people who can own homes. So that can help diversify a neighborhood, basically.
based on income, also race because race is so tied to income. And then yeah, citizenship is another one that if you're not a US citizen, you're probably not going to be buying a home. You'll have to rent one to live and work here as a resident. So I think that like, yeah, demonizing investors, it inevitably hurts the people who would be renting out those homes. I think it's worth talking about how investors profit off of the scarcity of housing because
But I think that conversation should be centered around the scarcity of housing and how to address that, not how to address this other problem that's really a second order effect from the root source. Okay. So now I want to talk about housing and the housing market and where we are right now. So we should tell people we were talking in April. Yeah.
How's it been going out there? I haven't been paying as close attention as usual, Daryl. So I don't know. It's my impression that prices are still high and supply is still low. Is that right? Yeah. It's pretty similar to the way it was last year, which is very low inventory, prices remaining high, and mortgage rates remaining high, so not much demand. I think what's different this year is that demand is a
a little bit weaker than it was last year and supply is a little bit improving because there's more new listings on the market. And also there's inventory that was
built during the pandemic that is just coming online now, especially in multifamily housing. So I think it's a bit more of a buyer's market this year than last year, just in terms of how much negotiating power you would have against a seller if you're making an offer. You can probably get your offer accepted for under list price this year more so compared to last year. So your outside options are better if you're... Yeah. So as a buyer...
there are more homes for you to choose from. So that means you have more options as a seller. You have fewer buyers. So if your offers to choose from, so that means your options are worse. And knowing that, and I think you say this in the book, if you're pricing your house, you're,
Do you say this, it's better to price a little lower because then you'll get more bids that way? If you price too high, then you won't attract interest? That's correct. So if you underprice your home, what that tends to do is it attracts more offers and then buyers compete with one another and you end up getting the highest offer, which is probably the best offer you're going to get in any situation. If you overprice, then you're scaring people off. You're not going to get any offers. People tend to not submit offers for a lot less than the listed price.
So your home will just sit on the market. And homes that sit in the market tend to get fewer and fewer views the longer they sit. Like on Redfin, we can see the view count going down. They get fewer tours. And they're more likely to have price drops. So you can save yourself a lot of time by just pricing low the first time. And then if you price too low, there really isn't a downside because more buyers will just come in and compete against one another to get to the competitive price.
Yeah, there is no downside because if you do a really low price and you only get one buyer, then maybe it wasn't a really low price after all. Exactly. Maybe you're learning a hard lesson like Destiny's Child. Yes, exactly. I love how you brought that back. And I wanted to also ask the market.
is kind of the same, but a little better for buyers. But have you been looking at specifically at like the DC area lately or the DMV, DC, Maryland, Virginia, just because they're seeing so many layoffs? I've been wondering when is that going to show up in the housing data? Has it already? I got this data right here. Hold on.
Yeah. So in DC, on average, homes are selling for less than their listed price. But the typical home is still selling for its listed price. 43% of homes sold below the original list price, but that's an increase from last year. Okay. Yeah. So the majority of homes are selling for listed price, but an increasing number of them are selling for below. Got it. Yeah.
And I would expect that number to grow. I mean, I don't know what you think, but as more people leave their jobs and then think about their outside options in an area with so much unemployment versus other parts of the country. I mean, the labor market is a factor that impacts demand. It impacts jobs.
I think what's different this time is that homeowners have so much equity in their homes and they have these record low mortgage rates. So their mortgage payments are very cheap. So even for the people who have lost their jobs, they're probably not rushing to sell their home.
They're probably waiting to see if they can get another job. Maybe they want to rent out their home because they could rent it for more than their mortgage payment. So because of that, I don't think we're going to see a large shift in the market. I think it will show up in terms of D.C. possibly being weaker than the rest of the country, but it's not going to be an outlier. I don't think we're going to see that.
I wanted to ask you also, you were one of the pandemic migrants, basically, right? How's that been going lately? I sometimes see headlines saying like, these people moved during COVID and now they regret it. Like, is there some reverse migration happening yet or what's going on? Well, there is more return to office now. So I think fewer people have the ability to work remotely. Luckily, my job is still remote and I still have my job. So that situation hasn't changed for me.
I think what surprised me about moving from an urban area to a rural area is that I've changed. Like I feel more comfortable in rural spaces now. Anytime I travel back to a city, I'm like, it's too noisy. There's too much traffic. There's too much. It's too much everything. So I think that it would be harder for me to go back just because like, yeah, I've changed into a country mouse. What are your outside options in the new more rural space?
Like you must think about that or does that worry you? Is that something to concern people who move or have moved? So my career path, I feel comfortable staying remote. Like I haven't been in a situation where I have to go back into the office. And in addition to being the chief economist at Redfin, I also have this book.
So I'm diversifying my income streams and making it even easier for me to work remote long term. So I'm not worried about it, but I do think for other people, their options have changed because remote work is not as prevalent as it was at the peak of the pandemic.
So if you are committed to staying remote, that could be hindering the availability of your options. But I know for me, like I now know the difference between what it's like to work in an office versus what it's like to work remotely and what that does for my personal productivity. So the options are kind of being self-restricted for myself because I've learned more about what really matters to me. And I think that's completely fine for me and other people in the same situation.
Well, Daryl, I hope everyone goes and buys your book and it's a bestseller. And then you have this alternate income stream. Thank you. Listen, listen to Emily.
Well, that's our show for this week. Thank you so much, Daryl, for coming on. Yeah, thank you. It was lovely to be on. And thanks to Jessamyn Mollie and Shaina Roth for producing. Ben Richman is Senior Director of Podcast Operations. And I'll be back in your feed on Saturday, along with Felix and Elizabeth, for a regular episode of Slate Money. Until then, thanks for listening. I'm Leon Nafok, and I'm the host of Slow Burn Watergate. Before I started working on this show...
Everything I knew about Watergate came from the movie All the President's Men. Do you remember how it ends? Woodward and Bernstein are sitting with their typewriters, clacking away. And then there's this rapid montage of newspaper stories. About campaign aides and White House officials getting convicted of crimes. About audio tapes coming out that prove Nixon's involvement in the cover-up. The last story we see is Nixon resigns. It takes a little over a minute in the movie. In real life, it took about two years.
Five men were arrested early Saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment. It's known as the Watergate incident. What was it like to experience those two years in real time? What were people thinking and feeling as the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters went from a weird little caper to a constitutional crisis that brought down the president? The downfall of Richard Nixon was stranger, wilder, and more exciting than you can imagine. Over the course of eight episodes, this show is going to capture what it was like to live through the greatest political scandal of the 20th century.
With today's headlines once again full of corruption, collusion, and dirty tricks, it's time for another look at the gate that started it all. Subscribe to Slow Burn now, wherever you get your podcasts.