Yeah, that's you. Kids change the calculations for a lot of people. The vulnerability you are willing to accept for yourself is quite different than the one you want for your child.

I would expect her to not resent Joan more than any of the guys who did not make Partner entirely based on merit either, yes.

It's no longer Peggy's responsibility, was my point.

Again, the injustice is that her merits are the only ones that are questioned. It's not a meritocracy, but the guys still get to pretend it is. People don't make partner because they are the best employees. Joan is the only one who gets shit for it.

I get that there's a trade-off involved with all these little power games and that Don's choice can be rationalized. The problem is that he didn't bother to do so, before he went through with it. It was not his decision alone.

I don't know if it's really still the best show on air right now (although it will always be in my heart), but it certainly still inspires some of the best criticism.

Datapoint: As someone who went to business school herself, I would totally buy that someone like Peggy is capable of doing a better job than me. (And I graduated fifth of my class, from a perfectly respectable institution.) I still value my education, because I think it's not all just about employability and I do…

And Joan and Peggy should probably think of all those widows burned with their husbands in India, before they start complaining, am I right?

Oh, Joan does punch up too. Quite literally. She smashed a vase over her abusive husband's head.

It's not just about the money, but also about the lack of consideration.

Peggy is also not a single mom.

You just agreed that in a meritocracy Joan would have deserved to make partner, because she has indeed been very valueable to the firm.

Why wouldn't Don have been supposed to accept supervision of some kid at Herb's? Everyone else is repeatedly expected to swallow their pride for the good of the company. It was not a decision he should have made without checking in with other stake-holders.

But can you see why Joan might have felt that this was the only way for her to make partner ever and why she might have been quite a bit more justified in thinking so then, say, a guy?

Jaguar was Joan's Vietnam. Don made her sacrifice meaningless, without so much as a second thought. He couldn't even imagine that she would have issues with that, almost expected her to be impressed. He was being presumptuous.

Joan has earned that partnership a hundred times over - if you can't see how she's always been one of the MVPs for that company, you haven't been paying attention. It's not her fault that those contributions have always been undervalued and that she was given the partnership for something that should never have been…

I think Peggy and Joan handled those guys as well as they could, given the circumstances. Really don't see what else they could have done.

It's easy to see how the thrills of office politics and market competition might offer more immediate gratification. The victories and defeats may be meaningless in the larger scheme of things, but at least they are easy to identify in the moment. Writing is a lonely effort, often without much tangible results.

Yep. People down-thread have mentionned that the new job might be cushy enough do allow for some writing in the down-time, but to me, his eagerness to jump on the opportunity to not pursue the whole writing-life after all kinda suggests that he's never going to do it. His life has been cushy enough to risk full-time…

I think Pete's expression of jealousy here was actually intended as a compliment by Pete - the most sincere expression of flattery, and so on. The comment about Ken looking so potentially rad on a dust-jacket also seems fairly good-natured (because it's obviously genuine, I mean, of course Ken would look rad on a…