3 ms·

Medical doctors are like auto-mechanics or, to make a more HN-relatable comparison, software engineers trying to debug a program. Except there's a little more s

Medical doctors are like auto-mechanics or, to make a more HN-relatable comparison, software engineers trying to debug a program. Except there's a little more schooling, a lot more rigor with boards examinations, and you don't really have the full source-code available to debug. Just like in any profession, you're going to have crappy auto-mechanics who'll just pull up the ODB-II code and perform patch-work without rigorous root-cause analysis, or have engineers who'll also perform similar patch-work to get it "good enough", you'll have the same hacks who make it through medical school. I'm with you 100% in that they're consultants offering their opinion, but I'll take your analogy a step further and say that some consultants are 27 year old kids fresh out of Wharton who can put together a pretty PowerPoint deck, and some consultants genuinely know their field.

palimpsests 11y ago
> a little more schooling ... after getting a bachelor's degree (3-5 years) a general practitioner takes at the bare minimum 7 years of schooling and internship. Surgeon far more than that. One can work as a professional software engineer without ever attending any university.
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  Yes, I do believe I addressed that-- "<from MS3, through residency, then fellowship for most surgeons, ~7-8 years>". (Though I'd argue a residency is far more time-intensive than a traditional "internship", and after you pass USMLE S3 you're a board-certified Medical Doctor until your 10 year card comes up) My point was that you're going to have hacks at any sort of field which involves operational mechanics, or for that matter any craft that involves a mastery of a skill. I'm a life-long tennis player. Competent enough to hold my own against a recreational player pretty safely, but cognizant enough to know I'm not Roger Federer. If we were to graph any trade/craft/art/profession practitioner, I'd imagine "good" (for any metric of good) can be depicted by a normal Gaussian plot. You'll have geniuses, hacks, and average folk.

palimpsests 11y ago

> a little more schooling ... after getting a bachelor's degree (3-5 years) a general practitioner takes at the bare minimum 7 years of schooling and internship. Surgeon far more than that. One can work as a professional software engineer without ever attending any university.

iheartmemcache 11y ago
Yes, I do believe I addressed that-- "<from MS3, through residency, then fellowship for most surgeons, ~7-8 years>". (Though I'd argue a residency is far more time-intensive than a traditional "internship", and after you pass USMLE S3 you're a board-certified Medical Doctor until your 10 year card comes up) My point was that you're going to have hacks at any sort of field which involves operational mechanics, or for that matter any craft that involves a mastery of a skill. I'm a life-long tennis player. Competent enough to hold my own against a recreational player pretty safely, but cognizant enough to know I'm not Roger Federer. If we were to graph any trade/craft/art/profession practitioner, I'd imagine "good" (for any metric of good) can be depicted by a normal Gaussian plot. You'll have geniuses, hacks, and average folk.