Good point. This is possible for surgeons because medicine is a stricter hierarchy of professions that software: you decide to become a surgeon or a nurse or a

Good point. This is possible for surgeons because medicine is a stricter hierarchy of professions that software: you decide to become a surgeon or a nurse or a PA early in your career, compete for that privilege, and don't change. Advanced specialist doctors often work in teaching hospitals and devote a large chunk of their time to research; at lower-level medical professions, you might get continuing education credits. These tiers are well established over many years in the industry and the schools that train the next generations of participants. I'd say that top achievers in the software industry can also command similar benefits, but the mechanism is different. Instead of leveraging a credential into research and leveraging cool research stories into grant funding, software people get to do what they want by leveraging hard work, luck, and great stories about what they can do into great jobs or investor dollars. There are pros and cons to each system, but one big virtue of the less structured software world is that it tends to respond to market opportunity a lot more efficiently than something like medicine.