3 ms·
The doctor's job is not exactly equivalent. After a day of programming, I feel I could still put in a couple hours of light manual labor or say drive for Uber,
by lgieron 10y ago
The doctor's job is not exactly equivalent. After a day of programming, I feel I could still put in a couple hours of light manual labor or say drive for Uber, but I'm unable to focus intensely any longer. Doctors probably use a much greater variety of skills (and not just intense focus on 100% abstract problems for 8 hours), hence I think their resources deplete slower.
I know that when I've worked at jobs which weren't all about focusing on abstract problems (such as an analyst or a consultant or a project manager), I could definitely put in more hours.
EDIT: Also, air traffic controllers (a job that I feel is more similar to programming than being a doctor) are restricted by law to work no more than 6 hours. From what they say, after their shift is done, their brain is often completely fried.
- mac01021 10y agoDo you really focus intensely for several hours at a time during a typical workday? What industry/domain are you working in? In my experience, most software jobs mix bits of intense abstract reasoning, distributed throughout the day, with an at-least-equal amount of tedious gruntwork or meetings.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- lgieron 10y agoFor jobs, I do rather typical Java/Scala/BigData development. I agree that the there's a bit of mindless tediousness in the jobs, although a lot of it can eventually be automated. However, IMO, when working on a large code base which you didn't author (so, pretty much the most typical case), if you want to do a good job - i.e. think through potential consequences of your changes, weight the pros and cons of alternative approaches etc. - you still need a ton of cognitive resources.
- rmc 10y agoOTOH doctors are literally working with life and death scenarios.