5 ms·

Nursing pays quite well and has a similar gender ratio, in the opposite direction. It's unlikely that's due to two completely different mechanisms, so I'd put

Nursing pays quite well and has a similar gender ratio, in the opposite direction. It's unlikely that's due to two completely different mechanisms, so I'd put more stock in theories that explain both situations.

dragonwriter 9y ago
Per BLS, registered nurses have a $68,450 median salary. [0] Software developers have a $102,280 median salary. [1] [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/registered-nurses.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/registered-nurses.... [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/mobile/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
- traverseda 9y ago
  In san-fran, sure. I'm in Canada (Nova Scotia) and they're pretty similar, with similar levels of respect. It depends a lot on country, but the gender ratio holds pretty steady. They make 80k, I make at most 80k if I work at the highest-end webdev firms.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > In san-fran, sure That’s national data for the US, not local for SF.
    - mdorazio 9y ago
      That's the whole point. Median salary nationally is massively skewed for computer science because salaries in tech centers, where those jobs are clustered, is extremely high. The same is not true for nursing, which is distributed fairly uniformly across the country. For example, according to Glassdoor, a software dev in Chicago has an average salary of about 82k compared to about 120k for a nurse practitioner. Or if you want to compare earlier career, a junior developer is at about 67k vs. 68k for a registered nurse. You need to bound your statistics geographically to control for skewed labor markets when comparing salaries like this.
      - graywh 9y ago
        Becoming a nurse practitioner requires additional education and certification/licensing in addition to what's required for a registered nurse. It's not just a tenure/promotion thing like moving from junior developer to developer.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > For example, according to Glassdoor, a software dev in Chicago has an average salary of about 82k compared to about 120k for a nurse practitioner. Becoming a Nurse Practitioner requires, at a minimum, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, followed by licensure as an RN, followed by a Master's in a NP specialty, followed by certification as an NP. Practically, it requires more because most NP programs require practice as an RN in the specialty for at least 1-2 years prior to admission. Its a very small, elite subset of nursing. Further, Glassdoor estimates are something like a real-time estimate of what the current values of a nonrepresentative measure would be; they really should be marked "for entertainment use only". Per BLS data, the median salary of the 1,930 NPs in the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights Metropolitan Division is $101,930, about on par with the far more numerous software developers (Software Developers, Applications: 20,570 jobs, $99,430 median salary; Software Developers, Systems Software, 9,930 jobs $103,620.) [0] The Glassdoor numbers you give are way high for NPs and way low for devs. Contrary to your suggestion of massive geographical distortion in median salary due to concentration of tech jobs in high-cost locations, this elite level of nursing is paid generally similar to software developers nationally, as well. (Nurse Practitioners, 150,230 jobs, $104,610 median salary; Software Developers, Applications, 794,000 jobs, $104,300 median salary; Software Developers, System Software, 409,820 jobs, $110,590 median salary.) [1] (Yes, these national numbers are a little different than those from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, also from BLS, that I posted upthread: the OOH is a high-level publication updated more recently, which also uses slightly different categorizations; so here I've used the national data that corresponds directly to the geographic specific data.) [0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_16974.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_16974.htm [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
        mdorazio 9y ago
- Goladus 9y ago
  The difficulty here lies in actually doing a reasonable compare/contrast that looks at the entire system. You wouldn't compare the salary of a PhD principal software architect to a registered nurse at a pediatrics office. Just like you wouldn't compare the salary of a cardiac surgeon to a junior programmer. There are many professional and specialist roles in the medical field that go beyond "nursing" but don't require going to med school for full MD training. You have occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, physicians assistants, nurse practitioners, behavioral therapists, and probably many others I don't know about. Last I checked, all of the fields I mentioned are majority women. The salary ranges clear $100k though there's a generally higher education requirement for a given pay range. Although I think that is more an issue that tech has a uniquely low bar for formal education and a higher bar for informal education and experience.

dragonwriter 9y ago

Per BLS, registered nurses have a $68,450 median salary. [0] Software developers have a $102,280 median salary. [1] [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/registered-nurses.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/mobile/registered-nurses.... [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/mobile/software-developers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

traverseda 9y ago
In san-fran, sure. I'm in Canada (Nova Scotia) and they're pretty similar, with similar levels of respect. It depends a lot on country, but the gender ratio holds pretty steady. They make 80k, I make at most 80k if I work at the highest-end webdev firms.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > In san-fran, sure That’s national data for the US, not local for SF.
  - mdorazio 9y ago
    That's the whole point. Median salary nationally is massively skewed for computer science because salaries in tech centers, where those jobs are clustered, is extremely high. The same is not true for nursing, which is distributed fairly uniformly across the country. For example, according to Glassdoor, a software dev in Chicago has an average salary of about 82k compared to about 120k for a nurse practitioner. Or if you want to compare earlier career, a junior developer is at about 67k vs. 68k for a registered nurse. You need to bound your statistics geographically to control for skewed labor markets when comparing salaries like this.
    - graywh 9y ago
      Becoming a nurse practitioner requires additional education and certification/licensing in addition to what's required for a registered nurse. It's not just a tenure/promotion thing like moving from junior developer to developer.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > For example, according to Glassdoor, a software dev in Chicago has an average salary of about 82k compared to about 120k for a nurse practitioner. Becoming a Nurse Practitioner requires, at a minimum, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, followed by licensure as an RN, followed by a Master's in a NP specialty, followed by certification as an NP. Practically, it requires more because most NP programs require practice as an RN in the specialty for at least 1-2 years prior to admission. Its a very small, elite subset of nursing. Further, Glassdoor estimates are something like a real-time estimate of what the current values of a nonrepresentative measure would be; they really should be marked "for entertainment use only". Per BLS data, the median salary of the 1,930 NPs in the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights Metropolitan Division is $101,930, about on par with the far more numerous software developers (Software Developers, Applications: 20,570 jobs, $99,430 median salary; Software Developers, Systems Software, 9,930 jobs $103,620.) [0] The Glassdoor numbers you give are way high for NPs and way low for devs. Contrary to your suggestion of massive geographical distortion in median salary due to concentration of tech jobs in high-cost locations, this elite level of nursing is paid generally similar to software developers nationally, as well. (Nurse Practitioners, 150,230 jobs, $104,610 median salary; Software Developers, Applications, 794,000 jobs, $104,300 median salary; Software Developers, System Software, 409,820 jobs, $110,590 median salary.) [1] (Yes, these national numbers are a little different than those from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, also from BLS, that I posted upthread: the OOH is a high-level publication updated more recently, which also uses slightly different categorizations; so here I've used the national data that corresponds directly to the geographic specific data.) [0] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_16974.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_16974.htm [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
      - mdorazio 9y ago
Goladus 9y ago
The difficulty here lies in actually doing a reasonable compare/contrast that looks at the entire system. You wouldn't compare the salary of a PhD principal software architect to a registered nurse at a pediatrics office. Just like you wouldn't compare the salary of a cardiac surgeon to a junior programmer. There are many professional and specialist roles in the medical field that go beyond "nursing" but don't require going to med school for full MD training. You have occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, physicians assistants, nurse practitioners, behavioral therapists, and probably many others I don't know about. Last I checked, all of the fields I mentioned are majority women. The salary ranges clear $100k though there's a generally higher education requirement for a given pay range. Although I think that is more an issue that tech has a uniquely low bar for formal education and a higher bar for informal education and experience.