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>> With my skillset (software engineer) I can easily pull low six figures. And I'm confident that doctors provide more value than I do. I'm pretty sure I've ne

>> With my skillset (software engineer) I can easily pull low six figures. And I'm confident that doctors provide more value than I do. I'm pretty sure I've never saved anyone's life. So I have zero problem paying doctors 2 or 3 times my pay, which is about what you're saying they get paid. There are many problems comparing software pay to healthcare pay. - A large portion of software jobs are in the Bay Area, you are not being paid for your software job, you are being paid a giant CoL premium that gets taken away by landowners. Doctors on the other hand have jobs available all across the country and need not live in super-expensive areas. Further, their pay usually goes UP as they go to less expensive areas . - Medical salaries/jobs are not cyclical and do not suddenly disappear in droves as tech jobs did in 2001-2003 (countrywide) / 2008-2009 (NY+). With tech jobs, your low six figure pay is also paying you a hazard premium which i'm hoping youre saving for the next down cycle. - Many software engineers will tell you about age discrimination -- supposedly it gets harder and harder to find a job as you age. It is an unlicensed field, so there is theoretically unlimited supply. Further, there isnt a cartel-like mechanism (i.e., AMA and residency programs) to constrict supply. Thus, you are like a less extreme football player -- you make low six figures and then you pleateau or go down over time. Doctors make more with experience and there is no age discrimination that is spoken of. Depending on how many workers get imported on any given year, there are 300-500% more tech workers imported (e.g., with H1b) than all medical school graduates per year: https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/interactive-data/2018-facts-applicants-and-matriculants-data https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/students-residents/interac... There are near zero imported medical specialists in the US. There are imported primary care workers, but those arent where the big billings are coming from. There is literally no downward pressure on medical salaries like there is in the US for tech.

kerkeslager 7y ago
Okay. So maybe the multiplier of my salary to get a doctor's salary is 5 or 6 instead of 2 or 3. The multiplier of my salary to get a health insurance CEO's salary is also now, what, 200 or 300 instead of 100?
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  Actually, my point was the opposite -- I was noting that software engineers dont make enough compared to doctors and deserve more given the major SWE downsides: - SWE: Much of the premium might be CoL premium - SWE: There is a downward slope on earning potential - SWE: No cartel and constantly expanding pool of workers I'd argue that SWEs should make more given all these negative aspects.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    Okay. It's not a really a point I care that much about, but I'd argue that this is a very SF/NYC-centric viewpoint. - SWE: Much of the premium might be CoL premium There are non-SF/NYC software jobs. Before I was a freelancer, I worked only one salary job in NYC. The rest of the time I worked and lived in much lower-CoL areas. And as a freelancer I work remote, getting paid NYC/SF money in a much cheaper place. - SWE: There is a downward slope on earning potential There may be a downward slope on earning potential, but that's in part because the SF/NYC markets bump you up pretty high pretty early, without much real justification. These places seem to fetishize the young hotshot "10x" programmer who is willing to work 70 hour weeks, but the reality is that that isn't sustainable, and the work done by kids isn't actually very high quality. That only works for a fail-fast startup model, but most companies outside the NYC/SF bubble aren't actually like that. There are plenty of old greybeard programmers working boring jobs at Dunder Mifflin-type companies in the Midwest, making wages increasing by 3% over inflation every year. Maybe they never peak as high as their SF/NYC counterparts, but they're still making more than a lot of other jobs in their areas. And the workloads of these jobs themselves are more sustainable. - SWE: No cartel and constantly expanding pool of workers There's also an expanding job market. Sure, there are cyclical downturns, but the overall trend is up. One thing that trips a lot of people up is a failure to specialize. If your job is writing Django/Angular apps, that only gets so difficult, and there's not really a reason to pay for someone with more experience beyond a certain point. But Django/Angular apps aren't the peak of software engineering--there are much more complex systems out there which actually do need someone with more experience. I see a lot of people hit the point where they can't progress further with LAMP/.NET/whatever-common-stack and get stuck instead of going back to school or finding a job that will teach them cryptography or networking or FPGA programming or whatever.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Okay. So maybe the multiplier of my salary to get a doctor's salary is 5 or 6 instead of 2 or 3. The multiplier of my salary to get a health insurance CEO's salary is also now, what, 200 or 300 instead of 100?

TuringNYC 7y ago
Actually, my point was the opposite -- I was noting that software engineers dont make enough compared to doctors and deserve more given the major SWE downsides: - SWE: Much of the premium might be CoL premium - SWE: There is a downward slope on earning potential - SWE: No cartel and constantly expanding pool of workers I'd argue that SWEs should make more given all these negative aspects.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Okay. It's not a really a point I care that much about, but I'd argue that this is a very SF/NYC-centric viewpoint. - SWE: Much of the premium might be CoL premium There are non-SF/NYC software jobs. Before I was a freelancer, I worked only one salary job in NYC. The rest of the time I worked and lived in much lower-CoL areas. And as a freelancer I work remote, getting paid NYC/SF money in a much cheaper place. - SWE: There is a downward slope on earning potential There may be a downward slope on earning potential, but that's in part because the SF/NYC markets bump you up pretty high pretty early, without much real justification. These places seem to fetishize the young hotshot "10x" programmer who is willing to work 70 hour weeks, but the reality is that that isn't sustainable, and the work done by kids isn't actually very high quality. That only works for a fail-fast startup model, but most companies outside the NYC/SF bubble aren't actually like that. There are plenty of old greybeard programmers working boring jobs at Dunder Mifflin-type companies in the Midwest, making wages increasing by 3% over inflation every year. Maybe they never peak as high as their SF/NYC counterparts, but they're still making more than a lot of other jobs in their areas. And the workloads of these jobs themselves are more sustainable. - SWE: No cartel and constantly expanding pool of workers There's also an expanding job market. Sure, there are cyclical downturns, but the overall trend is up. One thing that trips a lot of people up is a failure to specialize. If your job is writing Django/Angular apps, that only gets so difficult, and there's not really a reason to pay for someone with more experience beyond a certain point. But Django/Angular apps aren't the peak of software engineering--there are much more complex systems out there which actually do need someone with more experience. I see a lot of people hit the point where they can't progress further with LAMP/.NET/whatever-common-stack and get stuck instead of going back to school or finding a job that will teach them cryptography or networking or FPGA programming or whatever.