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Why are women turned off by competitiveness in CS ... but not in medicine? Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K
by rdouble 15y ago
Why are women turned off by competitiveness in CS ... but not in medicine?
Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers. If you do pre-med but can't get into med school, you can still get into public health, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, etc... If you do CS but can't get a job at Google, you can get into TPS reports or be unemployed. That last part is grossly simplifying, but compare getting a programming job someplace like Wyoming or North Dakota vs. getting a medical job in the same place.
- true_religion 15y agoOr perhaps there's more prestige in a medical degree than a CS degree. Or perhaps there is a perception that doctors are really helping people, as opposed to CS professionals. Didn't we just have a spate of articles that complained that startups weren't doing enough to "help the world".
- rdouble 15y agoThere may or may not be more prestige. There are countless "I hate my jerk doctor" stories. There is definitely more money.
- curtis 15y agoI don't think it's just perception. Doctors really do deal with other people -- both patients and coworkers -- more than software engineers do.
- ma2rten 15y agoYes, but that does not mean that software engineers are not helping people (indirectly).
- politician 15y agoIndeed! Warehouse automation software prevents scores of back injuries in the first place, ergo women are shallow. That's tongue-in-cheek, but I'll bet there is a study out there to support the idea that humans do not value indirect effects as much as direct effects.
- pak 15y agoIn my experience, maybe 2% of software engineers are incentivized more strongly by positive social change than by money or fame. These are the idealists, like Richard Stallman and former members of OLPC, who are often ridiculed by the rest of the community. Until the academic and governmental infrastructure is able to put anywhere near as much money into CS research as private industry, the majority of technologists will (have to) be driven by the desire to make money. For all the talk of how doctors make a lot of money, the reason they do is that so few are both qualified and willing to take the long, grinding road through 8 years of medical school and residency, $200k in debt, and 80 hour work weeks, with fierce competition at every step of the way. According to the med students I know, if you aren't inspired by some higher calling it's almost not worth it because you won't make it through.
- mahyarm 15y agoAnd medical education doesn't have to be structured that way at all. Medicine could be like engineering, where you start on day one of your undergrad and take 5-6 years in an average university setting, and 80 hour residency programs are just counter productive.
- rdouble 15y agoThat is how medical school works in most countries.
- protagonist_h 15y agoIn my experience, at least in US, less than 1% of medical students go into the field "to help people." In fact, nowadays saying you want to become a doctor "because you want to help people" sounds almost cliché. Most of them do it either for money, social status or because that's what their mom wants them to do. And while it's true that very few programmers are "incentivized by positive social change", many of them do it because they find it interesting and fun in some way.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- igorgue 15y agoIf you go by that logic, nobody would study finance (or any financial business career). But they're hugely popular.
- gaius 15y agoThat is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?
- jff 15y agoAs opposed to the low-stress 9-5 world of medicine?
- dpritchett 15y agoDoesn't an M.D. imply more job security and a higher starting wage than any C.S. credential?
- gaius 15y agoQuite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.
- joeyo 15y agoAt the risk of getting quite off-topic, in my opinion most physicians will eventually be replaced by a combination of Bayesian diagnostic software and surgical robotics. There will be an intermediate period where physicians will control and oversee the software and robots, but this too will pass. Those tasks which cannot be easily roboticized (for example, all the soft skills) will be shifted over to nurses.
- neutronicus 15y agoIt's sor tof happening (not the tech part). I dated a nurse practitioner for a while, and the medical industry is putting more and more responsibility into their hands to save money.
- 15y ago
- saturn 15y ago> The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers I was all primed with a fiery response about how good programmers in hot markets should be pulling more than 200k, lousy markets at least 100k, and anyone who wasn't is either a lousy negotiator or not good, but then I remembered where I was. The crème de la crème. Yeah, "staff programmers" (as I call them) might well earn less, on average, than nurses. And it's a guaranteed, standardised wage, none of this grasping meritocracy competitive nonsense. The thing about programming is that it gives you a chance to shine. I mean really shine. God bless the nurses, etc, but realistically speaking any one nurse is not going to change the world just by being a bloody good nurse. I think the attraction to the high-stakes sink-or-swim pure meritocracy game is a very male thing.
- rdouble 15y agoEven if you shine you don't make as much as a general physician, and you'll never make as much as a dermatologist. If you want to get rich as a programmer you have to attach yourself to a liquidity event or run your own business.
- saturn 15y agoIsn't it the case that if you want to get rich as a GP or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise? It is known that you'll never get rich working for someone else, but that applies to all trades and I don't see any reason why starting one as a programmer is dramatically different from starting one as a GP, or a plumber, or any other kind of highly skilled and valuable trade.
- rdouble 15y agoIt depends on what you mean by rich. If you want beaucoup dollars (millions) it does help to own the cardiology clinic. However, my dad hires physicians for a rural health care system. A cardiologist in this area can get paid a salary of $350,000 per year, guaranteed three year contract. This is in the middle of nowhere, where a nice house can cost $100K and a king's mansion costs about $400K. That is "rich" by most of the world's standards. The option to throw a dart at a map, move there, and make a $300K+ a year without running a business is simply not available to programmers (or any other profession.)
- krakensden 15y ago> The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary And they have to spend ten extra years in school, none of which is guaranteed to do anything but leave them poorer.
- drgath 15y agoVery true. While unlikely, it is certainly possible to rise to the top of the industry in CS without even graduating high school. Medical field? No way.
- Duff 15y agoMore than that, medicine is more portable. At a typical large company, the ingress point into the company is at an entry-level position. Many women want to interrupt employment when they have children, which isn't practical for a IT person or programmer at a bank or government agency. My mother, to use a fairly typical example, is a nurse. She took 5-6 years off at various times when my siblings were born or when daycare costs became prohibitive. Impact on her career? Not too bad -- hospitals need nurses, especially nurses with the specialist certifications she had.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoWhy should it be a big deal if you interrupt your career for a few years (whether to have a family or to travel the world...somehow I bet the second would be seen as ok in tech circles)? A good programmer can pick up a new technology in a couple of months. If you are hiring based on candidates winning resume buzzword bingo, you are going to get crappy candidates anyway. Hire for intelligence and capability and five years off to have a couple of kids is meaningless.
- Duff 15y agoI agree. I think paid sabbaticals have positive ROI too. Number crunchers don't think in those terms though.
- bugsy 15y agoGood comment. Great point about sabbaticals. It's a pity that when I read your good comments and the one above it, both had been downvoted into the grey. Many newcomers here at HN don't seem to understand that downvoting here is not meant to indicate that one doesn't like an opinion, it's supposed to be for comments that are abusive, obviously trolling, or that contribute nothing. I propose an improvement to the downvoting API: One can downvote all they want, but each downvote will cost 1 karma/reputation point. That way, people with much good reputation can as needed mark abusive posts. But the newcomers will think more carefully about marking down posts they simply don't agree with since it can plunge them into negative.
- seanalltogether 15y agoPerhaps it's because medicine is way more academic then programming. I think programming has more in relation with a skilled trade then with an academic based career, and the skilleds trades are notoriously male dominated.