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More to the point, medicine is portable because people need doctors everywhere. You can practice medicine in New York just as well as you can practice medicine
by bartonfink 15y ago
More to the point, medicine is portable because people need doctors everywhere. You can practice medicine in New York just as well as you can practice medicine in Ouray. Further, barring highly specialized fields (e.g. pediatric oncology, transplantation surgery), the work you'll be doing will be more or less similar and available wherever you go. Software just doesn't offer that.
Most of the places I've seen that advertise telecommuting are really only paying lip service to the idea that where you develop software simply doesn't matter all that much. You see places that say you can work from home one day a week, and call that "remote work." There are some companies that acknowledge this fact, and are structured for true remote work, but software engineers as a class are far more tied to location than doctors are.
- groby_b 15y agoSoftware does offer exactly that. Last I checked, a hash table works the same in New York and Ouray. And you can remotely contribute to a project from pretty much anywhere you get Internet. Sure, that excludes e.g. large parts of Africa, but let's be honest: People don't get into medicine because they could always get a job in Africa. Yes, there are some who have that calling, but most like the developed world just fine. So the issue is not with the profession per se - that leaves the employers. And there, you have a point for large swaths of the industry. But it seems the world of web/backend development is a bit more flexible there, no?
- imajes 15y agoYour perception is wrong. Medicine (and, especially the implementation of it) is (in many areas) changing as much as software engineering. There is, however, stronger certification around medicine: once you have a medical license, it's pretty hard to lose it - especially through inactivity.