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> Comparing the income of Wall Street traders to physicians is bogus, the skills required are very different , and Wall Street is much more competitive and cut-

> Comparing the income of Wall Street traders to physicians is bogus, the skills required are very different , and Wall Street is much more competitive and cut-throat than the medical profession is. It's really not a bogus comparison. Comparing to the average wage of all professions is meaningless, since a prospective doctor would be capable of getting a top paying job if he decided not to go to medical school. The proper comparison is between two jobs that a prospective doctor might choose. More than half of all medical school applicants take a year or more off in between college and medical school, and Wall Street and medical schools are indirectly competing for a lot of the same talent - a person who decides medical school is too heavy of a financial burden may very well choose to work in finance instead. Students graduating from top-tier engineering schools, for example, are prime candidates for both fields (and it is not uncommon for someone with an engineering degree to work for a few years in finance before deciding to go to medical school) As I said before, it easily takes 30 years or more before medical school starts to look like a good financial decision, and that's assuming you make it that far without burning out and leaving the profession (as many do). That time frame is increasing, not decreasing, which means medicine is becoming a less attractive or sensible financial decision for the top-tier candidates, who are theoretically the very people one would most want to be performing one's open-heart surgery twenty years from now.

foobarqux 12y ago
Specialist medicine beats finance in many ways, particularly lifestyle. (Autonomy, work hours, vacation). I don't believe the 30 year figure for specialists (Being a physician isn't that great). As always going to a top school changes the calculus significantly compared to everywhere else.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > Specialist medicine beats finance in many ways, particularly lifestyle. (Autonomy, work hours, vacation). If you're in private practice, maybe, but that's really not the case anymore. And in any case, private practices are a dying breed. If you're an employed doctor, you have essentially zero autonomy with regards to your practice, your work hours aren't that flexible (or forgiving), and you don't get that much vacation time. What you describe certainly did apply to doctors one or two generations ago, and still applies to some of the outliers today, but it's not true for the vast majority of doctors anymore, and the direction of the trend is very clear and has been for many years. > As always going to a top school changes the calculus significantly compared to everywhere else. Not as much as the residency and/or fellowship does. The top schools charge more, but ceteris paribus, the residency is a better predictor of how much money you can make. Both of those effects, however, are swamped by whether or not a doctor actually lasts long enough after their fellowship to become one of those incredibly lucky high-earners. As much as people might not want to believe it, specialty medicine is a very competitive and cut-throat world, and there's a reason that so many would-be doctors burn out before ever seeing the thick paychecks referenced in this thread. > I don't believe the 30 year figure for specialists It's true, though if you choose not to believe it, I'm not going to argue the point further.
pcrh 12y ago
>a prospective doctor would be capable of getting a top paying job if he decided not to go to medical school. This is not strictly true. To make an analogy, a marathon runner is not the best athlete for cycling, and most physicians would make lousy engineers. The biggest advantage of the medical profession is how secure it is relative to other highly skilled white-collar jobs, where climbing the ladder is a much less certain endeavor than medicine is.

foobarqux 12y ago

Specialist medicine beats finance in many ways, particularly lifestyle. (Autonomy, work hours, vacation). I don't believe the 30 year figure for specialists (Being a physician isn't that great). As always going to a top school changes the calculus significantly compared to everywhere else.

chimeracoder 12y ago
> Specialist medicine beats finance in many ways, particularly lifestyle. (Autonomy, work hours, vacation). If you're in private practice, maybe, but that's really not the case anymore. And in any case, private practices are a dying breed. If you're an employed doctor, you have essentially zero autonomy with regards to your practice, your work hours aren't that flexible (or forgiving), and you don't get that much vacation time. What you describe certainly did apply to doctors one or two generations ago, and still applies to some of the outliers today, but it's not true for the vast majority of doctors anymore, and the direction of the trend is very clear and has been for many years. > As always going to a top school changes the calculus significantly compared to everywhere else. Not as much as the residency and/or fellowship does. The top schools charge more, but ceteris paribus, the residency is a better predictor of how much money you can make. Both of those effects, however, are swamped by whether or not a doctor actually lasts long enough after their fellowship to become one of those incredibly lucky high-earners. As much as people might not want to believe it, specialty medicine is a very competitive and cut-throat world, and there's a reason that so many would-be doctors burn out before ever seeing the thick paychecks referenced in this thread. > I don't believe the 30 year figure for specialists It's true, though if you choose not to believe it, I'm not going to argue the point further.

pcrh 12y ago

>a prospective doctor would be capable of getting a top paying job if he decided not to go to medical school. This is not strictly true. To make an analogy, a marathon runner is not the best athlete for cycling, and most physicians would make lousy engineers. The biggest advantage of the medical profession is how secure it is relative to other highly skilled white-collar jobs, where climbing the ladder is a much less certain endeavor than medicine is.