3 ms·

To be fair, becoming a radiologist is so much harder than becoming a software developer that I'd sure hope it would come with some perks. Your cousin might be w

by nilkn 12y ago

To be fair, becoming a radiologist is so much harder than becoming a software developer that I'd sure hope it would come with some perks. Your cousin might be working half time now, but she almost surely worked quadruple time for a long time before that just to get to where she is. Dermatology and radiology are some of the most competitive medical specialties in the world. Most doctors are neither dermatologists nor radiologists, and frankly if you did a truly detailed cost benefit analysis I'm not so sure the numbers would be so clear cut for the average doctor. As a very hard-working programmer, at age 25 I was making $120k base salary far away from Silicon Valley -- my friends in medicine were neck deep in coursework still with an income of approximately -$50k/year and another ~4 years on average before they'd match what I was making already. And I assure you that not every physician is able to just "scale back". Yes, some can, but that's not the norm. Plenty of ER doctors work nights for decades. My best friend growing up is a resident physician right now and works 80 hour weeks. I haven't even talked to him for a year because he's so busy.

geebee 12y ago
Responding to you a bit late… I certainly didn't intend to compare radiologists and dermatologists to median software developers. I bring these fields up as a reminder that career flexibility exists at a level that is considerably more elite than dental hygienist. In short, if you are a very ambitious and academically talented person, there are high earning and high prestige professions that will still yield considerable career flexibility . I also think you may be selling "developer" a little short here. Part of the problem here is that "radiologist", "registered nurse", and "dental hygienist" all mean something very standardized and specific. Software developer, on the other hand, means very little. It can range from someone who just finished reading a book on php and myql (or didn't read it but claims to have) to someone with a PhD who is doing mathematically intense programming on genomics (though I suppose that person would probably have a different title). A lot of jobs I'm interested in these days say "MS required, PhD preferred." These grad degrees require majoring in a STEM field, degrees that even at the undergrad level have a very high attrition rate, perhaps even higher than pre-med coursework (which doesn't honestly require the same difficulty in math). To get into a top school, you need to score at the top percentiles on standardized tests. In spite of this, elite PhD programs typically have an attrition rate between 35%-50% attrition rate (engineering is best, pure science is worst). MD programs at elite schools, by contrast, have vanishingly low attrition rates (UCSF, for instance, is below 0.5%). No joke, attrition rates at elite PhD programs are between 75 and 100 times higher than elite med schools. Of course, as people have pointed out to me in the past, it's not apples-to-apples. If you can even realistically apply to a PhD program in CS, you probably can already work in industry for a fine salary. If you leave with an MS, as I did, you have a valuable degree. MD tends to be more all-or-nothing, and (as you have reasonably pointed out), highly selective residencies in lucrative fields are hardly guaranteed. It will never be apples-to-apples when comparing fields. But considering that when you go by pay, your typical programmer is between dental hygienist and registered nurse (in San Francisco), we should probably recognize that we need to compare outcomes for a comparable educational path. But I wouldn't say that becoming a radiologist or other medical specialist is so much harder than getting a PhD that the comparison is useless. Especially if we're going to take seriously the talk among silicon valley CEOs and congress about a critical shortage of PhDs in STEM fields. Overall, I'd say that the career stability, pay, and flexibility of health care fields may win out over tech at a high level as well as a low one. This doesn't mean there are no good reasons to want to be a programmer, but I do think it's relevant when the US president stands next to tech CEOs at press conferences and agrees that there is a shortage of STEM workers.

by nilkn 12y ago

geebee 12y ago

Responding to you a bit late… I certainly didn't intend to compare radiologists and dermatologists to median software developers. I bring these fields up as a reminder that career flexibility exists at a level that is considerably more elite than dental hygienist. In short, if you are a very ambitious and academically talented person, there are high earning and high prestige professions that will still yield considerable career flexibility . I also think you may be selling "developer" a little short here. Part of the problem here is that "radiologist", "registered nurse", and "dental hygienist" all mean something very standardized and specific. Software developer, on the other hand, means very little. It can range from someone who just finished reading a book on php and myql (or didn't read it but claims to have) to someone with a PhD who is doing mathematically intense programming on genomics (though I suppose that person would probably have a different title). A lot of jobs I'm interested in these days say "MS required, PhD preferred." These grad degrees require majoring in a STEM field, degrees that even at the undergrad level have a very high attrition rate, perhaps even higher than pre-med coursework (which doesn't honestly require the same difficulty in math). To get into a top school, you need to score at the top percentiles on standardized tests. In spite of this, elite PhD programs typically have an attrition rate between 35%-50% attrition rate (engineering is best, pure science is worst). MD programs at elite schools, by contrast, have vanishingly low attrition rates (UCSF, for instance, is below 0.5%). No joke, attrition rates at elite PhD programs are between 75 and 100 times higher than elite med schools. Of course, as people have pointed out to me in the past, it's not apples-to-apples. If you can even realistically apply to a PhD program in CS, you probably can already work in industry for a fine salary. If you leave with an MS, as I did, you have a valuable degree. MD tends to be more all-or-nothing, and (as you have reasonably pointed out), highly selective residencies in lucrative fields are hardly guaranteed. It will never be apples-to-apples when comparing fields. But considering that when you go by pay, your typical programmer is between dental hygienist and registered nurse (in San Francisco), we should probably recognize that we need to compare outcomes for a comparable educational path. But I wouldn't say that becoming a radiologist or other medical specialist is so much harder than getting a PhD that the comparison is useless. Especially if we're going to take seriously the talk among silicon valley CEOs and congress about a critical shortage of PhDs in STEM fields. Overall, I'd say that the career stability, pay, and flexibility of health care fields may win out over tech at a high level as well as a low one. This doesn't mean there are no good reasons to want to be a programmer, but I do think it's relevant when the US president stands next to tech CEOs at press conferences and agrees that there is a shortage of STEM workers.