Sometimes I wonder whether doctors will stop existing at some point.
Why would someone go through years and years of painful studying and training, to end up working in a hospital (!) doing colonoscopies all day, being on call 24/7, just to end up with the same income as some kid joining a FAANG straight out of high-school?
Perhaps I'm too tunnel visioned in this tech world, but I'm wondering about the incentives here and if they will keep existing. We do need doctors, right?
- ability to help people and even work directly with/in international communities to promote global health (eg, doctors without borders)
- dictate your schedule including working minimal hours
- answer a calling (life is more than money)
- ability to work in any area of the country or world (every city needs a doctor)
- solid job security and pay for your entire life
- respect / social status (people want to have a doctor as their friend / spouse)
- ability to develop and maintain social skills (ie, be more "broad") which are exercised as a physician significantly more than (in my experience) as a software engineer
- have months of vacation every year without any consequences
- life time of growth and learning
There's also a bit of tunnel vision in that these amazing jobs didn't exist 10 years ago; the people who have graduated within that time span just feel like they've been around forever. But when I graduated, PHP programming paid less than working management at KFC. I even applied to a job at KFC because working in tech was this ridiculous fantasy, and I'd eventually run out of inheritance money.
I still don't have a FAANG job. And the odds of getting a FAANG job for me is much lower than the odds of making a million dollar company.
I think that's the case for many career decisions. Some guy out there has better odds at becoming a pro footballer than getting a FAANG job. Many people who become doctors are from doctor families. To them, amputating a foot sounds more doable than trying to make sure a server runs at 99.99% uptime.
This isn’t true (at least in Australia).
In my 20s I earned significantly more than my doctor friend and I held the same viewpoint as you. Fast forward to mid-30s and he makes almost double my income, has full autonomy as a GP, works 20-30 hours a week, no stress.
You have to go through 10 years of hell as a doctor (study + intern). But once you get past that, a lot of opportunities open up. And you actually get to help people. Where in tech I feel like I’m just making someone else rich, sometimes at the expense of the user.
Sooooo basically it's almost always an emotional decision, unless you're already in a family that assumes and pressures you to be a doctor. (Though in that case I'd argue it's still an emotional thing, but the emotion is the pride of the family instead of your personal interest in medicine.)
I think that everyone picking a career straight out of high school is doing it based on their feelings towards that field. Maybe they think it would be super dope to have a bunch of money, so they decide to go to school for finance. Maybe they watched a lot of investigation shows and decided to go into forensics because they wanted the excitement and achievement of solving crimes. etc etc
A close friend of mine grew up in a rural country area and has spent a rewarding lifetime being a rural and remote area GP.
The benefits have been a continous steady reliable income, opportuniites for increased rates via locuum work, being embedded within various communities for three to five years at a time and forming deep connections with those communities.
There have been multiple side trips as the doctor on various scientific, tourist, and environmental trips to remote areas, and numerous solo trips (eg: walking the Western Arthur Ranges in Tasmania) that have drawn upon local support from patients an contacts made as a doctor.
GPs, at least, have the opportunity for more interconnected and broader social lives than that afforded the average software tech worker.
[1] They high FAANG salaries are not really rational, but a result of these companies being de facto monopolies (or are burning through billions of VC money, promising to become a monopoly in the future) and thus having so much money that they can afford to behave irrationally. It's basically unchecked corporate mismanagement and stupidity.
Kaiser Medical has their own medical school where doctors are trained and leave without debt. https://medschool.kp.org/. I know - I know - a Non-Profit behaving like a Non-Profit is almost unheard of in the US. Think of it - what if not for profit Universities decided to graduate all types of students without debt. Especially top Universities with outrageous endowments - who only pay 1.4 percent tax on the income. Makes you wonder how much profit is in the not for profit institution:)
In the US at least, many physicians enjoy a high degree of autonomy as well as high social status and high income. (The latter two can also be something of a down side since some mechanisms for maintaining high social status and high income can be detrimental to patients and to other health professionals.)
Then it got popular and everyone knew it was the ticket to upper class and the job slowly got shitty. A lot of extra hurdles and costs got added, kind of like lawyers.
Now it’s a shitty business, pay is still high but the debt burden is extreme, the health care system is broken so hours and quality of work conditions isn’t great.
If you compare it to a career in FAANG you will be 1-2million ahead before a doctor sees his first patient. Not a good deal or the best ticket to the upper class
And there’s even more money than FAANG employees… in specialties. And better job security.
I almost went that route and there's pretty much no other explanation for it. It's a labor of love.
Becoming an dev good enough to pass a FAANG interview is orders of magnitude easier than becoming an MD.
It's like asking why do people become pilots instead of chefs.
Imagine saving someone's life as opposed to writing JS for an image app that provides filters. Incomparable.