Medicine vs CS (Tech)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am 30 years old and I work in cybersecurity and I make 400K/year with no student loans debt. My 35 years old brother just finished his PhD/MD in medicine and his salary is around 425K/year but he has about 400K in student loan debt. My work is very stressful but not as stressful as his. I made money at the age of 22 after graduation up until now so I am about 2M ahead of him in earnings with no debt while he has 400K in student loan debt.

I mean 425k is on it low end for someone smart enough to get into a MD/PhD program unless he's working in academics. My brother in IR is making close to a million 2 years out of fellowship. Similar salaries or higher are typical in private practice urology, optho, ENT, ortho, plastics, derm, pain, GI, just to name a few. Yes, he has more debt but if you estimate a 30 year career, he will easily out pace most CS people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I’m a CS/math major and I make more per hour worked than my surgeon brother in law who didn’t start making money until nearly 40 (phd-md). The majority of his family’s major decisions revolve around his career, it constantly takes priority in his family’s life and has nearly led to divorce more than once. Granted, their life has gotten better since he finished his training, research and fellowship, but it was a grueling period of time while trying to also start a family. They have told us after going through the process to become an elite surgeon/researcher, they would never have either of their kids go into medicine unless they were the best of the brightest and could get into something cushy like dermatology (highly competitive).

I love my stress free job, complete flexibility, can work from anywhere, 20 hours per week. If you like and are good at math, are also good with people and American , you will do extremely well. Every industry is in desperate need of tech workers not just Big Tech.

I’ve been in software development and engineering management for almost 30 years. I’ve never met anyone in tech who worked 20 hours per week. Not doubting PP, just saying that experience is not typical. Much more common to work 60 hours per week. Also, you have to stay current. I spend at least 10 hours per week learning new languages, frameworks, and tools (outside of work). There have been some studies about the stress of needing to stay current on software developers over time, and it’s a more stressful gig than you would think for that reason. Also, something like 60% of software projects either fail outright or end up way over budget or late. Depending on your personality, that can be very stressful.

don’t they need to learn about need things in medicine? New research, new trratment, certifications also even for dentists

They do and they have to take medical board exams.
But the speed of change is not like in tech.

There’s a lot of opinions on this thread from non-doctors.

The speed of change is not that fast in general medicine; however, some fields are evolving so rapidly that it’s hard to keep up. Hematology/oncology comes to mind.
I’d strongly advise at least seeking an opinion from a specialist at an academic medical center if you are diagnosed with cancer because there is no way that a general community oncologist who treats all kinds of cancers can keep up with the explosion in new drugs and new molecular/cytogenetic findings that have therapeutic and/or prognostic implications.

And medicine really has been pretty miserable since the pandemic.
We are understaffed - with no way to fix it. Not just a national shortage doctors, but also nurses, support staff, laboratory techs, etc.
From what I can tell, my hours 20 years into my career rival those of a big law lawyer, but I earn about a third of what they do.
The people I know in tech work for home. With shorter hours.

I just can’t recommend medicine in its current iteration.

Don’t you feel good about helping people? I work in a teaching hospital and many of my colleagues stay even though they could be in far more lucrative positions.

I feel good that my job hopefully helps people (unlike my corporate law and i-banking friends, whose job description appears to be: ensure that the rich get richer).

But right now medicine is just so frustrating. I am relatively senior with a substantial administrative role in an academic institution, and spend a huge amount of my time begging junior doctors, nurses and support staff not to quit; listening to my junior doctors rage about how the crazy administrators keep exhorting us to do the impossible: “do more with less” “work smarter not harder” etc; trying to get the hospital administrators to let us actually fill open positions; and talking to patients who are pissed off about various and sundry issues like long wait times or something they read on MyChart that they misunderstood and have concluded (erroneously) is malpractice.

The post-Covid burnout is real.

Two colleagues are married to CS people (both at google), and say their spouses make more money and have a lot more free time than we do (in a speciality with a mid-range salary).

[Anonymous]

Two colleagues are married to CS people (both at google), and say their spouses make more money and have a lot more free time than we do (in a speciality with a mid-range salary).

Bit of a silly comparison. What specialty are you on? Being at a competitive employer like Google is analogous to someone in medicine being in Plastics, not a mid range salary specialty in academics.