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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

The US News article has eight different medical professions in the top ten. It's rounded out with Psychiatrist as number nine (which I'd argue is medical as well) and "Chief Executive" as number ten.

If you consolidate nine of them as "Medical", I bet IT, or some variant of it, would be in the top ten.

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> Psychiatrist as number nine (which I'd argue is medical as well)

No argument needed. In the US, psychiatrists are fully-licensed physicians.

Scroll down a bit further and they have a list of the top 10 non-medical professions. IT makes it on the list at #7 with "Computer and Information Systems Managers". Still not great I'd argue.

Yep.... if you are a US citizen, for the money, go to med school, everything else is overrated.

A medical degree costs a lot more than the degree necessary to work in IT. I don't have the report off the top of my head, but doctors don't reach salary parity with their peers who got bachelors degrees until their mid-40s.

Edit: I'm talking about lifetime earnings parity, not yearly parity. If you are marking $85k in IT as a 27 year old, you are way ahead of someone who starts making $175k at the age of 35 and has $250k in debt.

Though I do not have doctor friends in US so I may be wrong but I have heard from many that even family doctors here start with 200K pa almost anywhere in US. Now apart from top end software/banking most would not reach that number by end of career in software/IT.

That's true, but you can easily reach a six figure salary in software or IT, and you'll essentially have been in the workforce for twice as long as the doctor if you retire at 65.

How much you make really depends on your specialty as well. Cosmetic surgeons, anesthesiologists and radiologists make a lot more money than general practitioners. Pediatric anything does not make much money.

Cosmetic surgeons make an absolute boatload of money though. Like, an absurd amount. A guy I play pickup basketball with went from being a pediatric surgeon to a cosmetic surgeon, and he said it almost feels criminal how much more money he makes now.

That 6 figure IT salary is only recent AND doctors make 2-3x that.

My wife is a general medical provider, by the time we pay liability, malpractice, etc. etc. we end up making about the same. General practice (when compensating for overhead) provides about the same level income as senior level IT. Now granted that is out the door and IT you need at least a decade in to get to that salary but when balanced out for schooling required, you hit the same level of compensation at about the same time in life.

It's not salary parity per se, but rather that in the comparison the doctors are paying both the actual cost of medical school (and the servicing of the resulting debt) and the opportunity cost of spending seven-to-ten years in school/residency/fellowship before actually making a high salary. Meanwhile, their bachelor-only peers have been paid money, gained experience and gotten promoted.

Doctors can get 10 year loan forgiveness or even employer repayment. Then after age 40 (salary parity with a BS) the earnings compound. The doctor will be at 150k+ which is likely more than the BS holder alone. Plus the doctor doesn't have to worry about layoffs and is always employable.

Loan forgiveness isn't that great of a deal, because the IRS treats it as taxable income. So if you are making $200k a year, and you get a $200k loan forgiven, you will have a massive tax burden.

Plus, loan forgiveness is only after ten years of payments. Doctors will probably not have much money remaining on their loans, unless they spent ten years working for Doctors without Borders or something similar. If you pay back your student loans at the standard rate you will have repaid them after 10 years.

Doctors get special incentives to work in rural, nonprofit, NIH and other places... All of the big academic medical centers are nonprofits and they pay well.

Lifetime earning parity...

Let's make three assumptions:

* person in IT has zero education debt (per your example). Not likely, but okay * retirement at 65 * no promotion, pay raises * education debt is at zero per cent (but since we're saying the IT worker has none, it balances a little)

IT worker has 38 years of useful career at $85K. Earnings: $3.23M

Physician has 30 years of useful career at $175K. Earnings: $5.25M. Minus $250K in debt and we have $5M.

I'm not sure how the IT worker at $3.23M is "way ahead" of the physician at $5M...?

You are ignoring a lot of really important factors, such as investments. Obviously if neither person invests any money then the doctor will come out ahead at the end. Furthermore, if you are making $85k a year and haven't paid off your BA by the time you are 27 you are a moron. Plus, most of the debt the doctor will have is probably in the 6.5% range.

Regardless, I'm not saying that a doctor will make less than an IT worker over the course of their life, only that the IT worker will be leagues ahead of their doctor brethren for a large part of their working life.

On top of that, quality of life is an issue as well. Most doctors I know are still on call several nights a week, and work odd shifts. Most IT workers I know are on call for a fraction of the time doctors are on call, and generally work standard hours.

If money is your only goal, being a doctor is probably a more reliable career path. However, it's not far and away the more obvious career path, at least if you live in the United States.

Dunno man.. 1.75M is a lot of ground to cover in investment vs base salary alone..

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