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Comment by jl2718 | Hacker News Reader

This is an extremely poorly-argued point full of one-sided emotion. The fact of the matter is that no other career path even comes close to the risk-adjusted lifetime financial remuneration of becoming a doctor. Every once in a while, some other career will briefly take the spotlight, like pilots in the 90s, real estate agents, or maybe even software engineers today, but none of them last. Get your MD. Don’t talk to a 30-year-old resident about it. Look at how 60-year-old doctors are doing compared to a random sample of their peers. Not even close.

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> The fact of the matter is that no other career path even comes close to the risk-adjusted lifetime financial remuneration of becoming a doctor

Does that stat include doctors who didn't place into residency. This year, 1 in 5 med school grads didn't get a residency. Some of them will match next year, but it's typically considered a one and done process. That something many older doctors tend to forget.

You basically go $1 million in debt (between tuition and lost wages) for a 1 in 5 chance of being a complete financial wreck with a mostly useless degree since you can't become licensed.

Once you've made it being a doctor can be great. However, the process of getting there is absolutely brutal.

NRMP Data: http://www.nrmp.org/one-nine-press-release-thousands-residen...

Do you really want to be a lifetime income maximizer, though, rather than a satisficer? Medical doctors need to put in an incredible amount of work and study in order to get into the career, and even more after becoming an MD.

Just to highlight what is already well known is a big downside of securing the “lifetime financial remuneration” is the sheer length of the training and juniper years. I’m not going to pretend that those in other careers don’t work hard (they do and reading some of the things on this website makes me feel I have it easy), however I can see why it’s not for everyone. The path in my country (Australia) is shorter than in America which at quickest is as follows 5 years medical school after finishing high school at 17/18. 2 years being a junior (average workweek is 50-60 hours which isn’t too bad). Then training for a specialist takes 5 years average workload is super variable anything from 40-80 hours a week. Then sometimes people do 1-2 years overseas to gain an edge on a certain area within their field. Then finally you come back as a boss (hopefully earning the big bucks at this time After securing a job in what can be a saturated market). Oh and don’t think about claiming overtime during this process, you get paid as if you worked 40 hours a week regardless. The above mentioned includes evenings public holidays night shifts etc.

It’s a long road and I can see why it would be hard if not impossible for others to carry through until the end depending on their age and life circumstances. I think once you consider not only the high income once you made it, but the long path (what I described above is streamlined assuming everything lines up perfectly and you outcompete your competition) it’s moderate to above average compensation at best. I contrast this to my friends in engineering and law whom have secured 6 figure salaries 1-2 years after graduating, have their weekends off and told me they haven’t studied since university. I do get the impression at least US software engineering may be the best way to secure a great income at a young age these days, hopefully it stays this way for you guys. Just wanted to stress don’t go into medicine for the long term financial remuneration because there’s likely something better for the work that you need to put in.

> The fact of the matter is that no other career path even comes close to the risk-adjusted lifetime financial remuneration of becoming a doctor.

Lifetime income is a very poor proxy for happiness. If you're optimizing solely for money, good on you, I guess, but I suspect that's not the case for most people.

> The fact of the matter is that no other career path even comes close to the risk-adjusted lifetime financial remuneration of becoming a doctor.

This seems like a very sad way to view the world.

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