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Comment by JMTQp8lwXL | Hacker News Reader

Software Engineers in the US often make 2x as much as our European counterparts, yet we don't have any artificial limits on the number of people able to study Software Engineering. I'm not disagreeing with you the point on the AMA, but even if they removed their limits -- would many more people want to enter the field? It seems extremely intensive, not only during your education and residency, but on the job too. 12+ hours days, multiple days per week? No thanks.

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>In 2011, 43,919 students applied to medical schools. However, only 20,176 of those applicants were accepted into at least one medical school. In other words, 54% of applicants got rejected to every medical school they applied to.

Even if we remove the bottom 10% or even 20% of un-accepted individuals (who we might assume, unfairly or not, are not cut out to be doctors) an absolutely significant number of people would enter the field.

I wonder what’s the graduation rate for medical school? You’d think it should be difficult enough to flunk out 2/3 of the students (like engineering), but I’m guessing that is not the case.

It's practically 100%. Once you're in, they'll do everything in their power to graduate you (legitly). Every incentive they have points at a perfect graduation rate.

EDIT: In the US, anyway. Things are different in, say, Caribbean medical schools.

I read someone mention that French medical schools are easier to get into but the graduation rate is much more like engineering schools. About 1/2 to 2/3 of students drop out or fail. Said the result was French doctors were functionally better in general than US ones and happier.

Since I don't have any experience with French medical schools I don't know if that is true or still true.

I do have experience with US doctors and about half of them are just phoning it in every day.

I also used to assume it was a field full of highly intelligent people, but when I told this to my cousin who is a doctor he laughed and said something to the effect of "The medical profession selects for mediocrity", and went on to point out that being a doctor is a fairly rote profession; most of their work does not involve creative problem solving or critical thinking. It is a very challenging profession in terms of having to learn an enormous body of material, work grueling hours in dangerous and unpleasant environments, and deal with customers who are definitionally unhappy to be your customer. But it's a set of challenges that a fairly wide portion of the population can rise to.

Software engineers are in such high demand in the US that we can't train supply fast enough. In addition, most tech companies tend to be clustered in areas with the highest cost of living in the country. Those two things combined are what serves to push salaries up.

If there were more doctors, they wouldn't have to work 12+ hour days. They are overworked and have to pack patients in because of the limited supply of doctors.

Speaking for Canada rather than Europe but I imagine the argument is mostly the same. The supply and demand ratios are different. Canada has very few pure software firms like Google or Amazon compared to the US, so there is significantly less competition for the engineers that work there. This drives prices down - or rather, prevents prices from being driven up.

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