Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
nationalpost.com
nationalpost.com
I graduated from ECE at Waterloo in 2008. I wanted to go to med school, so I studied for the MCATs (did well), volunteered at this ER, and eventually went on to do a Masters in medical imaging. I never did go to med school though, I didn't have the marks nor the drive.
That said, volunteering at this ER was a significant turning point in my career/life. Besides the life experience of being in a busy ER, it actually served as the foundation point for my current career as a software engineer/startup founder.
During my volunteer stint, my volunteer coordinator passed my name along to the company running the bedside television terminals in the hospital. I started working for them, selling services to patients. Through that work, my innate curiosity and need to solve problems got the best of me. I saw they had a fairly new/technical system, yet we were doing things by paper. I started hacking on the system, figured out how to extract data from the DB using a PHP script. This caught the attention of the company owner. Eventually, I left that job to continue doing contract software/technical work for that owner. We had a very interesting relationship over the years.
Eventually, I leveraged that opportunity to find future opportunities in commercial real estate, which I used to create my current startup.
Oh, and I met my wonderful wife through that volunteer position too. We now have a beautiful 1.5 year old.
All because I volunteered in the ER.
The closest I have is a rejection letter from Radio Shack HQ, I received as a kid, maybe around age 12. I'd spent many hours ogling parts and gear in their stores, and practically memorized their catalogs. So I was a big fan, and I'd written to their headquarters, proposing that I would write a hobby computers&electronics book, in the vein of some of the Forrest Mims projects articles I'd read. (With the difference being that I had almost no knowledge worth sharing.) I got back a polite letter, on Radio Shack stationery, not mentioning that I was obviously just a kid, and saying that they didn't wish to develop a hobby book, but if I developed it otherwise, they'd be happy to review a copy off the press. I had my first rejection letter framed for a while, but lost the original during a very lean move right after grad school, and now I only have a scan of it.
https://hackaday.com/2018/12/14/retrotechtacular-remembering...
I know my kid would have really liked something like that.
If you've read anything about what they were like as a band that's quite a career path!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Baxter#Defense_consulting...
Agreed. Now imagine being a similarly aged retail service worker, or agricultural laborer, and doing the same. Even more amazing, if rare. The point is: both the drive and capital are needed. This person clearly had both at their disposal.
It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than having to spend mid-five figures. That the student learns law, medicine, math, physics, biology or any other university discipline doesn't cost more or less to the family.
The benefit for the country however is massive. The "cost" of training a doctor is repaid infinitely by the benefits of medicine itself (and great tax contributions!) during their whole career (30+ years).
I wish it were like that everywhere...
It costs a lot more than that to become a doctor in the US. Typical student loan debt for doctors is well into 6 digits.
https://www.bestmedicaldegrees.com/is-medical-school-worth-i...
[1] https://www.medicineandthemilitary.com/joining-and-eligibili...
I'm confused because need based financial aid for medical schools is still mostly loans. My partner who comes from a relatively poor family (they used to be on welfare) had most of their need based financial aid in the form of loans. Out of her residency class the highest % of folks taking out loans were from low to middle income families not well off families. So I'm curious where you got that stat from?
A family in the top 5% of incomes with one child and zero financial issues and can pull it off. But, that’s well past just middle class.
To go from ab initio to an airline pilot role, the cost is in the area of $200,000 - $250,000 now and there's a lot of ways to end up not getting picked for an airline job.
Entry salary is up from $18,000 to $40,000 or so now, but that's not much improvment considering the cost of training.
Part of the issue is the 1,500 hour experience rule, which is government-imposed. (There's an option for 1,200 hours, but then your major has to be airline-focused., preventing them from wisely diversifying their career options.)
US airlines are in a bind because their policy is to not subsidize initial training, but cannot fly without pilots.
And students are getting sticker-shock, and thinking about other careers with better ROI and certainty.
However, when I talked to admissions staff, this counted for essentially nothing. My prerequisites were out of date—-I’d have to go take biology and physics (with lab!), even though I’d spent the last 6 years measuring the electrical activity of living brains in living animals. I’d need to volunteer in a hospital for....whatever reason. None of this would have been insurmountable but it would have added another year or two to the process, while making less than a grad student and pushing a real job even further into the future.
This is especially maddening since the NIH is particularly keen on training physician-scientists, but everything seems designed for physician->scientist and not the other way around even though we have a glut of biomedical researchers and not enough doctors!
There's an underlying premise, I think, that countries like France or Germany seek to minimize the cost of healthcare in general, because the bill is collectively paid— the bottom line is a direct cost on GDP, that's what mutualizing bills means i.e. "social security", beyond that the whole socialistic apparel of redistribution of (some % of) wealth.
Artificially inflating any of these mutual bills simply means that some (people, corporations, the medical field entirely including drugs and supplies) would take more than they should from all others, financially. Starting with having to buy their way in the field (exactly the kind of artificial gating that modern democracies sought to remove, historically; long-term it's no better than saying "voting costs $100k per person").
It's a form of inner competition at a national level, because the enrichment of some hampers the velocity of the whole towards the core mission. It's a huge distraction, at best.
In layman terms: because I'm gonna charge 200 instead of 100, the country can only buy N/2 worth of what I do. If "I" is the entire field of medicine drugs/supplies/infra, we only cure half what we could, but I personally get 2x profits. It's wrong on every level when we're talking about mutual bills.
But in the USA, the bills are not (yet) mutualized, not enough of them... so there is no incentive to keep costs low and treat as much as we could, because microeconomically, it makes more sense for the field of medicine to increase its relative profit. Unless you add the macroeconomic coupling, that bills are mutualized and everybody pays them at the end of the day, it just can't / won't change imho.
Correct. I assume it's not specific to France, and that it's the case in many developed countries. I suspect the US are the exception.
I'd add it's uncommon for French students in demanding fields to work part time. However, it is quite easy to get a scholarship if your parents earn below a certain income.
Having money can help though, for instance to pay some external tutors which may be useful to pass the entrance examination.
"The AAMC explains that the percentage of medical students from families in the highest quintile of household income has not dropped below 48 percent since 1987—half of students come from the richest 20 percent of the population—while the percentage of students from the lowest quintile has never risen above 5.5 percent [9]"
https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/sites/journalofethics.a...
This is anecdotal, but my elementary school class was full of doctors kids and I can tell you that the doctor parents would almost disown their kid if they didn't get into medical school. Doctors seem to have a very strong opinion on the medical field being the only right option.
So in that sense it's more of a correlation with money, and a causation through inheritance.
In my case.... my dad is a doctor and it was sort of expected I become one myself. Its not my thing though, or it wasn't at the time so now (like a lot of people on this forum) I work in engineering. In a way I do regret it now, because I wish I did something "useful" to society.
My younger sister however, did go to med school and is about to finish. She was very driven from a young age - I don't remember her saying she wants to become anything else but a doc. When her and my dad talk, I feel a little left out and only occasionally I have the feeling they look at me and shake their heads.
That's a claim a lot of people make (I think I'd probably agree with it), and the parent comment is disagreeing.
I wish either one of its ex-ceos was like that in real life. But an ER doctor is pretty cool as well.
Another great piece of RadioShack literature is Jon Bois' recap of working there for years. It's long but worth a read if you have 20 minutes.
https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulog...
I think if someone asked me to sort of define the 2000s, outside of some obvious life events, this article does a pretty damn good job of painting a picture of where we were.
I find people like him inspiring, I would much prefer if media would concentrate on presenting us more people doing useful things instead of celebrity gossips.
I relate to all of the gratitude in the above quote. It seems almost gratuitous to be able to pursue more than one major career pathway. I feel lucky to have the opportunity and lucky to have realized that I didn't have to choose.
I think it’s easy for this to be a fulfilling career if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t get early filtered out.
Plus you are the only profession that can legally write prescriptions and do some services.
The power of the medical cartels has intangible benefits too.
The salaries look nice when they're windowed to a single year. Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech - especially when you consider the hours and stress.
* 4 years of med school - $0 income - $40k+ of tuition
* 3+ years of residency, minimum (4+ for most fields, even more for surgery) - $60k/year
------
If my wife had gone straight into tech, we'd have been better off financially until our 50's. 30 years is a long, long time to break even.
We are in a strange time when software engineer salaries can even be comparable to those of doctors. Rest assured that sooner or later tech workers will be middle-class schlubs like pretty much every other type of engineer.
500k in costs before your first year of big earnings.
You said 30 years. I'm counting 2.
Disingenuous.
Missing interest - unless you really want to fuck yourself in the short term. 160k of tuition costs more like $300k with the standard payment play. Good luck if you have undergrad debt. Could easily add $500k more to your debt load.
> 80k x 4 = 320k lost wages.
Try a number closer to $400k. Also a good portion of MD's take a gap year for research either during med school or before residency. Potentially adds a year.
> 30k x 3 Delta wages.
3 years is for family medicine, most other specialities are 4 years - so add a year. Surgery is more like 8 years.
This wage delta is more on the order of $80k to $100k+ per year. I have friends who are closer to $150k+ per year wage gap compared to their MD spouses.
For my wife and I this number will be $400k.
$300k + $400k + $400k = $1.1m+ difference.
> You said 30 years. I'm counting 2.
You're counting two because you're only looking at salary and not the salary difference. I'm counting 15 at minimum on a pure salary income.
My wife is also working 80/hours week. I'm working 40. It will take into our 50's before my wife makes more on a per hour basis than I do. If I worked 80 hours per week, my wife would never catch up.
Family med say $120k starting, Internal med $200k
Each extra $25-50k is like another year of training at $50k.
At least in Canada anyway.
And often get their liability insurance paid for too.
For the Medscape study, I would say it's good to see the numbers are better in the private practice world, nationwide. But - most MD's will be presumably internal medicine and you'd have to look at the breakdown. The low end jobs in primary care, public health, etc start at $200k, and most folks who aren't surgeons or ophalmologists or dermatologists are in the low-mid $200's. That's assuming you graduate from residency in your late 20's or early 30's w/ the $350-500k in debt or whatever it is these days, unless you took the National Health Services or DoD scholarships, whereupon you then owe them 4-8 years of your life...
Additionally, the bay area in the US is essentially the only place in the world you can make that kind of money in tech.
One example: do a comparatively easier 4-yr undergrad in business and start with a bank straight out of school (they scoop up lots of new grads willing to move around). In the same ~15 years you can move into a senior position in finance or M&A and make comparable money. It's not easy or guaranteed but IMO easier...
It's a ten-year commitment, roughly, to become a practicing ER doc. And in today's industry, you'll spend the overwhelming majority of your time doing documentation on shit that should've been seen by a PCP, not an emergency department. And definitely not treating emergencies. You'll be lucky if you see one or two a day in a major ED; in smaller ED's, even one a week is optimistic.
If you want to jump in with eyes wide open, more power to you. Most days, I can't tell you whether I regret my move or not.
That said, most ED’s are not like that, and an awful lot of emergency medicine is ‘just’ careful assessment and reassurance, so I’d agree that if you don’t like the process of seeing and helping high and low acuity patients, it’s a bad career choice.
If anyone wants to chat about the pro’s and con’s of EM and career changing, happy to chat, contact info in profile
Although he did a full 5yr EM residency, in Canada you can work EM with a 2 year FP residency and another year as an FP specializing in EM.
Sooo, 10 at the most, but could be done in 6.
The tech industry saved many lives during this pandemic. Compliance with social distancing standards would be way lower if people had nothing to do at home but watch TV. Even social media is showing its bright side. People are using it in more positive ways, connecting with each other and largely sharing quality information regarding Coronavirus. Life would have come to a halt without modern internet technology, almost warranting a calendar pause until the pandemic passes.
That being said, there's a lot of variability in the social value of tech industry jobs. At risk of being pedantic - you can net society more social good if you transition to a higher social value job within the same industry. It takes many years to become a doctor, and many people compete for that career so you wouldn't expand the supply of medical labor. Moreover, medical industry cronyism plays a part in bankrupting America with little to show for it. You should do what you want ultimately. I've just seen some people self-flagellate when they're actually doing really good things for society.
And outside of that (i.e. big tech) there's plenty to invent and contribute in countless ways. Medical equipment, niche technology products, innovative and useful consumer technologies, the warriors we don't hear about improving industrial processes and everyday stuff, etc.
I have younger friends looking to enter the game industry. I tell them: make sure you don't land somewhere that makes you start hating what you loved just so you can tell yourself you make games (having addiction-machine mobile games in mind). Better work anywhere else and wait for the opportunity to do it right, I believe.
Selling your soul is always a choice... and it's not an easily replaceable good.
By all means pursue things elsewhere, but not because you think there are no opportunities in tech.
Personally, I believe I can do far more good writing and pushing public policy than any amount of code. That is "operating at scale".
With that said, here is my example: Medicare For All would save us $450 billion, and avoid 68k preventable deaths, every single year. I find it a stretch to suggest that ambitious goals such as that "lack imagination". Such impact is simply not obtainable with tech or NGOs alone. Even Bill Gates has needed roughly $50 billion to drive forward his foundation's humanitarian efforts (but admittedly, is very efficient, with estimates of having saved ~122 million lives through their work).
To stay with your examples, some of the Gate's foundation efforts have largely been tech efforts, some haven't. Some of the things I mentioned off-the-top have potential to reach 10s to 100s of millions of people. MFA is a big $ number partially because the US healthcare system is expensive and inefficient, so that draws focus on $ saved ... other efforts may focus on lives impacted at much lower $ impacts.
Most public policy work isn't as big as MFA either.
I'm not saying policy work isn't important or impactful. I'm rejecting the idea that you (generic 'you') can't have similar effect in technology to what you might be able to achieve in policy; especially the idea that this is so clearly true that the "right" thing to do is quit technology to go into policy. Even assuming you can be as effective in policy work as you are in tech work, which isn't a given.
I doubt anything at all comes close in leverage. Maybe having mountains of money or being POTUS.
How do you think a doctor feels when he sees some fat patient going into the donut shop (or all you can eat buffet) after he told them to go on a diet and lose weight. (is this worse than the person who dies of bad genes caused heart attack despite talking their medications, exercising and eating well - another thing doctors see)
I enrolled in a premedical postbaccalaureate program, and over the course of two years of night classes finished all of the prerequisites required by most allopathic medical schools. I worked by butt off to finish with a 4.0 GPA and place in the 96th percentile on the MCAT (good enough to not be ruled out because of my MCAT score). I also volunteered at a memory care hospice on weekends during this period and ended up with 100 hours of clinical experience. I had some additional clinical exposure working on medical device projects as an engineering student.
I applied to 27 schools and was invited for two interviews. Of those two, I was waitlisted by one and rejected by the other. I didn't end up clearing the waitlist. So what went wrong? I can't say for certain, but I suspect these were contributing factors:
* My undergraduate engineering school GPA was 3.3 and my graduate school engineering GPA was 3.4. These are reasonable by engineering school standards but borderline for medical school. * I only had 100 clinical hours. Many applicants have hundreds or even thousands of hours of clinical experience when they apply. I was 31 when I started the postbac program and decided to keep my full time job in order to save up money. The opportunity cost of each hour of clinical experience was higher at this age compared to a typical undergrad. In hindsight I should have at least devoted my weekends to gaining clinical experience the moment I decided to go this route. * One of my recommendation letter writers was late. My application wasn't processed until all recommendation letters were in. I wasn't eligible for consideration until later admissions rounds. * I didn't stand out. To be clear this isn't a requirement, but schools like to build a diverse and interesting class, so standing out in some way can be helpful. I struggle to decide if this was something beyond my control or if it represents a personal failure.
To return to my initial point, it is doable. In an alternate universe in which my recommendation letters made it in earlier, or I slept better before the MCAT and got an extra point, perhaps I would have been invited for one or two more interviews. If the interview -> admission invite conversion rate is 20%, that boosts the odds of admission from 36% to 59%. (I haven't ruled out applying again, but I would need to enroll in classes for at least another year in order to get new faculty recommendation letters. Unfortunately it isn't safe to volunteer at the hospice right now due to COVID-19).
If you read about this CEO and are thinking about making the switch be very realistic with your chances, particularly about your GPA like parent post said. Without a 3.7+ you're going to have a tough time, and there's no guarantee that you won't spend 2+ years and get rejected. You'll have to overperform on the MCAT. Expect bias against your work experience (only software really). Whenever I said I used to be a software engineer you could see the light leave some of the interviewers eyes... Though if you're FAANG or another name-brand company I wouldn't expect the same.
Versus people working here having their per unit value of work cut by Medicare to 62% of what it was in 1998: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/02/17/opinion/sunday/17...
Have got to say though software/data skills have been super useful for research projects, which are the fun part of medical school vs the absolute grind of pounding facts in.
I've thought about doing this myself. I'm curious, what made you want to switch (from software engineering I'm assuming?) to medicine?
A good friend of mine actually had a great career in software but decided that to become a nurse in the time he has left on earth. He and his wife both decided to go to nursing school and were definitely the oldest students. They are both now nurses and seem very happy.
I’m a resident in Australia. 11 years at university (took some side tracks), $70k in debt for the whole time, now gone, and we are paid between $70-110k a year as interns.
Although our training pathways are longer because we are required to do 2 generalist years
I think one could study at much lower cost in China, Russia, Eastern and Central Europe. They have now courses in English, and have become the new hub for medical education.
Cost is cheaper, yes. Quality varies a lot across the country. Some countries are doing better than others. But medical degree is still not easily convertible, so if you study outside the US, but practice here, it's not simple. Language is not the main issue, different approaches, different standards, etc.
https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/kwo/spr07/alumni/mckim....
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/ceo-quietly-sells-compan...
I have an interest in medicine but simply wrote it off as being impossible because of my age.
But hats off to this guy -- i think it's very cool. Makes my daydreams of what I'd like to do post this-job seem quaint and underachieving.
Not saying that to be snarky, just saying there's a bit of survivorship bias involved in this story, as well as positive feedback loops in society in general. People with the same ability to be an ER physician who don't have RadioShack CEO on their application will not be seen the same, even if they're equally able.
I also have no idea how I would manage full time school and having children to raise.
With a nanny? There’s a reason MDs can graduate with a lot of loans. They’re good credit risks, so banks give good rates and large amounts.
Fantastic podcast about them by freakonomics: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/nurses-to-the-rescue/
There are lots of provider types who could easily expand their scope of practice with additional training, and who are currently prepared to do so. The AMA lobbies heavily against any attempts to do so all the time, every year. Pharmacists, PAs, dentists, optometrists, psychologists, nurses, ... the list goes on and on. Every year they lobby heavily to just have the opportunity to offer more services, and more services independently, the AMA fights back against it in lobbying, and politicians respond to it.
The crisis in some ways highlights how absurd this is. Right now I know of many med schools whose in-class training is about 1.5 years, and some are trying to make that 1 year. The rest is studying for licensing exams and clerkships. Now many of these schools are graduating them early to help with the pandemic.
Compare that with PAs, who often are required to have substantial medical clinical experience before starting their programs. Then they do... 1.5 years of coursework and about .5 years of clerkships before going on and then... practicing under the supervision of an MD. So, then, what's the difference between a new MD and a PA with an extra 1.5-2 years of supervised experience, especially given that extra 1.5-2 years of experience is probably more independent than what the med student gets?
The current model is absurd, and at some level I have no sympathy for complaints that hospitals are understaffed right now. This is solely the fault of the AMA and their lobbies at some level. Many services could be offloaded onto other providers, who could easily expand the scope of what they offer, especially in the middle of a public health crisis per se. There could also be a much greater diversity of training routes than undergrad -> MD -> specialty (just for example, undergrad -> specialty doctoral/professional degree -> expanded training).
Why?
I always enjoyed chemistry and research. I would be doing it because I find it interesting, not for the multitude of reasons for my career choices so far - money, geography, future potential growth.
1. Most of the "soul destroying" aspect of graduate school is because you're at your PIs mercy when it comes to landing a post-doc or industry position. Without a good reference from your PI, you're truly screwed. If I were to do a PhD in retirement, I don't need any of that. Worse comes to worse, I can just leave.
2. I would also find a PI who was later on in years (professor emeritus)? They've been there, done that, have a steady flow of grant money and nothing to prove. I worked with a prof like this in school and he came into the lab purely out of enjoyment of science. Screw the grind.
I remember doctoral studies very fondly. But finished on time and moved to the industry, because once you graduate, the academic job market is outright depressing.
I did EM for 6 months and hated it. This is because it just doesn't suit my personality.
To be good at EM you need to be: - Comfortable with being a kinda bad at everything and great at nothing - Comfortable with large amounts of uncertainty and risk and having to make decisions anyway - Being abused by drunk/mentally ill patients constantly - Being patronized by medical colleagues in other specialties
Of which your post here is a prime example!
By the time I’d seen a couple thousand patients in the ED, I was much more comfortable and now intend to complete training there (also, I can do it part time given my other commitments). I’d prefer to be ok at most things (ie retain my general medical knowledge) and good at critical care but that’s more because I work so infrequently now, and have found that I value being a generalist... abuse of ED docs decisions be damned!
I'm sure he tried to save my beloved RS, too.
I remember reading a Rolling Stone article years ago about neurosurgery residents (7 years) where one of the guys lost something like his first 17 patients on the table (because they're all cases like anyeurisms). He stuck with it and, one night, placed the clamp in a pool of blood to within a mm of perfection to close the bleed. Their training was: learn a procedure, do a procedure.
I am grateful that people like yourselves undergo the arduous process to become an MD.
Good luck and thanks!
Anyways Mr.Ferrari is a medical doctor, but it appears he was a Mechanical Engineer. Then at age 43 after his wife died of disease, he went back to university joined medical school and became a respected medical scholar and tried to find treatments for what affected his wife..
And later was selected to be the top EU scientist on the basis of his medical credentials.