But the 300-500k/ yr income is nice.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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...