Hacker News Reader

Comment by theelous3 | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal, but my cousin did exactly this. I will note, he is probably the most exceptional person I known of, beyond those classic geniuses everyone knows.

View on HN

Interesting, can you give a bit more details what exactly his path was?

comp sci in prestigious european uni. Moved to us in early 2000s. Big nationwide datacenter stuff. Decided to become doctor. Did doctory stuff and floated around medical for a while before switching to psyc. Currently forensic psych for infamous US prison. Found that rather than patient hop in regular psyc practice, or drug up people in asylums, with trial cases spanning years you can really deep dive a person and do good work.

Did he support a family during his transition or was he still single?

Was money a problem in general along the way?

Married no kids, partner also successful. Given his talents and character I don't believe money was an issue.

I think you need to pause before considering this route. Are you that exceptional? This level of intelligence is incredibly rare and unless you're 100% sure you're capable of this, I wouldn't do it.

The guy has brains to burn of course, but tbh, it's simply about motivation. Medicine is a grind, more than an intellectual exercise. If you have the brains for actual tech there's no doubt you have the requisite intelligence. The only barrier is the stamina for the grind. I know I couldn't do it. Not as I am now. Maybe in the future. I couldn't say for sure, given I'm not clairvoyant.

I agree that you should give serious pause. Probably the most serious pause of your life, but still. I wouldn't shy away too quickly. When you know, you know.

Very true. Not to discount MD training or doctors, but it's less about connecting disparate dots or learning how to solve problems and more about working out the brain like a muscle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com