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Comment by rdouble | Hacker News Reader

Why are women turned off by competitiveness in CS ... but not in medicine?

Maybe they are just more practical. The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers. If you do pre-med but can't get into med school, you can still get into public health, physical therapy, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy, etc... If you do CS but can't get a job at Google, you can get into TPS reports or be unemployed. That last part is grossly simplifying, but compare getting a programming job someplace like Wyoming or North Dakota vs. getting a medical job in the same place.

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More than that, medicine is more portable.

At a typical large company, the ingress point into the company is at an entry-level position. Many women want to interrupt employment when they have children, which isn't practical for a IT person or programmer at a bank or government agency.

My mother, to use a fairly typical example, is a nurse. She took 5-6 years off at various times when my siblings were born or when daycare costs became prohibitive. Impact on her career? Not too bad -- hospitals need nurses, especially nurses with the specialist certifications she had.

Why should it be a big deal if you interrupt your career for a few years (whether to have a family or to travel the world...somehow I bet the second would be seen as ok in tech circles)? A good programmer can pick up a new technology in a couple of months.

If you are hiring based on candidates winning resume buzzword bingo, you are going to get crappy candidates anyway. Hire for intelligence and capability and five years off to have a couple of kids is meaningless.

I agree.

I think paid sabbaticals have positive ROI too. Number crunchers don't think in those terms though.

Good comment. Great point about sabbaticals.

It's a pity that when I read your good comments and the one above it, both had been downvoted into the grey. Many newcomers here at HN don't seem to understand that downvoting here is not meant to indicate that one doesn't like an opinion, it's supposed to be for comments that are abusive, obviously trolling, or that contribute nothing.

I propose an improvement to the downvoting API: One can downvote all they want, but each downvote will cost 1 karma/reputation point. That way, people with much good reputation can as needed mark abusive posts. But the newcomers will think more carefully about marking down posts they simply don't agree with since it can plunge them into negative.

I'm fairly certain new users can't downvote.

> A good programmer can pick up a new technology in a couple of months.

I would love it if things worked this way. But I told someone I could get coding in C# in a week, and probably be quite comfortable in a few months, and they sent me a polite rejection letter saying they were "impressed with my confidence" but there were many highly qualified candidates, etc. But then, that's probably the only advertised tech job I pursued that I didn't land an offer for.

You take a break for some years come back and see who was your peer sometime back is now your boss. How would you feel? The feeling of underachievement especially when you know you were helpless to prevent that, hurts!

It would hurt me atleast. If I knew I would face a such situation I will rather take up some other profession.

This is exactly the senseless obsession with competition that the article is complaining about.

My boss is a woman who was my peer in school and has children now. She is one of the best techies I have ever worked with and I love having her aboard.

It shouldn't be, but most large organizations (corporate and public sector) have setup systems designed to avoid the appearance of discrimination or subjectivity in hiring decisions. The irony is that these systems make it difficult for people who don't have a "perfect" (from the perspective of the system) record to get in.

The problem with such systems is that it is difficult to assess someone's ability to perform a job objectively. So the systems are design around measurable facts (ie. years of experience, education), biased towards promoting from withing, with the final selection being made by rolling the dice using tools like job interviews that are at best randomizers.

Humans aren't "resources" -- they are people. But we try to treat them like commodity goods, and in the process create some crappy situations for many people.

More to the point, medicine is portable because people need doctors everywhere. You can practice medicine in New York just as well as you can practice medicine in Ouray. Further, barring highly specialized fields (e.g. pediatric oncology, transplantation surgery), the work you'll be doing will be more or less similar and available wherever you go. Software just doesn't offer that.

Most of the places I've seen that advertise telecommuting are really only paying lip service to the idea that where you develop software simply doesn't matter all that much. You see places that say you can work from home one day a week, and call that "remote work." There are some companies that acknowledge this fact, and are structured for true remote work, but software engineers as a class are far more tied to location than doctors are.

Software does offer exactly that. Last I checked, a hash table works the same in New York and Ouray. And you can remotely contribute to a project from pretty much anywhere you get Internet. Sure, that excludes e.g. large parts of Africa, but let's be honest: People don't get into medicine because they could always get a job in Africa. Yes, there are some who have that calling, but most like the developed world just fine.

So the issue is not with the profession per se - that leaves the employers. And there, you have a point for large swaths of the industry. But it seems the world of web/backend development is a bit more flexible there, no?

Your perception is wrong. Medicine (and, especially the implementation of it) is (in many areas) changing as much as software engineering.

There is, however, stronger certification around medicine: once you have a medical license, it's pretty hard to lose it - especially through inactivity.

Or perhaps there's more prestige in a medical degree than a CS degree.

Or perhaps there is a perception that doctors are really helping people, as opposed to CS professionals. Didn't we just have a spate of articles that complained that startups weren't doing enough to "help the world".

There may or may not be more prestige. There are countless "I hate my jerk doctor" stories. There is definitely more money.

I don't think it's just perception. Doctors really do deal with other people -- both patients and coworkers -- more than software engineers do.

Yes, but that does not mean that software engineers are not helping people (indirectly).

Indeed! Warehouse automation software prevents scores of back injuries in the first place, ergo women are shallow.

That's tongue-in-cheek, but I'll bet there is a study out there to support the idea that humans do not value indirect effects as much as direct effects.

In my experience, maybe 2% of software engineers are incentivized more strongly by positive social change than by money or fame. These are the idealists, like Richard Stallman and former members of OLPC, who are often ridiculed by the rest of the community. Until the academic and governmental infrastructure is able to put anywhere near as much money into CS research as private industry, the majority of technologists will (have to) be driven by the desire to make money.

For all the talk of how doctors make a lot of money, the reason they do is that so few are both qualified and willing to take the long, grinding road through 8 years of medical school and residency, $200k in debt, and 80 hour work weeks, with fierce competition at every step of the way. According to the med students I know, if you aren't inspired by some higher calling it's almost not worth it because you won't make it through.

And medical education doesn't have to be structured that way at all. Medicine could be like engineering, where you start on day one of your undergrad and take 5-6 years in an average university setting, and 80 hour residency programs are just counter productive.

That is how medical school works in most countries.

In my experience, at least in US, less than 1% of medical students go into the field "to help people." In fact, nowadays saying you want to become a doctor "because you want to help people" sounds almost cliché. Most of them do it either for money, social status or because that's what their mom wants them to do. And while it's true that very few programmers are "incentivized by positive social change", many of them do it because they find it interesting and fun in some way.

If you go by that logic, nobody would study finance (or any financial business career). But they're hugely popular.

> The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary

And they have to spend ten extra years in school, none of which is guaranteed to do anything but leave them poorer.

Very true. While unlikely, it is certainly possible to rise to the top of the industry in CS without even graduating high school. Medical field? No way.

That is actually the only plausible explanation at this point in history. The average woman looks at the long hours and job insecurity in high tech and thinks "this is just not worth it". Men, historically, have always done these kinds of jobs and still do. We don't see feminists agitating for more woman refuse collectors do we?

As opposed to the low-stress 9-5 world of medicine?

Doesn't an M.D. imply more job security and a higher starting wage than any C.S. credential?

Quite. Can't outsource a surgeon, can you? Not to mention the social prestige.

At the risk of getting quite off-topic, in my opinion most physicians will eventually be replaced by a combination of Bayesian diagnostic software and surgical robotics. There will be an intermediate period where physicians will control and oversee the software and robots, but this too will pass.

Those tasks which cannot be easily roboticized (for example, all the soft skills) will be shifted over to nurses.

It's sor tof happening (not the tech part). I dated a nurse practitioner for a while, and the medical industry is putting more and more responsibility into their hands to save money.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Bayesian analysis alone is insufficient to produce accurate diagnoses, and even with more advanced clinical decision support tools you still need a human to carry out the observations. Physicians won't be generally replaced until we have strong AI (at which point everyone gets replaced).

Good luck in getting the vague descriptions of symptoms that patients give into your diagnostic software. When you say this, do you think it will happen in our lifetimes?

Two words: medical tourism.

Which is due to too much domestic demand, raising prices too high. Medical tourism isn't costing surgical positions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_surgery

It also implies a significantly higher starting debt than C.S. graduates. Medical students take out huge student loans for undergrad and med school, and probably during residency as well because those salaries are really low (around $40K/yr).

Medicine is not really like the TV show ER, unless you work in the ER. Much of it is 9-5 and the stress comes from dealing with administrators and paperwork, the same as any office job.

My dad has been a doctor for over thirty years and the most stress he's had to deal with on a weekly basis is filling out paperwork.

My girlfriend is a doctor. She mainly works in the ER, but sometimes fills in at doctor's offices and the out of hours clinic. She finds them horribly dull, and basically hates them. Except they pay $100-$125 per hour. She likes that part.

Sure you do. See attached link - I'm guessing women becoming trash collectors in the first place wasn't achieved without a struggle. http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2008/mar/29/city-hono...

2.8%, yep, looks like equality to me!

That's sort of different.

As they fought for the right to simply become refuse collectors. Now that they have equal rights, no one is stomping about saying "but wait... why isn't it a 50/50 split?".

Similarly, no one wishes for their child to grow up and join the wild world of hands-on sanitation engineering. They may not look down on those with such jobs, but it can hardly be argued that it is a prestigious job.

I might be completely misinterpreting sarcasm on the first points. Job insecurity in high tech? Absolutely not - the high tech industry is desperately trying to hire good people. Also, long hours are not a requirement. Lots of developers in startups or the game industry work long hours, but there are plenty of other positions (e.g. DoD sort of work) that is low stress 9-5. Medical work is decidedly not 9-5.

Well, yes and no. I've been laid off twice from high tech firms. Both times I found a (better!) job within a couple of weeks, but if you want a stable career, this is not the industry for you.

if you want a stable career, this is not the industry for you.

Well, yes and no :). Depends on where you work. If you work at a tech company then yeah, that's probably not the most secure workplace, but I work at a bank, and the only way you're ever going to get fired from there is if you're a really, really crappy worker, or if you screw up big time.

Plus you have the added security that if the brass really fucks things up the government is there to pick up the slack (at least in the U.S.).

I met a bank programmer a couple of years ago. He was driving a taxi. Apparently when his bank got bought by another bank, they laid off the whole IT department.

If you work at a bank there's a good chance you'll next laid off en masse as soon when there's a really bad year.

Well, as far as my bank is concerned, nobody got laid off during the recent recession (I don't work in the US, mind you). There was just a hiring freeze and smaller bonuses at the end of the year. We really weren't hit that hard.

I urge you not to plan on such a hot market for software developers forever. Anyone who was around when the first wave of dot-coms laid everyone off around 2001 knows how quickly and severely the well can run dry.

So women somehow magically ship from the factory with a natural instinct to avoid IT jobs?

In my city, they gave a civil service exam for a garbage collector -- 2,000 people took the test.

So women somehow magically ship from the factory with a natural instinct to avoid IT jobs?

The fact that a large number of the original "computers" were actually women would seem to indicate not.

Perhaps it's because medicine is way more academic then programming. I think programming has more in relation with a skilled trade then with an academic based career, and the skilleds trades are notoriously male dominated.

> The worst physician's salary averages about $50K more than the best programmer's salary. Nurses get paid as much as programmers

I was all primed with a fiery response about how good programmers in hot markets should be pulling more than 200k, lousy markets at least 100k, and anyone who wasn't is either a lousy negotiator or not good, but then I remembered where I was. The crème de la crème. Yeah, "staff programmers" (as I call them) might well earn less, on average, than nurses. And it's a guaranteed, standardised wage, none of this grasping meritocracy competitive nonsense.

The thing about programming is that it gives you a chance to shine. I mean really shine. God bless the nurses, etc, but realistically speaking any one nurse is not going to change the world just by being a bloody good nurse. I think the attraction to the high-stakes sink-or-swim pure meritocracy game is a very male thing.

Even if you shine you don't make as much as a general physician, and you'll never make as much as a dermatologist. If you want to get rich as a programmer you have to attach yourself to a liquidity event or run your own business.

Isn't it the case that if you want to get rich as a GP or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise? It is known that you'll never get rich working for someone else, but that applies to all trades and I don't see any reason why starting one as a programmer is dramatically different from starting one as a GP, or a plumber, or any other kind of highly skilled and valuable trade.

It depends on what you mean by rich. If you want beaucoup dollars (millions) it does help to own the cardiology clinic.

However, my dad hires physicians for a rural health care system. A cardiologist in this area can get paid a salary of $350,000 per year, guaranteed three year contract. This is in the middle of nowhere, where a nice house can cost $100K and a king's mansion costs about $400K. That is "rich" by most of the world's standards. The option to throw a dart at a map, move there, and make a $300K+ a year without running a business is simply not available to programmers (or any other profession.)

Bloody hell. I guess I didn't realise they could make quite that much. Yep, that outpays all but the most exceptional programmers all right, I stand corrected.

Cardiologists are in the upper salary echelons of physicians. If you're a family physician or a pediatrician you probably won't make more than $200,000 per year, which isn't too far out of line with what some programmers make.

Right, but to make $200K a year as a programmer you have to work at Goldman Sachs or have spent the last 8 years moving up the ranks at VM Ware or be Mark Zuckerburg's college friend. To make $200K a year as a GP you can live anywhere in the USA you want and work part time (which is what my father does).

To make that $200,000 you also have to pour an ungodly amount of time, effort and money into the education system, etc. Once you factor in all the relevant differences the gap is a lot smaller than it appears at first. There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end.

There are many programmers who earn that kind of salary and don't fit your description of being in finance or climbing the managerial ladder for years on end.

Who are they and where do they work? I am looking for a job.

Find product companies where top-percentile individual contributors can make a huge difference to the company's bottom line and are renumerated accordingly.

Was hoping for specific examples, but thanks anyway.

Sorry to be unhelpful. The specific examples I could have given you wouldn't have been useful in your personal job search and giving them would have meant betraying the confidence of close friends and acquaintances. My post's somewhat abstract answer was a common denominator.

How many of these can there be if giving any hint to the observable characteristics of any of them will compromise an individual's privacy?

You were hoping for a list of companies where psykotic has friends who have shared their confidential salaries with him/her, usually small web businesses with a max of 5 or so programmers, so you can ring up and demand your $200k job?

That's not how the real world works.

Not only that, but you're gonna be crushed by debt and won't be starting making money until you're in your mid 30s. Programmers come out way, way ahead once you consider the lost opportunity and cost of all those extra years doctors spend in school.

People who say this haven't done the math or looked at real salary numbers.

The average salary for a cardiologist is $308,000/yr. The average salary for a software engineer is $58,000/yr.

The cardiologist makes six times as much money. Even with a 12 year head start the programmer comes out behind. Medical school debt can be paid off in 2-5 years. In addition, the cardiologist can keep practicing into her 60s whereas a programmer should plan on changing careers in his 40s.

"In addition, the cardiologist can keep practicing into her 60s whereas a programmer should plan to retire or change careers in his 40s."

And from where do you find this Bullshit?

From news articles and personal experience. There have been dozens, if not hundreds of articles about age discrimination in high tech. The people in my extended family who are doctors are all still practicing in their 60s, whereas the two who were programmers were laid off at age 48 and 52, never to work as programmers again. I worked in Silicon Valley, Boston and NYC for 12 years and I can count the number of programmers I worked with over the age of 45 on one hand! (Maybe even on 1 finger, technically the other guy was no longer working as a programmer...)

>The average salary for a software engineer is $58,000/yr.

That seems awfully low. I would never have stayed in this business if I was making anything close to that.

Comparing the average software engineer to a cardiologist is just silly. If you're going to select a small, highly skilled portion of the medical field to analyze, you should compare it to a skilled portion of the software engineering field.

Let's draw a more valid comparison: that between cardiologists and graduates of good engineering programs. Graduates from top CS programs are making significantly more than 58K fresh out of college. The standard offer from Microsoft for a good UIUC CS student is 80K + starting bonus. Conservatively assuming an average salary of 100K over 15 years for the programmer, he is 1.5 million ahead once the cardiologist is finally debt free (12 years of school + 3 years to pay back debt). The cardiologist will then take 7.5 years to catch up, by which time the cardiologist will be in his 50s. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be debt free and making 100K in my 20s, 30s, and 40s, then being the guy on top when I'm 50.

22.5 years after high school is age 40, not age 50. Doctors start pulling (small) salary 8 years after high school.

I'm pretty sure it's 12 years of schooling after college. 4 years of medical school plus 6-8 years of fellowship. Thus 12 after college + 3 years to pay back debt + 7.5 years to get even is age 22 + 22.5 years = 45. Of course the reality is that someone who has worked at Microsoft for as long as the guy in the comparison is going to average more than 100K a year in compensation over 22.5 years. So my figure of the salaries evening out at 50 is pretty reasonable I think.

Medical school is 4 years after college. Average cost is $100k-$200k.

After medical school comes residency, which lasts from 3-6 years depending on speciality. Compensation during residency is $40k-$60k.

After residency, you can get a job. At that level of training, the salary will be $150k-$250k.

Optionally, you can get a fellowship after residency. This will be another 3-6 years of training, with compensation around $50k-$70k.

After fellowship, jobs pay in the $250k-$500k range.

Averages here are worthless. Is that $300k with or without insurance factored in? (In Florida "General surgeons paid in between $90,000 per year and $175,000 per year or more. OB/GYNs once again could expect the highest rates, with liability coverage ranging from $100,000 to $200,000 per year." Other states are less.) I'm told those in the medical profession have high salaries and correspondingly high insurance rates, which makes their salary much less than what it appears. There's also the cost of equipment if they need that. Similarly I'd like to control for location (which goes along with insurance costs anyway): a $60k job in the slums may be worth $100k in the Valley due to living costs alone.

The downside of course is that by the time your able to throw the dart at the map you're going on 40. Still, it sounds quite appealing.

"or specialist you have to start your own business, too? Also known as a practise?"

The number of practicing dermatologiests strictly limited to an amount determined by a council of dermatologists via the AMA. Programmers have nothing remotely similar.

This applies to all doctors, when you can artificially limit your supply, of course salaries are high, you make sure of it. If everyone who was qualified to be a doctor -- i.e. residents who should already be but don't have that magic piece of paper --, was made a doctor automatically after X years of residency, wages would be no higher than programmers.

Registered nurses at Ontario's public hospitals can make $100k+. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/20....

Paramedics can make $125k+. http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/20...

Doctors can make $200k+. See both of previously mentioned lists.

Whoa, where are good programmers in hot markets making more than $200k? Is that counting stock compensation, or actual salary? I'm seeing sub-200k salaries for Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San... http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Software-Engineer-P... http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Microsoft-Software-Developme...

Seconded. $200k _is_ possible if you factor in all bonuses, but even then it's not an easy gig to land. Not even for brilliant programmers right in Silly Valley. I'd like to see a pointer to those opportunities...

I doubt the best salaries are in the valley. Too many people still trying to get rich off of stock options. If I were going to try to maximize my base salary I'd move to NYC and work for a hedge fund.

Outside the US you can easily make 200k USD.

160k CHF in 2000 = 88 USD

160k CHF today = 200k USD

160k CHF after US defaults = ???

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=CHFUSD=X&t=5y

Demand that you get paid in bullion today!!

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