However my wife is a doctor who is fellowship trained, so she didn’t start making real money until she was 32. But she made a good bit above the median salary for many years before that. She also doesn’t feel like she sacrificed her 20s. She had plenty of fun, although she says med school was much harder than her engineering degree.
And now she makes much more than I do as a principal engineer, and she works less than 30 hours a week.
She doesn’t have to worry about interview prep or job hopping. She has absolute job security in any economy. She gets paid for continuing education. She is highly respected (people are much more impressed that I married a doctor than that I’m a principal engineer lol).
There is a legal framework protecting her autonomy and decision making at work. Not even the CEO of the hospital can overrule her.
In short, she is almost completely above the rat race, and is a true professional in ways that we (software engineers ) are not.
I would 100% recommend our children become doctors.