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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

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skrebbel

wait, so, in the US a programmer earns double what a doctor earns?

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No, not at all the average doctor's salary is more than twice the average programmers salary.

The article lists $45,000 per year for doctors. Programmer polls on HN showed that $100,000 is little.

What am I missing? :-)

$45/year for residents. At that point you're still basically an apprentice doctor.

Right. Turns out I completely misunderstood every sentence that contains "resident" in that article, then :-)

Thanks for pointing it all out. Does make his argument about the bad money bogus though. Nearly every other job is worse money than being a doctor (which is why he compared to investment bankers and the likes)

Well, the things is that if you include resident medecine studies are really long. So: * You'd have to average for a life time of work * You need to make sure you subtract the cost of studies (although in US pretty much any study costs a ridiculous amount of money) * You may also want to take into account that you start making a good salary late in your life, at a time you'd need some (like when you want to buy your first house)

Anyway, I don't know about US but in France doctors are not that bad. They have pretty competitive studies and they also have a few resident years, but they don't have to pay for study (as for any student) and pretty soon they get their well paid job. They also don't have as many stupid trials as in US.

Does make his argument about the bad money bogus though. Nearly every other job is worse money than being a doctor

If you worked those other jobs for 80 hours a week, I think you'd start catching up pretty quickly ;-)

Yeah, but in medicine, by the time you're making the big money you're working much less. Or on whatever schedule you like.

At the age of 29: $45,000 for eighty hours a week.

At the age of 49: $600,000 for forty hours a week.

HN readers are not average programmers and are not likely to be junior.

Or people lie.

I understand that $45k is about average for residents. Fellows make a bit more, and so on.

Then, if you think of work as the process of converting time/life into money, I'd say private practice is a bit more efficient than hospital work. Because you work for yourself, you get to extract as much life as you want in exchange for money. I suppose it is very similar for entrepreneurs.

I think it's implied after 8 years of experience.. Still seems a little sketch, but I think it would be on par in say the Bay Area (though the programmer would have no debt)

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