Ask HN: Why Become a Doctor Nowadays? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why Become a Doctor Nowadays?

14 pointsfinallythis33 comments

Hello! I'm a computer person and sometimes I have health problems and then I'm really grateful that doctors exist.

Sometimes I wonder whether doctors will stop existing at some point.

Why would someone go through years and years of painful studying and training, to end up working in a hospital (!) doing colonoscopies all day, being on call 24/7, just to end up with the same income as some kid joining a FAANG straight out of high-school?

Perhaps I'm too tunnel visioned in this tech world, but I'm wondering about the incentives here and if they will keep existing. We do need doctors, right?

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- extreme longevity of a career (if that appeals to you) or retire early (if that appeals to you)

- ability to help people and even work directly with/in international communities to promote global health (eg, doctors without borders)

- dictate your schedule including working minimal hours

- answer a calling (life is more than money)

- ability to work in any area of the country or world (every city needs a doctor)

- solid job security and pay for your entire life

- respect / social status (people want to have a doctor as their friend / spouse)

- ability to develop and maintain social skills (ie, be more "broad") which are exercised as a physician significantly more than (in my experience) as a software engineer

- have months of vacation every year without any consequences

- life time of growth and learning

What sorts of doctors can dictate their own schedules, work minimal hours, or take months of vacation each year? If they exist, surely they're firmly in the minority.

They are tradeoffs certainly, those benefits generally come with less pay.

I do agree they are in the minority. It is possible if you own your own practice. But also attainable by most physicians willing to work locums, essentially being a substitute doctor. You can take gaps between these locums contracts to travel.

As a software engineer in a great job at an exciting company, I think programming is like magic but I've never completely felt at home doing it.

I still have this have this urge to go be a doctor, despite investing 7 years of my life into computer science. Thanks virtueman for your input here, it really summarizes the biggest pros of medicine.

It's apparent that you've thought deeply about this virtueman, what's your relationship to medicine?

I think people here greatly underestimate the risk in becoming a FAANG programmer. It's a easier getting a FAANG job than becoming a top league sports player, but not by far.

There's also a bit of tunnel vision in that these amazing jobs didn't exist 10 years ago; the people who have graduated within that time span just feel like they've been around forever. But when I graduated, PHP programming paid less than working management at KFC. I even applied to a job at KFC because working in tech was this ridiculous fantasy, and I'd eventually run out of inheritance money.

I still don't have a FAANG job. And the odds of getting a FAANG job for me is much lower than the odds of making a million dollar company.

I think that's the case for many career decisions. Some guy out there has better odds at becoming a pro footballer than getting a FAANG job. Many people who become doctors are from doctor families. To them, amputating a foot sounds more doable than trying to make sure a server runs at 99.99% uptime.

Quick googling, there are 500k engineers working in FAANG: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-total-number-of-software-e...

I would say those are much better odds than becoming a top league sports player.

But it's mainly the ones in the US that get the crazy salaries? Certainly not the ones in Asia, S America and much less so in Europe.

Also adding some stats on this that someone else posted a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/106ne2r/...

It's still someone with a great resume - Purdue, 3.8 GPA. They did get a good job and compensation, but it's not FAANG, and it's what many people should expect today even if they're top 1% in the country.

Lol. FAANGs have hundreds of thousands of employees. They aren't Einsteins.

> just to end up with the same income as some kid joining a FAANG straight out of high-school?

This isn’t true (at least in Australia).

In my 20s I earned significantly more than my doctor friend and I held the same viewpoint as you. Fast forward to mid-30s and he makes almost double my income, has full autonomy as a GP, works 20-30 hours a week, no stress.

You have to go through 10 years of hell as a doctor (study + intern). But once you get past that, a lot of opportunities open up. And you actually get to help people. Where in tech I feel like I’m just making someone else rich, sometimes at the expense of the user.

"intern" doesn't qualify as hell in my books, because they still make a very decent salary - far better than your average graduate in most other fields.

Working in ED sounded pretty bad but tbh I’m just filling in blanks. Come to think of it, I doubt he’d describe it as hell either.

The hours are grueling as is the volumes of administrivia. Talk to any intern and they will tell you that they are burnt out and on the verge of breakdown.

Hospitals are run for a profit by non-medically trained "professional" managers.

I can't speak to other places and times, but I just looked up the place where I did my internship and residency in the US. Starting salary today is just over $52k, which - while not nothing - is a good salary for a fresh college grad, not an MD. By the end of residency, they are around $60k despite being nearly fully qualified.

Taking 24h call roughly every fourth or fifth night. Working typically 50-60 hours a week, without counting call.

One of my college friends told me I should apply for a residency near him, just so we would have an opportunity to hang out. I told him I couldn't afford it. He was astonished that we had to pay for our own job interviews.

I'm not trying to be all woe-is-me; it's an interesting job, and I like it, and I am well-paid now. But it's a rough road to get here, and you basically don't get to have your twenties.

There will always be people who find any field interesting enough to do it at their own detriment. I was a teacher because I just thought it would be enjoyable and interesting, and I was young and didn't think the stress or low pay would be a problem for me. I assume most doctors start out the same way.

Sooooo basically it's almost always an emotional decision, unless you're already in a family that assumes and pressures you to be a doctor. (Though in that case I'd argue it's still an emotional thing, but the emotion is the pride of the family instead of your personal interest in medicine.)

I think that everyone picking a career straight out of high school is doing it based on their feelings towards that field. Maybe they think it would be super dope to have a bunch of money, so they decide to go to school for finance. Maybe they watched a lot of investigation shows and decided to go into forensics because they wanted the excitement and achievement of solving crimes. etc etc

Not all doctors end up in hospitals.

A close friend of mine grew up in a rural country area and has spent a rewarding lifetime being a rural and remote area GP.

The benefits have been a continous steady reliable income, opportuniites for increased rates via locuum work, being embedded within various communities for three to five years at a time and forming deep connections with those communities.

There have been multiple side trips as the doctor on various scientific, tourist, and environmental trips to remote areas, and numerous solo trips (eg: walking the Western Arthur Ranges in Tasmania) that have drawn upon local support from patients an contacts made as a doctor.

GPs, at least, have the opportunity for more interconnected and broader social lives than that afforded the average software tech worker.

High salary in FAANGs have existed for the past 10 years only and they may end at any time [1], while doctors will be needed forever.

[1] They high FAANG salaries are not really rational, but a result of these companies being de facto monopolies (or are burning through billions of VC money, promising to become a monopoly in the future) and thus having so much money that they can afford to behave irrationally. It's basically unchecked corporate mismanagement and stupidity.

I often have to wait 3+ months for an appointment with a specialist in SF. Yes we do need doctors. As the population ages we will need even more. One of the major conservative arguments against public health systems is "Do you want to have to wait 3 months to see a doctor like they do in X? (Canada, UK etc)" Apparently our non-gov't based healthcare system is unable to deliver that either.

Kaiser Medical has their own medical school where doctors are trained and leave without debt. https://medschool.kp.org/. I know - I know - a Non-Profit behaving like a Non-Profit is almost unheard of in the US. Think of it - what if not for profit Universities decided to graduate all types of students without debt. Especially top Universities with outrageous endowments - who only pay 1.4 percent tax on the income. Makes you wonder how much profit is in the not for profit institution:)

Maybe you don't want to live where FAANG have offices? Or can you get $300k/year WFH FAANG job out of high school now?

Working at Facebook or Google, you might (somewhat indirectly) improve people's lives or even save them sometimes, but many physicians do so frequently in a very obvious, direct, and personal way. This seems very different from trying to increase the time that users spend on a web site, or trying to sell more advertisements, or writing code that displays a box on a screen and fills it with some sort of information.

In the US at least, many physicians enjoy a high degree of autonomy as well as high social status and high income. (The latter two can also be something of a down side since some mechanisms for maintaining high social status and high income can be detrimental to patients and to other health professionals.)

Doctor was the tech bro career of the 70s and 80s. Big money, high status and not terribly high bar to get in.

Then it got popular and everyone knew it was the ticket to upper class and the job slowly got shitty. A lot of extra hurdles and costs got added, kind of like lawyers.

Now it’s a shitty business, pay is still high but the debt burden is extreme, the health care system is broken so hours and quality of work conditions isn’t great.

If you compare it to a career in FAANG you will be 1-2million ahead before a doctor sees his first patient. Not a good deal or the best ticket to the upper class

Life isn't just about the easiest path or money. Some people see value in working hard for things and might view the medical field as a way to bring something positive to the world as opposed to figuring out how to serve ads to people.

BTW when was the last time you saw a doctor get laid off. Job security is pretty high.

Hmmm… getting paid doctor’s wages for colonoscopies doesn’t sound too bad. It’s a low stress job where you can help people and then go home and live your life without worrying about your job. I can imagine (and have done) much worse jobs for a lot less money.

To help other people and provide a necessary service for society.

AFAIK you need to graduate from high school in the top 1%-3% (depends on country) in order to even have a chance to be accepted into med school.

For Social Status. The top of society’s social hierarchy.

And there’s even more money than FAANG employees… in specialties. And better job security.

Because they love it?

I almost went that route and there's pretty much no other explanation for it. It's a labor of love.

Just wait a year and see how many doctors are jobless vs how many ex-FAANGS

They do it so that you can create cool apps for them to use.

Some people like the medical field, or helping people.

High salary, security, status.

What a hilarious question. Doctors make far more than software engineers and are respected. The profession carries prestige by default. Software engineering simply does not.

Becoming an dev good enough to pass a FAANG interview is orders of magnitude easier than becoming an MD.

It's like asking why do people become pilots instead of chefs.

Imagine saving someone's life as opposed to writing JS for an image app that provides filters. Incomparable.

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