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Comment by dfit99 | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, what inspired you to pursue medicine. I have been a SDE at a FAANG with 7 years of experience, but I am curious in maybe pivoting into medicine or at least combining the two fields.

I have been feeling extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and was hoping pursuing medicine would give me some renewed passion.

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I've dealt with extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and changed professions (albeit from software to information security) and after years I am again facing the same issues. I feel like there may be deeper problems here. In retrospect, while a career change hasn't damaged my career prospects, (on the contrary, it seems like I am probably more employable) I certainly don't have as much experience in either field as I would have if I had just stuck to one (although, through diligence, I have kept on top of my software skills, at least in my particular set of niches). As such, I can't necessarily recommend pursuing this type of solution to your particular problem (although medicine definitely seems distinctly different to tech so maybe it WILL solve the problem).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe consider other options such as trying to completely understand the root cause for your dissatisfaction and extreme boredom. Believe me, I know this isn't easy, but at this point I am at a loss for other options and feel like I must figure out exactly what causes me to feel like this in order to avoid having this happen a third time.

Thank you for sharing! It is nice knowing others feel the same, although I hope you can find what you are looking for.

I am curious, what were you two careers?

Did you try various types of surroundings like management, self-employment etc?

I guess the best explanation is that I liked engineering but it didnt 'fulfill' me. It's something tough to explain.

In any case make sure you know what you are getting yourself into ( speak to medical colleagues ) as medicine has changed a lot in the last 5-10 years. I suspect in 10 more years medicine will be completely corporate run, as things are going now, small practices are being absorbed and being merged into larger and larger groups.

Also I agree with the sibling comments by Arch and snakes.

You'll need to exhibit character like servant leadership to do well as a doctor.

And by that I mean not burning out. The demands on a M.D. are intense. At least from what I know of the ones I’ve talked to.

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