What is a better job in the long run - doctor or software/engineer

Tech has good work / life balance and a reasonably low investment in education in terms of time and money. Tech salaries posted online are often much higher than reality in my opinion. Your average tech worker not in a high CoL area and not working for a FAANG isn't making 200k+. Moreover, once you do get into that range, your responsibility increases a ton and you're no longer "coding in your pajamas and gaming at the same time".

For this reason, I think on average $$$ wise you're better off being a doctor. There's more stability and the average doctor will make much more in his/her lifetime than a tech worker.

Now, if you're willing to grind and maximize your career potential as a tech worker, you can make a LOT of money. But you have to be skilled, work hard, have luck, and be at the right place at the right time. Million+ packages exist, but not if you're average.

Agree with this guy. Do medicine if that's your passion. Software jobs are a dime a dozen. Many people go into the field and burn out quick because frankly it's not as sexy as media would like you to think.

Hard to tell without knowing any of their training background. Doctor is on his feet most of the day so I'd give him the edge on having a better long run

Spoken like someone who has either never written a line of code in their lives, or you have but you suck balls it it. It is actually a very creative black art if done correctly; in my career I worked with a ton of great engineers who were also great musicians, etc. You have no clue; frankly, the kind of personality you mention is an absolute impediment to success in software. You need to be able to communicate with analysts and product owners, and if you're at the application architect or dev lead leven you need to be able to communicate with other devs.

I work in tech, though I'm not a developer, and live in NYC.

As a career, at this particular place and time, SWE probably has the best compensation-to-effort ratio of any job ever. I think people who don't have skin in the game haven't really processed just how much, e.g., a staff engineer at AirBnB [0] or Google/Meta [1] makes, and also that, if you're good at what you do, it takes about as long to get there as it does to do medical school & residency. The difference is you'll be making money the whole time as you get there.

For sure the market could crash, but if it does, you can just go to medical school then 😃

Obviously not all SWE jobs pay like this but if you're smart enough to get into medical school, you're probably smart enough to be towards the top of your profession.

As to the 'become a doctor so you can help people' idea -- most of the doctors I know are, at the end of the day, cogs in a big corporate machine (a hospital conglomerate). The ones who are out there pursuing mission-centric work took a big salary cut to do so.

Good luck!

[0]

forbes.com

As More Employees Reveal Pay, Organizations Must Prepare To Discuss Compensation

Kim Elsesser

From his $30,000 per year internship in 2014 to his $575,000 current annual compensation at Airbnb, on Friday Zach Wilson laid out his salary and job description at tech giants including Facebook (Meta) and Netflix. With more...

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If you have any hesitation at all about being a dr then I would say absolutely do not do it. The nice thing about tech and cyber security is that if you get bored with whatever you're doing, it's pretty easy to find something else within that field. Lots of work from home opportunities.

Money shouldn't be too much a part of the equation. You don't need as much as you think and there are plenty of miserable rich people.

I can't see myself as an actual software engineer. I've never been particuarly interested in programming itself and I've never practiced it. I was looking at jobs which utilise computational work to some extent - for example nuclear engineering, metrology, cyber security. Stuff that isn't purely about programming. I've used software like matlab and mncp which aren't strictly programming but more like a modelling tool. I know someone who went into cyber security (albeit in Germany not the UK) and it seems like an interesting fusion of computing and logical work but not pure programming... but I admit I don't know a lot about the field.

To be honest, if medicine was a shorter course with some further training on top I'd just take the chance and do it, but the long training pathway is what is putting me off to a large extent. I will finish medical school at 38, foundation training at 40 and then specialise. My student debt will be £70,000. In the UK student debt it different but it still isn't nice. Some people will say if you aren't 100% sure about medical school then don't go but I am having a hard time walking away from my offer. I'm tempted to just go and see what happens, but if I leave I'm told I won't be allowed to apply to medical school ever again (not sure how they can check up on this though).

I sell hardware for a living and have afforded myself a very good living, the guys that dwarf my income are guys that sell the software. If I work a system for $100,000 which is not uncommon I individually make $6,500-$8,000 one time. The software guys that I work with on the same projects might have an annual license agreement for $25,000-$30,000 for which the are making $4,000-$5,000 annually. So in answering your questions go for the engineering its far less debut but if you have anyone of personality and persistence find a sales job in software. You will make more money and have a lot more freedom.

Have you done much software development? I worked with colleagues who had advanced degrees and were extremely smart but they couldn't master writing code. I worked with other colleagues who never went to college and were very competent at writing code.

At your age be aware there is age discrimination in the software industry if you remain just a coder/developer. If you have strong domain knowledge and interpersonal skills then seek a path managing people and projects.

Now that I see your follow up... medical school or research sounds better for you.

What? My wife earns $100k and I earned $150k until I quit last year. We have 3 children and a net worth of about $3M. I don't understand your numbers at all. $375k is a huge salary regardless of where you live.

Medical school is tough and so is residency. I wouldnt want to go through it again. However I work in a surgical subspecialty and make >400k/year working generally 9-3 or 4. I do have late nights once a week sometimes twice but I also can take off whenever I want even with only 2 weeks notice.

Physician Assistant is also a solid option. 3 additional yrs and you can make anywhere between 100-200K depending on the state.

Completely agree with "thoughts and questions"

Also, where do you want to work? I don't know how work from home is going to go, but perhaps that's something to consider.

If WFH ends, the medical profession has jobs in every town. While I don't know of its the same for tech, I know a lot of well paid tech jobs are in expensive cities.

A friend of mine didn't do well enough at MIT to get into an American med school and became a podiatrist. However he was always interested in computers and currently spends more time and makes more money with medical software and helping offices set up their technology. He still works as a podiatrist (probably for insurance and licensing purposes) but again he spends more time traveling, doing workshops at conventions and setting up computer systems.

My best friend from High School is a cardiovascular profusionist (botched spelling). He works from 6 AM to 11 AM 4 days a week and brings home 400K. Basically a heart anesthesiologist. I work in the IT dept for a large roadbuiding company and bring home 200K, work 40 - mostly from home and live in the Colorado MTNs.

Im the better runner but he's the better golfer!!

My job outsourced multiple times in software. Now I am doing food delivery as a job. Yes, demand for H1B visas and off shore workers has gone up

I was thinking of mentioning the age discrimination in the software industry as well. Most of the best software developers I've known ended up as managers etc... (never writing a line of code again) - some like that and some hate it, but you should know that, even if you are great at writing code and love it, it's a tricky field to remain in as one gets older. (There is no reason that there should be any overlap between brilliance at software and brilliance at management, so this seems to be an example of the Peter Principle!) The most brilliant software developer I've ever known (e.g. hemsingle-handedly built a better system than a team of 12 highly-paid people who were simultaneously trying to build the same thing) told me that, when he got into his mid-50s he started finding that it was difficult to even get hired (and the industry is less stable than medicine, so he did not just work in the same group for his entire career). Knowing how great he is, that was shocking to hear. Software also has the "lottery" element - another brilliant friend of mine created a startup that he sold for a *lot* of money at a rather young age (but he's the only person I know who has had that kind of success).

Given the era we're in, I would also give a bit of thought to what careers will vanish or radically change with further technology (e.g. AI) developments.

Think about whether it is important to you to love your job, or whether it is important to have a job that allows you to do other things you love. The day-to-day work lives of a doctor vs. a software engineer are quite different. If a lot of this is about money rather than loving what you do from day to day, and you were really strong at physics and math, there are financial firms (hedge funds etc...) who hire physicists and you might decide to gamble on that and on making so much money from it in a few years that you never have to work again.

Incidentally, I write as someone who chose to do a job I love rather than other jobs that pay more, and have never regretted it!