most overpaid profession?

Looking at this thread for some good job opportunities. Nothing but BS so far. Teaching is basically like being a cop at a 6 hourprotest without teargas, mace, body armor and any authority to use violence.

Data Scientist is honestly pretty good, but requires a certain level of technical skill that I don't possess given the difficulty I had with an intro Python course

Managerial/Finance/Sales are basically acting jobs in disguise.

Math Professor wrote:

yyy wrote:

doctors (MDs, not real doctors) and lawyers.

How much does a doctor actually make?

docs do okay. The job requires a lot of commitment and liability. One mistake over years can ruin you.

GPs make jack. Not enough for 80+/yr in loans to make sense. Higher-paid specialists 3-400, rising to 5-6 unless they go to undesirable locations. Specialized surgeons in low supply places can earn 7 figures.

If medical school did not cost so much, I would agree with the overpaid claim. Dropping GP salaries to 120 or less would make most medical school pathways insolvent.

M.D.. wrote:

Math Professor wrote:

How much does a doctor actually make?

docs do okay. The job requires a lot of commitment and liability. One mistake over years can ruin you.

GPs make jack. Not enough for 80+/yr in loans to make sense. Higher-paid specialists 3-400, rising to 5-6 unless they go to undesirable locations. Specialized surgeons in low supply places can earn 7 figures.

If medical school did not cost so much, I would agree with the overpaid claim. Dropping GP salaries to 120 or less would make most medical school pathways insolvent.

Yea, we might be overpaid, but it’s not as drastic as all that given the lost opportunity cost.

I’m in Canada. Four years undergrad, four years medical school, three years of residency. I made nothing in the first eight years and made around 55-65K/year during the three years of residency.

I finished medical school roughly $175,000 in debt between government loans and a bank line of credit.

I make around $250,000 now. You have to pay licence fees, malpractice insurance, college fees, etc to the tune of 10K a year. I’ve been lucky enough to land at places that don’t have overhead (hospital work) but many docs pay 20% in overhead if not more.

Take vacation? Coming out of your pocket.

You’re also 30 or older by the time you’re starting to earn, and probably 35 by the time you’re debt free and starting to build your nest egg.

I work hard - not insanely hard, but I am available by phone 24/7 and often take calls in the night.

I’m probably biased, but the compensation seems adequate. I can see how the public just sees a number like 250 or 300 for a family doc and feels they are overpaid.

babaganosh wrote:

I make around $250,000 now. You have to pay licence fees, malpractice insurance, college fees, etc to the tune of 10K a year.

A doctor has more stress than a teacher. You're dealing with blood and the possibility of death. A surgery can last 8 hours with just a 15-minute break.

People are overrating the teacher's job. If a student misbehaves, then he or she can be sent to the principal's office and then get suspended. A parent gets called. The police can get involved in serious cases.

Just think about your own experiences in school. The teacher will have her back turned while writing on the chalkboard. Students can fool around on their phones. How hard is this kind of job?

Booze distributors.

They sell freaking beer and liquor to liquor stores. I mean, are bars and beer stores ever not going to buy bud light?

facts and reason wrote:

A doctor has more stress than a teacher. You're dealing with blood and the possibility of death. A surgery can last 8 hours with just a 15-minute break.

People are overrating the teacher's job. If a student misbehaves, then he or she can be sent to the principal's office and then get suspended. A parent gets called. The police can get involved in serious cases.

Just think about your own experiences in school. The teacher will have her back turned while writing on the chalkboard. Students can fool around on their phones. How hard is this kind of job?

Doctor might seem high stress but I think they are trained so well and have their decision pathways thought out ahead of time, so they are like a highly trained robot. Might be completely wrong.

Teacher you have to be engaged with these little kids all day long. Takes a special person. For me, I couldn't get caught up in their pedantic stuff. It would be such a distraction.

People who think MDs, as a general population, are idiots. Compensation for physicians is so heavily dependent on specialty and location that any blanket statements regarding physician salaries really on speak to the idiocy of the person making the statement?

Consider this:

1) PCP in an underserved urban community = radically, radically underpaid

2) Dermatologist = radically overpaid

Medicine is a too broad a category to have a meaningful discussion about.

Jingle writer. Charlie Harper was mega wealthy just from writing a few jingles.

runn wrote:

Jingle writer. Charlie Harper was mega wealthy just from writing a few jingles.

Seattle -based radio psychologist is a close second.

Probably anyone who works with financial markets to make money for themselves and their firms. Like, those people are in the business of money for the sake of money. They deliver little discernible good, and provide virtually no benefit to society, in most cases. Other than pumpin up the ol reliable GDP and other performance indicators that mistake activity for achievement. A lot of companies outside of the finance realm could be described similarly.

Probably a lot of LRCers jobs, tbh.

Here are a few of the managers who made Institutional Investor’s list and what they earned in 2019:

Christopher John, TCI Fund Management — $1.8 billion

James Simons, Renaissance Technologies — $1.8 billion

Ken Griffin, Citadel — $1.5 billion

Israel Englander, Millennium Management — $1.5 billion

Chase Coleman, Tiger Global Management — $1.4 billion

zizek wrote:

Mine. Data Scientist in corporate America. I get paid well into the six-figures to do made-up math, which is presented as 'evidence' in support of decisions that would have been made anyways.

The whole thing is pointless and ritualistic.

Very curious to hear more! I am interested in data science, and have been playing around on pet projects.

I really like messing around with the programming and the math. It's just that the business world has a way of taking really smart and dynamic people and sticking them in a dead-end like you describe, where their creativity and passion is worthless.

Is there any slice of the data science profession that allows people to feel like more than a cog in some business machine? I am just looking for some hope that there might be a path forward for me.

I have to push back on this, as someone who was once a teacher and now an engineer. I've also worked in the construction field.

Teaching is by far the most difficult profession on a day-to-day level that I have ever had. Try managing a classroom of 25-30 kids in this day and age, with snotty demanding parents who blame you for their kid's failure, smart phones, PC bureaucracy etc. Couple that with very long days, and stressful days. Sitting in an office typing and going to some meetings is so easy in comparison to 5-6 hours of presentations and classroom management where you cannot be "off" for a single second. No podcasts, slack chats with your friends, bathroom breaks, long lunches.

Any time I feel stressed at work or feel that I am having a tough day, I think back to my teaching days and realize that I am paid significantly more to do less.

People commonly misunderstand the wealthy as creators of wealth rather than appropriators of wealth. People desire to serve those whom they see as the the source of wealth for a share of the wealth, misunderstanding that in serving the wealthy they are serving the distributors of wealth, those who are also the appropriators of wealth, but not the producers of wealth.

The wealthy accumulate wealth by appropriating the wealth created by those who sell their wealth creating power to the wealthy. Everyone who receives a paycheck enhances the wealth of the wealthy by being paid less than the amount of wealth they produce. If you do not produce excess wealth for the wealthy, or otherwise contribute to the profit of the wealthy, your employment will be terminated.

The wealthy distribute that which they appropriate in a manner that in their judgment best insures their continued accumulation of wealth. Those who best serve the wealthy are best compensated for their successful efforts at accumulation of wealth from the producers of wealth for appropriation by the wealthy.

Wealth production, appropriation, and distribution: this is the means by which the people are incentivized to serve the boards of directors, whether of capitalist enterprises or capitalist governments.

Peoples movements will always be secondary when the first choice available is to serve the wealthy masters. The masters have the power to distribute wealth to those who serve them best; and those who do not sufficiently demonstrate loyalty to the wealthy are cast out of the system and exposed to risks and insecurity of poverty.

Behind all great wealth lie great social crimes.

setrwtws wrote:

By far public school teachers. Make them "at will" employees (fired for most any cause) then we can give them a raise, if they get real results.

Cops would fit this better than teachers.

Yep. How many parents lost their $hit during the school shutdown because they had to help their elementary school age kids do course work for just a few hours a day! And these were their own one or two kids!

College football coach. For example, Bowling Green's coach Scott Loeffler makes $525,000 a year.

Anyone saying NBA players, or famous people, or anything like that are clueless. Do you know how few NBA players there are on the planet? And do you know how many NBA fans there are on the planet?

If you want to see how valuable professional athletes are, look at the flop of every attempt to startup another professional football league. You don't have the best athletes, and the business is a total joke.

The question really comes down to whose wages are protected by a non-competitive system. There have been some good answers in this area. CEOs probably qualify. Realtors qualify. Pretty much every government job.

Although, I would argue with a government job, there is competition for job openings, and there is a service they provide. If your schools suck, you really don't have much choice but to increase pay for teachers and hope you attract better teachers.

And let's also separate this idea that compensation should be linked to how hard you work. No one is saying roofers should be the highest paid people on the planet.