<story><title>Why doctors in America earn so much</title><url>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/10/31/why-doctors-in-america-earn-so-much</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manzanarama</author><text>Maybe I am naïve but I don&amp;#x27;t get this age vibe really. I do backend java distributed system stuff for a large company. A lot of my peers and managers are &amp;quot;older&amp;quot; 40s and 50s with kids. A lot of the work is high collaborative and design focused. Maybe I am just in a bubble of an aging tech stack but it does seem like we are always using &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; (at least different) databases, caching, and network layers to stay somewhat current.&lt;p&gt;Its hard to imagine that 5,10,15 years of distributed systems and system design experience and knowledge along with domain knowledge and social skills will be all of a sudden be so irrelevant that it is worth phasing all of us &amp;quot;old guys&amp;quot; out for someone who happened to learn the newest programming language straight out of school.&lt;p&gt;We are constantly expected to learn the new stuff and will just a project assigned with a mandate &amp;quot;okay this is to be done in spring boot, using this DB, this HTTP layer, etc...</text></item><item><author>nostromo</author><text>Similarly, my husband is a commercial pilot and is now starting to make more money than me in tech after his 10+ years of underpaid work and a high student loan debt load.&lt;p&gt;But, here&amp;#x27;s the deal: he&amp;#x27;s basically going to make top dollar until he&amp;#x27;s 65.  Meanwhile, I&amp;#x27;ll likely be seen as a dinosaur in tech by that age and will be lucky to find work at all.&lt;p&gt;I imagine your wife will be seen the same way.  She can comfortably work until retirement age, in an profession that sees experience as a positive thing, while you might be a pariah before you know it.&lt;p&gt;Yes, we make good money when we&amp;#x27;re young in tech.  But we age out much more quickly due to the bias common in our industry.</text></item><item><author>SkyPuncher</author><text>There is absolutely a shortage of doctors. AMA is unwilling to fix this and instead rely on a system that drives many to suicide.&lt;p&gt;My wife is a doctor. I’m a software engineer. While she now makes more than I do, it took nearly 10 years. That whole time, we were racking up tuition&amp;#x2F;debt on tuition. Residency was demanding and severely underpaid.&lt;p&gt;Based on our math, we’ll be 25 to 30 years into our careers before her medical education with have a better ROI than my career choice. I didn’t even push for top-dollar jobs.&lt;p&gt;In other word, medical training had a huge opportunity cost. Even if you solve the bottleneck of residency placement, salaries need to offset the insane burden of training.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonbarker87</author><text>It’s the bubble of very online people and start up culture who think tech people age out at 40. I know plenty of devs in theirs 50s, after that they just take early retirement since they’ve earned enough.&lt;p&gt;Most devs aren’t terminally online, they treat coding as a job not a lifestyle and for them it’s just like any other industry - so you don’t hear from them.&lt;p&gt;Also, some devs retire into SQL and DBA like work since you can basically make yourself unfireable if you want to coast out the last decade of your career.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why doctors in America earn so much</title><url>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/10/31/why-doctors-in-america-earn-so-much</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>manzanarama</author><text>Maybe I am naïve but I don&amp;#x27;t get this age vibe really. I do backend java distributed system stuff for a large company. A lot of my peers and managers are &amp;quot;older&amp;quot; 40s and 50s with kids. A lot of the work is high collaborative and design focused. Maybe I am just in a bubble of an aging tech stack but it does seem like we are always using &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; (at least different) databases, caching, and network layers to stay somewhat current.&lt;p&gt;Its hard to imagine that 5,10,15 years of distributed systems and system design experience and knowledge along with domain knowledge and social skills will be all of a sudden be so irrelevant that it is worth phasing all of us &amp;quot;old guys&amp;quot; out for someone who happened to learn the newest programming language straight out of school.&lt;p&gt;We are constantly expected to learn the new stuff and will just a project assigned with a mandate &amp;quot;okay this is to be done in spring boot, using this DB, this HTTP layer, etc...</text></item><item><author>nostromo</author><text>Similarly, my husband is a commercial pilot and is now starting to make more money than me in tech after his 10+ years of underpaid work and a high student loan debt load.&lt;p&gt;But, here&amp;#x27;s the deal: he&amp;#x27;s basically going to make top dollar until he&amp;#x27;s 65.  Meanwhile, I&amp;#x27;ll likely be seen as a dinosaur in tech by that age and will be lucky to find work at all.&lt;p&gt;I imagine your wife will be seen the same way.  She can comfortably work until retirement age, in an profession that sees experience as a positive thing, while you might be a pariah before you know it.&lt;p&gt;Yes, we make good money when we&amp;#x27;re young in tech.  But we age out much more quickly due to the bias common in our industry.</text></item><item><author>SkyPuncher</author><text>There is absolutely a shortage of doctors. AMA is unwilling to fix this and instead rely on a system that drives many to suicide.&lt;p&gt;My wife is a doctor. I’m a software engineer. While she now makes more than I do, it took nearly 10 years. That whole time, we were racking up tuition&amp;#x2F;debt on tuition. Residency was demanding and severely underpaid.&lt;p&gt;Based on our math, we’ll be 25 to 30 years into our careers before her medical education with have a better ROI than my career choice. I didn’t even push for top-dollar jobs.&lt;p&gt;In other word, medical training had a huge opportunity cost. Even if you solve the bottleneck of residency placement, salaries need to offset the insane burden of training.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toomuchtodo</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s still unfortunately common, because there are always young workers in the pipeline.&lt;p&gt;HP: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38043552&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=38043552&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;It took seven years but over-40s fired by HP win $18M settlement&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;IBM: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.diversityjobs.com&amp;#x2F;career-advice&amp;#x2F;team-building&amp;#x2F;how-tech-giants-have-been-getting-away-with-age-discrimination&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.diversityjobs.com&amp;#x2F;career-advice&amp;#x2F;team-building&amp;#x2F;ho...&lt;/a&gt; (Control-f &amp;quot;Sources&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;features.propublica.org&amp;#x2F;ibm&amp;#x2F;ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;features.propublica.org&amp;#x2F;ibm&amp;#x2F;ibm-age-discrimination-a...&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;ProPublica: Cutting &amp;#x27;Old Heads&amp;#x27; at IBM&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;jackkelly&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;prior-ageism-allegations-at-google-facebook-and-ibm-raise-concerns-about-older-workers-being-targeted-for-termination&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;jackkelly&amp;#x2F;2023&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;prior-agei...&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;Prior Ageism Allegations At Google, Facebook And IBM Raise Concerns About Older Workers Being Targeted For Termination&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=14932680&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=14932680&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;HN: Ageism is forcing many to look outside Silicon Valley&amp;quot;)&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.orangecountyemploymentlawyersblog.com&amp;#x2F;dfeh-90-age-discrimination-complaints-filed-against-tech-firms-since-2012&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.orangecountyemploymentlawyersblog.com&amp;#x2F;dfeh-90-ag...&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;DFEH: 90 Age Discrimination Complaints Filed Against Tech Firms Since 2012&amp;quot;)</text></comment>