The darker side of being a doctor

Re:The darker side of being a doctor by cmiles8 on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @09:11AM (#49815557)

You need to consider the economic cost of delayed earnings, which is massive for the physician, and the higher pay later typically doesn’t make up for the massive debt and low pay early on. It’s not just about a point in time salary sizing contest. Earning little to nothing early in one’s career creates a massive net worth void to fill.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by bitexploder on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @09:22AM (#49815717)

Physician lifetime earnings counting for delay, and debt… normal investment, etc: 8.5-10m. Software engineer median is much lower. About 6.5m. Specialist and high end varies greatly. Median doctor is earning 2x a SWE (130k vs 250k).

People on HN vastly overestimate SWE pay as an industry, biased by FAANG as we are :).

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by bryanlarsen on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @09:41AM (#49816025)

Lifetime earnings of 6.5M is more than lifetime earnings of 8.5M if the 6.5M is front-end loaded and the 8.5M is back-end loaded and starts with a 0.5M hole.

It's the difference between compound interest working for you vs compound interest working against you.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by bitexploder on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @09:47AM (#49816129)

I accounted for that when I modeled it. I explicitly added investment start and compounding. A thing to remember: a physician is delayed yes but their higher income lets them much more heavily invest as their income often exceeds life expenses by a lot more than median swe.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by robocat on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @03:59PM (#49821663)

Maxxing your income is a foolish optimisation.

I still don't know what my own objective function is.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by bitexploder on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @08:47PM (#49824738)

Whatever you want it to be. You can change it any time you want.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by robocat on Thursday September 24, 2026 @11:38PM (#49839940)

Tautologically if you know what you want to change it to.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by sebmellen on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @09:38AM (#49815985)

The median physician definitely earns more than $250K as well.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by Aurornis on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @09:41AM (#49816034)

> and the higher pay later typically doesn’t make up for the massive debt and low pay early on.

It does, actually.

Physicians have high early career earnings. It’s not like grinding your way up the ladder until you get paid a lot.

Developers only make more if you only look at the very top end. Like a Stanford grad who goes straight to FAANG earning $200K the day after they graduate.

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Re:The darker side of being a doctor by boelboel on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @11:18AM (#49817456)

If you need to start accounting for those things you might consider adjusting for the risk of getting laid off as a tech worker .... I'd imagine it's far higher than for a medical professional.

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