Medicine vs Programming Careers

I can second this! I studied medicine for two years in a SE Asian country. My late dad was a doctor. Both of my host family parents are doctors in the US. My gf is a doctor.The main reason I left med school and decided to study math and comp sci. is because of the need of rote memorization necessary in medical training. This is especially worse in the US because the system here requires 4 yrs (undergrad) + 4 yrs (med school) + 3 yrs (residency) = 11 years of training to become a doctor. In co

Imagine spending years studying medicine and ending up doing this.

I agree with you to an extent but this article is especially relevant to the medical profession. There is a tremendous commitment to entering it. You must go to undergrad, medical school and residency (with standardized exams throughout) whereas for programming, there is no "traditional" path that you must follow. Moreover, although there is a tremendous reward—financial, societal and perhaps even moral—at the end, that end only comes after 8+ years of extremely hard work. Compare that with prog

Are you familiar with the medical pathway in the US? Software really isn't comparable for any but maybe the absolute most extreme developers.1) Premed - 4 year degree + easily 1-2k+ hours spent volunteering, doing research, gaining medical work experience, obtaining LOR, shadowing, MCAT prep etc. This isn't optional if you actually want any chance of being accepted. Fail to get in and you're working with a (typically) biochem bachelors as a lab tech for $12 an hour and no upwar

At least in the US there are more people who want to be doctors than positions available. The bottleneck is medical school acceptance rates. To practice medicine you need a medical license, which you can only get from an accredited university.I knew students who were rejected from medical school, but I also knew far more students who were at one time pre-med, saw how much effort and debt that would-be doctors would need to take on, and saw the risk of pursuing an e.g. biology degree where the

Medicine also requires, after college, medical school and a residency - typically 6 to 9 years work. Programming requires none of this.

I think the attitude you have is really common among doctors, too.I will say thought, that this is a really typical path in the US, at least:* 4 years undergraduate ($200K debt, high competition/workload)* 4 years medical school ($250K debt, high stress/workload, 50% odds of not being accepted)* ~3 years residency (pay only $50K/yr, famously high stress/workload, possibility of being separated from loved ones or making hard choices in residency match)So assumin

Thanks for sharing this! I went to med school for two years in my home country, married to a doctor who is in her residency training in the US and couldn't agree more.If you look at my HN comment history, you'll see that I've tried to mention that part of the problem of exorbitant healthcare expenses in the US is the artificial scarcity of doctors. It starts with this inflated/unnecessary requirement to have a bachelor's degree before going to med school. Other nation

that's like studying medicine then not becoming a doctor

USA has an extremely inefficient system of training for doctors which wastes literally years of human potential. First you go to university from 18-22 but not even 2/3rds of the year. The rest of the year is some level of waste for most students. You often purposefully dumb down and study less rigorous subjects than an engineer because you need all top grades to be get into medical school and can't risk it. Then medical school is an excessively long four years which has further periods