Surgeons Expertise Debate

Discussions center on surgeons' credentials, arrogance, success rates, and professionalism, frequently using surgery as an analogy to critique similar ideas in software engineering like uncredentialed work or optimization.

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Keywords

OR US telegraph.co SWE NHS surgery surgeons surgeon patient invasive surgical cases procedures performed physicians

Sample Comments

astrange Oct 31, 2025 View on HN

A surgeon is going to make more than an SWE. Also, surgeons are famously unhappy with anyone questioning any of their decisions.

skybrian Sep 16, 2016 View on HN

It seems like surgery has similar issues. Some surgeons might only take easy cases, while others might take higher risk cases.

isbvhodnvemrwvn Jul 26, 2021 View on HN

I guess it sort of works for surgeons

hhmc May 29, 2022 View on HN

Would you let an uncredentialled surgeon operate on you?

noonespecial Aug 21, 2008 View on HN

I'm kind of glad surgeons don't subscribe to this philosophy...

konjin Feb 10, 2021 View on HN

There is a reason why we don't visit surgeons who do it as a hobby.

pi-e-sigma Jan 9, 2024 View on HN

Let's apply your reasoning to medicine. I'm sure you would be completely fine with managers telling your surgeon what parts of the surgery can be 'optimized away'.

vshyshov May 15, 2012 View on HN

Fantastic! That would be realy helpful for surgeons

shabble May 1, 2018 View on HN

Would you want to be that surgeon's first patient?

0x456 Jul 9, 2021 View on HN

Apparently surgeons can do something similar. The experienced surgeon you talked to is just there you get to you agree to surgery, without explicitly telling you a first year (poorly/un)supervised resident will do all the cutting.