Since this comment seems to be fairly top-rated, I'm going to expand on this story a bit.
I graduated from ECE at Waterloo in 2008. I wanted to go to med school, so I studied for the MCATs (did well), volunteered at this ER, and eventually went on to do a Masters in medical imaging. I never did go to med school though, I didn't have the marks nor the drive.
That said, volunteering at this ER was a significant turning point in my career/life. Besides the life experience of being in a busy ER, it actually served as the foundation point for my current career as a software engineer/startup founder.
During my volunteer stint, my volunteer coordinator passed my name along to the company running the bedside television terminals in the hospital. I started working for them, selling services to patients. Through that work, my innate curiosity and need to solve problems got the best of me. I saw they had a fairly new/technical system, yet we were doing things by paper. I started hacking on the system, figured out how to extract data from the DB using a PHP script. This caught the attention of the company owner. Eventually, I left that job to continue doing contract software/technical work for that owner. We had a very interesting relationship over the years.
Eventually, I leveraged that opportunity to find future opportunities in commercial real estate, which I used to create my current startup.
Oh, and I met my wonderful wife through that volunteer position too. We now have a beautiful 1.5 year old.
When I was a kid, my dad sat next to a different RadioShack CEO on a plane. He mentioned that I was always in the store and Mr. Roberts gave him this, https://imgur.com/a/BolEA
The closest I have is a rejection letter from Radio Shack HQ, I received as a kid, maybe around age 12. I'd spent many hours ogling parts and gear in their stores, and practically memorized their catalogs. So I was a big fan, and I'd written to their headquarters, proposing that I would write a hobby computers&electronics book, in the vein of some of the Forrest Mims projects articles I'd read. (With the difference being that I had almost no knowledge worth sharing.) I got back a polite letter, on Radio Shack stationery, not mentioning that I was obviously just a kid, and saying that they didn't wish to develop a hobby book, but if I developed it otherwise, they'd be happy to review a copy off the press. I had my first rejection letter framed for a while, but lost the original during a very lean move right after grad school, and now I only have a scan of it.
A bit tangential, but this reminded me of Dexter Holland [0] the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Offspring. He went on to get a PhD in molecular biology (not an honorary one) and publish various papers about HIV.
James Williamson (one of the guitarists of Iggy Pop & The Stooges) retrained as an Electrical Engineer, and ended up as Vice President of Technical Standards at Sony working on Blu-ray.
If you've read anything about what they were like as a band that's quite a career path!
Action movie star Dolph Lundgren is also super educated, with a degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology and a master's in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney [1].
Greg Graffin of Bad Religion has a PhD in zoology, certainly after he began the band in high school. Something about SoCal punks. His dissertation is of course "Evolution and Religion: Questioning the Beliefs of the World's Eminent Evolutionists"
Guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (most famous for his work with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers) became interested in data compression algorithms and missile defense applications and came to chair the Civilian Advisory Board for Ballistic Missile Defense.
Agreed. Now imagine being a similarly aged retail service worker, or agricultural laborer, and doing the same. Even more amazing, if rare. The point is: both the drive and capital are needed. This person clearly had both at their disposal.
I reckon that in France, you can become a doctor without capital— although studies are long and absolutely not designed to help the student work a job part time, so there's an underlying social factor at play; gov help doesn't target 18-25s for some reason (most benefits start at 25).
It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than having to spend mid-five figures. That the student learns law, medicine, math, physics, biology or any other university discipline doesn't cost more or less to the family.
The benefit for the country however is massive. The "cost" of training a doctor is repaid infinitely by the benefits of medicine itself (and great tax contributions!) during their whole career (30+ years).
Correct, but I don't know a single doctor in the US who actually paid it upfront instead of taking out all those loans and then easily paying them back with their newfound doctor salary later.
Yeah, the only people that I know who don't have >400000 in loans with a >5% interest rate coming out of residency have wealthy parents who paid for everything, did the military's HPSP program [1], or did a free 7-year MD/PhD program. It's an interesting process.
Can you explain your logical reasoning for why you believe most folks with medical school debt come from well off middle class families?
I'm confused because need based financial aid for medical schools is still mostly loans. My partner who comes from a relatively poor family (they used to be on welfare) had most of their need based financial aid in the form of loans. Out of her residency class the highest % of folks taking out loans were from low to middle income families not well off families. So I'm curious where you got that stat from?
Anecdotally, I know some people who did not come from well off families who got need-based financial aid that covered the entirety of their medical school tuition. There was still some loans for living expenses but that’s about it.
It's interesting because you know we are weeding out talent that comes from low socio economic backgrounds and who need cash flow to support their families. At end of the day, we shouldn't be weeding out our doctors to only be folks who don't need to support their families for the next 10 years.
There is a limit put in place on supply (seats at medical schools) already. Weeding out is part of that system already. The question is should cost be part of that.. we decided somewhat yes which is fair if you decide to limit supply in the first place.
To limit supply is mostly to control price, like how OPEC controls oil. Current doctors have a vested interest in remaining a scarce commodity and lobby accordingly on the boards it matters.
The actual limit is residency slots. Every year there are many students who graduate from medical school but are unable to practice medicine because they can't get matched to a residency program.
Yep, that's the true barrier to entry. The main issue is there is that Congress has capped the Medicare funded residency roles to the same number since 1997 (Balanced Budget Act of 1997). In that time period, the US population has grown 21%.
Many people fail to become doctors and or lose their license for various reasons. So, it’s a huge gamble in the US that can easily cause massive financial issues.
What's interesting is that student pilots face those same issues now.
To go from ab initio to an airline pilot role, the cost is in the area of $200,000 - $250,000 now and there's a lot of ways to end up not getting picked for an airline job.
Entry salary is up from $18,000 to $40,000 or so now, but that's not much improvment considering the cost of training.
Part of the issue is the 1,500 hour experience rule, which is government-imposed. (There's an option for 1,200 hours, but then your major has to be airline-focused., preventing them from wisely diversifying their career options.)
US airlines are in a bind because their policy is to not subsidize initial training, but cannot fly without pilots.
And students are getting sticker-shock, and thinking about other careers with better ROI and certainty.
Yea, but that’s only half the story. Military pilots get training for free, which is vastly more and has massively suppressed airline pilot salaries. There are a few other approaches that can similarly reduce costs, but sticker shock is huge.
A friend of mine flies island-hopping cargo/shipping in the Puerto Rico area which is a common route to make money, live well, and get enough flight time to land a commercial pilot job in the future.
It would cost even more trying to do it midlife. You have the cost of feeding/housing your family and other responsibilities.
It's not an easy decision for anyone but the lucky wealthy.
The admission process is also very geared towards undergrads coming straight out of premed programs. I thought about going to medical school after finishing a biomedical PhD, where I had picked some relevant skills (large animal physiology) and worked on some translational stuff. We even had a semester of neuroanatomy classes with the med students.
However, when I talked to admissions staff, this counted for essentially nothing. My prerequisites were out of date—-I’d have to go take biology and physics (with lab!), even though I’d spent the last 6 years measuring the electrical activity of living brains in living animals. I’d need to volunteer in a hospital for....whatever reason. None of this would have been insurmountable but it would have added another year or two to the process, while making less than a grad student and pushing a real job even further into the future.
This is especially maddening since the NIH is particularly keen on training physician-scientists, but everything seems designed for physician->scientist and not the other way around even though we have a glut of biomedical researchers and not enough doctors!
Ouch. Worse than I thought. I suppose it's correlated to eventual revenue— doctors aren't nearly as rich in Europe, although they are clearly among the top earners. (what filoleg suggests in the other reply)
There's an underlying premise, I think, that countries like France or Germany seek to minimize the cost of healthcare in general, because the bill is collectively paid— the bottom line is a direct cost on GDP, that's what mutualizing bills means i.e. "social security", beyond that the whole socialistic apparel of redistribution of (some % of) wealth.
Artificially inflating any of these mutual bills simply means that some (people, corporations, the medical field entirely including drugs and supplies) would take more than they should from all others, financially. Starting with having to buy their way in the field (exactly the kind of artificial gating that modern democracies sought to remove, historically; long-term it's no better than saying "voting costs $100k per person").
It's a form of inner competition at a national level, because the enrichment of some hampers the velocity of the whole towards the core mission. It's a huge distraction, at best.
In layman terms: because I'm gonna charge 200 instead of 100, the country can only buy N/2 worth of what I do. If "I" is the entire field of medicine drugs/supplies/infra, we only cure half what we could, but I personally get 2x profits. It's wrong on every level when we're talking about mutual bills.
But in the USA, the bills are not (yet) mutualized, not enough of them... so there is no incentive to keep costs low and treat as much as we could, because microeconomically, it makes more sense for the field of medicine to increase its relative profit. Unless you add the macroeconomic coupling, that bills are mutualized and everybody pays them at the end of the day, it just can't / won't change imho.
> I reckon that in France, you can become a doctor without capital— although studies are long and absolutely not designed to help the student work a job part time
Correct. I assume it's not specific to France, and that it's the case in many developed countries. I suspect the US are the exception.
I'd add it's uncommon for French students in demanding fields to work part time. However, it is quite easy to get a scholarship if your parents earn below a certain income.
Having money can help though, for instance to pay some external tutors which may be useful to pass the entrance examination.
"Sufficient" meaning "Extraordinary"? The data doesn't really show that being hard working correlates with creation of wealth. In addition, it seems wealth plays a larger role in medical school acceptance than one might expect/hope for.
"The AAMC explains that the percentage of medical students from families in the highest quintile of household income has not dropped below 48 percent since 1987—half of students come from the richest 20 percent of the population—while the percentage of students from the lowest quintile has never risen above 5.5 percent [9]"
Doctors kids become doctors and doctors are well paid.
This is anecdotal, but my elementary school class was full of doctors kids and I can tell you that the doctor parents would almost disown their kid if they didn't get into medical school. Doctors seem to have a very strong opinion on the medical field being the only right option.
So in that sense it's more of a correlation with money, and a causation through inheritance.
That is true, up to a certain extent. I'd say that at university, about half of the medical students I met had one or sometimes two parents who were doctors. The rest seemed to come from comfortable middle-class backgrounds.
In my case.... my dad is a doctor and it was sort of expected I become one myself. Its not my thing though, or it wasn't at the time so now (like a lot of people on this forum) I work in engineering. In a way I do regret it now, because I wish I did something "useful" to society.
My younger sister however, did go to med school and is about to finish. She was very driven from a young age - I don't remember her saying she wants to become anything else but a doc. When her and my dad talk, I feel a little left out and only occasionally I have the feeling they look at me and shake their heads.
Exactly. In my country it works the same way, and doctors aren't well paid here. Some of them then go to places where doctors are paid better. Thus, they don't inherit money indirectly through going to schools for well-paid professionals, they inherit profession.
That's a bit of a tautology, isn't it? Of course sufficient drive begets the requisite capital, since any amount of drive which fails to beget the requisite capital is, by definition, insufficient :)
Just to go down the pedantry-hole with you (it's fun every once in a while!): I think a reasonable interpretation of the claim is that there's no initial condition such that some amount of drive won't get you to the level of capital under discussion. This isn't tautological, as the negation would be "there are certain situations where drive alone isn't sufficient to get you to that level of capital".
That's a claim a lot of people make (I think I'd probably agree with it), and the parent comment is disagreeing.
Ha, that's also one of my favorite Onion articles (besides the one that says Toyota issuing a recall on all 1993 Camrys because it's really time for the owner to get a new car).
Another great piece of RadioShack literature is Jon Bois' recap of working there for years. It's long but worth a read if you have 20 minutes.
I think if someone asked me to sort of define the 2000s, outside of some obvious life events, this article does a pretty damn good job of painting a picture of where we were.
Some people can learn to do more than one thing reasonably well and more easier than others. I won't be surprised if we see another headline in 5 years telling us that Mr Levy is a rocket scientist working for NASA, or he started a successful business or he is an acclaimed novelist.
I find people like him inspiring, I would much prefer if media would concentrate on presenting us more people doing useful things instead of celebrity gossips.
> 'I am just one of those people who was very fortunate, where things worked out, and where I could do not just do one thing I really enjoyed in life, but two'
I relate to all of the gratitude in the above quote. It seems almost gratuitous to be able to pursue more than one major career pathway. I feel lucky to have the opportunity and lucky to have realized that I didn't have to choose.
I've always dreamed of leaving behind Silicon Valley and pursuing emergency medicine. I need to stay the course for a while to ensure my college approaching kids are taken care of but stories like this are inspiring reminders that age doesn't have to be a factor when I finally decide to make the move.
Make sure you get a good perspective from a trusted friend in the medical community before making any big moves (if you haven't already). For the uninitiated, it's the furthest thing from a low-stress job. For some people, the passion outweighs the stress. But despite knowing countless people in medicine, I can only think of one that still professes to love her job - the rest were burned out long before covid.
As a counterpoint, nearly everyone in my family in medicine still loves it. My parents are surgeons in their sixties who don’t need to work any more. My uncles and aunts are GPs, radiologists, and anesthesiologists. My cousins are GPs, nurses, and anesthesiologists. So that’s a spectrum from 21-65 and almost all of them enjoy their jobs. The things that really bother them are poor administrators etc. They’ll quit jobs over that, but not out of burnout.
I think it’s easy for this to be a fulfilling career if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t get early filtered out.
Interesting. I've heard not great things about physician job satisfaction in the last few years, mostly centering around more time spent with billing/paperwork and less with patients.
They’re not all in the US. Spread over the US, Canada, UK, and the UAE. But anecdotally there are more complaints from North American family about paperwork. Obviously I see NA family more, living here now, so that’s not really a surprise.
All of those roles are rather low stress (aside from RN which can vary wildly depending on your dept/floor). The high churn/burnout roles are in critical type care from my experience being married to a nurse. Many docs go without sleep. Either they are on call in the middle of the night and on weekends or they are on 48 hour shifts. Its crazy they are allowed to do that let alone it being the norm.
Past the edit window, but I didn't notice that autocorrect changed "pay" to "party" (which works just well enough in that sentence to be confusing, I'm sure)
I had a colleague that was in his late 30's or early 40's at a large tech firm that applied to medical school and became a doctor. It was a long and hard road for sure. I ran into him years later in a Trader Joes in San Francisco and from what I gathered he had had his share of road bumps, but he was well on his way.
The salaries look nice when they're windowed to a single year. Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech - especially when you consider the hours and stress.
* 4 years of med school - $0 income - $40k+ of tuition
* 3+ years of residency, minimum (4+ for most fields, even more for surgery) - $60k/year
------
If my wife had gone straight into tech, we'd have been better off financially until our 50's. 30 years is a long, long time to break even.
> Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech
We are in a strange time when software engineer salaries can even be comparable to those of doctors. Rest assured that sooner or later tech workers will be middle-class schlubs like pretty much every other type of engineer.
The idea that doctors need to make huge amounts of money compared to almost everyone else is very American. Here in Poland, doctors up until very recently were paid not much more than the country's average wage. Now it's more diversified, especially with short-term contract positions paying much more than that - but regular jobs at a hospital still don't pay more than 3x the national average.
In the UK you have no debt but salaries for the first ten years generally don't go over 50k per year which makes living in a major city and having children unsustainable
Missing interest - unless you really want to fuck yourself in the short term. 160k of tuition costs more like $300k with the standard payment play. Good luck if you have undergrad debt. Could easily add $500k more to your debt load.
> 80k x 4 = 320k lost wages.
Try a number closer to $400k. Also a good portion of MD's take a gap year for research either during med school or before residency. Potentially adds a year.
> 30k x 3 Delta wages.
3 years is for family medicine, most other specialities are 4 years - so add a year. Surgery is more like 8 years.
This wage delta is more on the order of $80k to $100k+ per year. I have friends who are closer to $150k+ per year wage gap compared to their MD spouses.
For my wife and I this number will be $400k.
$300k + $400k + $400k = $1.1m+ difference.
> You said 30 years. I'm counting 2.
You're counting two because you're only looking at salary and not the salary difference. I'm counting 15 at minimum on a pure salary income.
My wife is also working 80/hours week. I'm working 40. It will take into our 50's before my wife makes more on a per hour basis than I do. If I worked 80 hours per week, my wife would never catch up.
If you are smart enough and tough enough to go through med school and become a doctor you can easily earn $300k-$500k per year in tech, with much less stress.
There’s some interest in there as well which adds up over 7+ years. Plus how much his wife makes depends on her specialty and the potential salary in tech is also wide. You can make $400+k at a large tech company faster than a doctor can even begin practicing.
Granted this is word of mouth from several years ago amongst new grads looking for jobs in NYC and Boston, some in SF, who were looking to stay in academic centers. I would say that's the worst case scenario. (there's a huge line of aspiring NIH PI's who are willing to work for peanuts for UCSF, Mass General, etc. The NIH training grants who are supposed to compensate for "75% time" are $98k/year...so do the math for the full 100%...).
For the Medscape study, I would say it's good to see the numbers are better in the private practice world, nationwide. But - most MD's will be presumably internal medicine and you'd have to look at the breakdown. The low end jobs in primary care, public health, etc start at $200k, and most folks who aren't surgeons or ophalmologists or dermatologists are in the low-mid $200's. That's assuming you graduate from residency in your late 20's or early 30's w/ the $350-500k in debt or whatever it is these days, unless you took the National Health Services or DoD scholarships, whereupon you then owe them 4-8 years of your life...
If you're going into medicine for the money you are making a huge mistake. The front-side effort, commitment and cost is massive, and depending on your field it make impact important aspects of your life for as long as you practice. There are way easier ways to make money.
One example: do a comparatively easier 4-yr undergrad in business and start with a bank straight out of school (they scoop up lots of new grads willing to move around). In the same ~15 years you can move into a senior position in finance or M&A and make comparable money. It's not easy or guaranteed but IMO easier...
Medicine is the single most reliable path to the upper-middle class in America. Sure the other things you described are possible but honestly unlikely unless you have an Ivy League undergrad.
It's a ten-year commitment, roughly, to become a practicing ER doc. And in today's industry, you'll spend the overwhelming majority of your time doing documentation on shit that should've been seen by a PCP, not an emergency department. And definitely not treating emergencies. You'll be lucky if you see one or two a day in a major ED; in smaller ED's, even one a week is optimistic.
If you want to jump in with eyes wide open, more power to you. Most days, I can't tell you whether I regret my move or not.
Depends where you work - I work at St Joe’s in Stockton, and it’s not unusual to incubate 5 or 6 patients in a shift, though one or two is more usual. Get in touch if you’re looking to work in a super underserved community, with ridiculously high acuity!
That said, most ED’s are not like that, and an awful lot of emergency medicine is ‘just’ careful assessment and reassurance, so I’d agree that if you don’t like the process of seeing and helping high and low acuity patients, it’s a bad career choice.
If anyone wants to chat about the pro’s and con’s of EM and career changing, happy to chat, contact info in profile
This fellow went to a 3 year med school that doesn’t care too much about your prerequisites as long as you have a degree. It’s 3 because they don’t really do summers off.
Although he did a full 5yr EM residency, in Canada you can work EM with a 2 year FP residency and another year as an FP specializing in EM.
The tech industry saved many lives during this pandemic. Compliance with social distancing standards would be way lower if people had nothing to do at home but watch TV. Even social media is showing its bright side. People are using it in more positive ways, connecting with each other and largely sharing quality information regarding Coronavirus. Life would have come to a halt without modern internet technology, almost warranting a calendar pause until the pandemic passes.
That being said, there's a lot of variability in the social value of tech industry jobs. At risk of being pedantic - you can net society more social good if you transition to a higher social value job within the same industry. It takes many years to become a doctor, and many people compete for that career so you wouldn't expand the supply of medical labor. Moreover, medical industry cronyism plays a part in bankrupting America with little to show for it. You should do what you want ultimately. I've just seen some people self-flagellate when they're actually doing really good things for society.
Agreed. I think there's plenty of space to make a difference in tech. I don't think it's automatic in any way (i.e. making a positive social impact) -- I think the choices of every CEO and every worker matter. Facebook and/or Google could turn the industry in completely different directions (e.g. more centered in providing culture, growth and genuine interaction) if there was the will. The extent to which they're glorified ad-machines is a choice.
And outside of that (i.e. big tech) there's plenty to invent and contribute in countless ways. Medical equipment, niche technology products, innovative and useful consumer technologies, the warriors we don't hear about improving industrial processes and everyday stuff, etc.
I have younger friends looking to enter the game industry. I tell them: make sure you don't land somewhere that makes you start hating what you loved just so you can tell yourself you make games (having addiction-machine mobile games in mind). Better work anywhere else and wait for the opportunity to do it right, I believe.
Selling your soul is always a choice... and it's not an easily replaceable good.
There is burnout across medicine and various other verticals that Technologists hope to retire into. I do think there needs to be a support network to help modern knowledge workers recognize the dignity and value of their labor. Some of the possible exercises could include practicing empathy during the work day, learning to explore where their labor helps the world, and recognizing the things about the systems around us that we cannot change.
Working on public policy is a worthwhile (and uphill) fight for sure. But it lacks imagination to suggest that impact at scale isn't possible in tech (examples: robust low cost medtech for non G7 economies, same for finance in those markets, support systems for large scale NGO efforts, access to justice efforts, etc. etc.). Clearly these opportunities exist, but they may be under resourced relative to lucrative tech options.
With that said, here is my example: Medicare For All would save us $450 billion, and avoid 68k preventable deaths, every single year. I find it a stretch to suggest that ambitious goals such as that "lack imagination". Such impact is simply not obtainable with tech or NGOs alone. Even Bill Gates has needed roughly $50 billion to drive forward his foundation's humanitarian efforts (but admittedly, is very efficient, with estimates of having saved ~122 million lives through their work).
I don't think this is a counterexample, and the imagination lacked wasn't in the scope of what can be done in policy work, but in the scope of what can be done in tech.
To stay with your examples, some of the Gate's foundation efforts have largely been tech efforts, some haven't. Some of the things I mentioned off-the-top have potential to reach 10s to 100s of millions of people. MFA is a big $ number partially because the US healthcare system is expensive and inefficient, so that draws focus on $ saved ... other efforts may focus on lives impacted at much lower $ impacts.
Most public policy work isn't as big as MFA either.
I'm not saying policy work isn't important or impactful. I'm rejecting the idea that you (generic 'you') can't have similar effect in technology to what you might be able to achieve in policy; especially the idea that this is so clearly true that the "right" thing to do is quit technology to go into policy. Even assuming you can be as effective in policy work as you are in tech work, which isn't a given.
You're welcome. I think it's a really interesting question in general: where do I want to spend my working time, and to what end? I've spent quite a bit of time thinking on it for my own case, and trying to find technical areas where I hope to be able to find an impact. It was the majority reason I left academic work (not that I am saying that can't be impactful).
Making companies that matter work more efficiently is meaningful progress. I've never had the thought that what I do isn't making a difference for the next generation.
It doesn't matter what you do, there will be days you wish you had a different job.
How do you think a doctor feels when he sees some fat patient going into the donut shop (or all you can eat buffet) after he told them to go on a diet and lose weight. (is this worse than the person who dies of bad genes caused heart attack despite talking their medications, exercising and eating well - another thing doctors see)
While my grandfather was in the hospital years ago, the patient in the room next door was recovering from a quadruple heart bypass. He didn't like the hospital food so his family brought him cheeseburgers from the fast food restaurant down the street.
absolutely. Or even less exotic: they probably won't make a (sexy) TV show about IT in a hospital but if you've ever been to one there are massive opportunities to make a huge, meaningful change
There's scope within tech. I recently moved to the NHS as a software engineer and it's amazing the amount of low hanging fruit there is. The main issues are politics and the fragmentation of existing tech but if you're an engineer with good people skills and the ability to deal with lots of system integrations you can have a lot of meaningful impact.
I tried this. I didn't get into medical school but it is doable.
I enrolled in a premedical postbaccalaureate program, and over the course of two years of night classes finished all of the prerequisites required by most allopathic medical schools. I worked by butt off to finish with a 4.0 GPA and place in the 96th percentile on the MCAT (good enough to not be ruled out because of my MCAT score). I also volunteered at a memory care hospice on weekends during this period and ended up with 100 hours of clinical experience. I had some additional clinical exposure working on medical device projects as an engineering student.
I applied to 27 schools and was invited for two interviews. Of those two, I was waitlisted by one and rejected by the other. I didn't end up clearing the waitlist. So what went wrong? I can't say for certain, but I suspect these were contributing factors:
* My undergraduate engineering school GPA was 3.3 and my graduate school engineering GPA was 3.4. These are reasonable by engineering school standards but borderline for medical school.
* I only had 100 clinical hours. Many applicants have hundreds or even thousands of hours of clinical experience when they apply. I was 31 when I started the postbac program and decided to keep my full time job in order to save up money. The opportunity cost of each hour of clinical experience was higher at this age compared to a typical undergrad. In hindsight I should have at least devoted my weekends to gaining clinical experience the moment I decided to go this route.
* One of my recommendation letter writers was late. My application wasn't processed until all recommendation letters were in. I wasn't eligible for consideration until later admissions rounds.
* I didn't stand out. To be clear this isn't a requirement, but schools like to build a diverse and interesting class, so standing out in some way can be helpful. I struggle to decide if this was something beyond my control or if it represents a personal failure.
To return to my initial point, it is doable. In an alternate universe in which my recommendation letters made it in earlier, or I slept better before the MCAT and got an extra point, perhaps I would have been invited for one or two more interviews. If the interview -> admission invite conversion rate is 20%, that boosts the odds of admission from 36% to 59%. (I haven't ruled out applying again, but I would need to enroll in classes for at least another year in order to get new faculty recommendation letters. Unfortunately it isn't safe to volunteer at the hospice right now due to COVID-19).
Can corroborate. Schools care about GPA too much even in the face of work experience (most doctors on admission committees have never had another job..) + MCAT score. Median GPA is 5% of the grading in the US News research rankings and that matters a ton to the schools. Went from software to med school, now in my second year (4 since software). 3.67 GPA (bioinformatics)/ 3.55 BioChemMathPhysics GPA with 100th percentile MCAT. ~140 hrs clinical experience when I applied. 20 applications, 6 interviews, 4 waitlists (to rejection), 1 immediate post-interview rejection (screw you too NYU), 1 acceptance.
If you read about this CEO and are thinking about making the switch be very realistic with your chances, particularly about your GPA like parent post said. Without a 3.7+ you're going to have a tough time, and there's no guarantee that you won't spend 2+ years and get rejected. You'll have to overperform on the MCAT. Expect bias against your work experience (only software really). Whenever I said I used to be a software engineer you could see the light leave some of the interviewers eyes... Though if you're FAANG or another name-brand company I wouldn't expect the same.
Have got to say though software/data skills have been super useful for research projects, which are the fun part of medical school vs the absolute grind of pounding facts in.
Wow. That story didn’t end like I thought it would. How depressing. I hope you get into med school because it really sounds like you deserve it. There is just so much unnecessary grind and friction in this country.
Your stats are pretty impressive. I'm surprised you didn't get into an MD program especially considering that you did the postbac. I'm sure you would've gotten into DO school though.
I've thought about doing this myself. I'm curious, what made you want to switch (from software engineering I'm assuming?) to medicine?
Thanks for sharing the story. I am curios if you applied both for MD and OD schools? Anecdotally, I heard opinion, that OD is more tolerant to people, who choose medical field as a second career or older applicants.
I've entertained very similar ideas myself. It's one of those things I often revisit -- wondering if I had made the right career choice. I love being an engineer and have been very lucky in being financially rewarded for doing something that I love. But whenever a startup I'm at fails or I feel my career is at a standstill, the things that's given me joy during those times are the times I've spent helping others outside of my career. I think it's because acts of kindness and generosity are meaningful in and of themselves whereas a career in engineering might make sense in the end or maybe not.
A good friend of mine actually had a great career in software but decided that to become a nurse in the time he has left on earth. He and his wife both decided to go to nursing school and were definitely the oldest students. They are both now nurses and seem very happy.
I’m a resident in Australia.
11 years at university (took some side tracks), $70k in debt for the whole time, now gone, and we are paid between $70-110k a year as interns.
Although our training pathways are longer because we are required to do 2 generalist years
Yes, I second the opinion that the costs the schedule issues etc are a US problem..
I think one could study at much lower cost in China, Russia, Eastern and Central Europe. They have now courses in English, and have become the new hub for medical education.
> I think one could study at much lower cost in China, Russia, Eastern and Central Europe. They have now courses in English, and have become the new hub for medical education.
Cost is cheaper, yes. Quality varies a lot across the country. Some countries are doing better than others. But medical degree is still not easily convertible, so if you study outside the US, but practice here, it's not simple. Language is not the main issue, different approaches, different standards, etc.
Is few years back I legit wanted to buy an AM/FM radio. I had A tiny one I loved to listen to while running that broke. I went into radio shack and asked if they, you know, sold radios. They did not. I was crestfallen.
Wow. I had no idea that one could get into medicine at that age. I feel like I'd been told that medical schools could discriminate based on age, with the idea being that an older person would be physically unable to serve for as long as a younger person.
I have an interest in medicine but simply wrote it off as being impossible because of my age.
Beyond having the money or not. By the time you're in your mid-forties, I just don't have the stamina for late-nights that I did when I was 20, even 30. I'm sure the money, maturity, experience I've accumulated between 20-45 would help, but no doubt the raw endurance is lower. I would not enjoy these legendary 24hr+ rotations that residents apparently have to do.
But hats off to this guy -- i think it's very cool. Makes my daydreams of what I'd like to do post this-job seem quaint and underachieving.
But these 24hr shifts seems to be an US thing. In my country doctors would have a more relaxed schedule, in fact you will get a more pressing schedule if you are in tech.. but generally engineers start out with better salaries than doctors here, though slowly the doctors then catch up and retire with better salaries than engineers..
Not saying that to be snarky, just saying there's a bit of survivorship bias involved in this story, as well as positive feedback loops in society in general. People with the same ability to be an ER physician who don't have RadioShack CEO on their application will not be seen the same, even if they're equally able.
My dad is a professor of emergency medicine. There are med students that come through in their 30s or 40s (none are former CEOs). It’s obviously not as common as people in their early 20s, but that may just be a self-selection thing (rather than bias against older candidates per se).
It's pretty interesting seeing some of my peers who second-careered into medicine. They had experience which paid dividends throughout school and residency that will serve them well.
I also have no idea how I would manage full time school and having children to raise.
OT but does anyone have insight into why there are so few med schools in the US? There are way more prospective students than admissions slots. Are there high capital costs or something I haven't considered that make starting a med school unprofitable even with average tuition fees being so high?
There are limited residency spots for med school graduates and if you don't get one you can't become an actual licensed doctor. The MD schools try to keep their admissions in line with the number of spots because that would be a raw deal to just pump out people with degrees in $500k in debt who will never get licensed. The residency spots are not controlled by the medical associations or the schools.
I don't know much about it either but AFAIK there's an industry group that artificially controls how many licensed doctors in each field there are. They reduce supply which naturally increases doctor compensation among other things.
The other question that is rarely asked, is why isn't much more of the training and services restricted to physicians expanded to other professionals? That is, it's not just "why aren't there more physicians?" but also "why do we need a physician for X?"
There are lots of provider types who could easily expand their scope of practice with additional training, and who are currently prepared to do so. The AMA lobbies heavily against any attempts to do so all the time, every year. Pharmacists, PAs, dentists, optometrists, psychologists, nurses, ... the list goes on and on. Every year they lobby heavily to just have the opportunity to offer more services, and more services independently, the AMA fights back against it in lobbying, and politicians respond to it.
The crisis in some ways highlights how absurd this is. Right now I know of many med schools whose in-class training is about 1.5 years, and some are trying to make that 1 year. The rest is studying for licensing exams and clerkships. Now many of these schools are graduating them early to help with the pandemic.
Compare that with PAs, who often are required to have substantial medical clinical experience before starting their programs. Then they do... 1.5 years of coursework and about .5 years of clerkships before going on and then... practicing under the supervision of an MD. So, then, what's the difference between a new MD and a PA with an extra 1.5-2 years of supervised experience, especially given that extra 1.5-2 years of experience is probably more independent than what the med student gets?
The current model is absurd, and at some level I have no sympathy for complaints that hospitals are understaffed right now. This is solely the fault of the AMA and their lobbies at some level. Many services could be offloaded onto other providers, who could easily expand the scope of what they offer, especially in the middle of a public health crisis per se. There could also be a much greater diversity of training routes than undergrad -> MD -> specialty (just for example, undergrad -> specialty doctoral/professional degree -> expanded training).
I still have a Radio Shack Battery Club card with only one more punch needed. Maybe if I run into him... nah, he'll insist I have to give him my name and address.
Recently, I was thinking about what I'd do if I retire early. I pretty much settled on going and getting a PhD in chemistry.
Why?
I always enjoyed chemistry and research. I would be doing it because I find it interesting, not for the multitude of reasons for my career choices so far - money, geography, future potential growth.
I have heard that getting a PhD can be so political and soul destroying that only those that really need or want it or have no other better options make it through. Not sure how universal that is though.
From the PhDs I know, yes, it's true. Grad school can be brutal, but there are a few ways around that:
1. Most of the "soul destroying" aspect of graduate school is because you're at your PIs mercy when it comes to landing a post-doc or industry position. Without a good reference from your PI, you're truly screwed. If I were to do a PhD in retirement, I don't need any of that. Worse comes to worse, I can just leave.
2. I would also find a PI who was later on in years (professor emeritus)? They've been there, done that, have a steady flow of grant money and nothing to prove. I worked with a prof like this in school and he came into the lab purely out of enjoyment of science. Screw the grind.
I did my PhD in the French Riviera. Some people were maxing out the extensions on their funding not because they couldn't defend on schedule, but they simply enjoyed their current work. But that might speak more to the misery of postdoc, than to the joy of PhD?
I remember doctoral studies very fondly. But finished on time and moved to the industry, because once you graduate, the academic job market is outright depressing.
A Tandy Corporation. They almost went under and then they were bought out by a leather crafts business. We used to joke around about Radio Shaft but my Trash 80 was the most hacked up PoS ever ! Great memories. And good on him for living his dream.
This is very inspirational. I'm applying to emergency medicine residency this year and love to see stories about how much people enjoy it. I'm curious what skills cross over from CEO to EM physician. Leadership and teamwork for sure.
I did EM for 6 months and hated it. This is because it just doesn't suit my personality.
To be good at EM you need to be:
- Comfortable with being a kinda bad at everything and great at nothing
- Comfortable with large amounts of uncertainty and risk and having to make decisions anyway
- Being abused by drunk/mentally ill patients constantly
- Being patronized by medical colleagues in other specialties
I hated EM as a student and for my first couple of rotations. I was streaming for surgery and couldn’t understand why Thr emergency department kept making such stupid admissions for us.
By the time I’d seen a couple thousand patients in the ED, I was much more comfortable and now intend to complete training there (also, I can do it part time given my other commitments). I’d prefer to be ok at most things (ie retain my general medical knowledge) and good at critical care but that’s more because I work so infrequently now, and have found that I value being a generalist... abuse of ED docs decisions be damned!
Thanks for sharing your experience! As a medical student, it is pretty difficult to get a decent feel for each specialty (as you know). I'm glad you were able to switch into something that fit you better. Have you ever considered anesthesia critical care? It seemed interesting from the little time I experienced it.
Well, RS certainly prepared him for how to deal with the patient dying.
I'm sure he tried to save my beloved RS, too.
I remember reading a Rolling Stone article years ago about neurosurgery residents (7 years) where one of the guys lost something like his first 17 patients on the table (because they're all cases like anyeurisms). He stuck with it and, one night, placed the clamp in a pool of blood to within a mm of perfection to close the bleed. Their training was: learn a procedure, do a procedure.
I am grateful that people like yourselves undergo the arduous process to become an MD.
I think the most fascinating thing, to me, is that transitioning from CEO of RadioShack to med student in your 40s means you _must_ have a humble, down to Earth ego.
I met tons of rich kids doing residency in their mid 20s with massive egos and zero humility. I doubt a millionaire former CEO doing it as a hobby requires any humility.
you doubt that opting into a situation where your wealth is completely irrelevant when it comes to saving lives (and, before that, passing medical exams) requires any humility?
Not exactly similar the top scientists of the EU, Mr Ferrari recently resigned, because he tried to push for a Manhattan Project like scientific project to find cure/vaccine for the virus, whereas EU wanted a bottom up approach of funding specific projects that come up organically..
Anyways Mr.Ferrari is a medical doctor, but it appears he was a Mechanical Engineer. Then at age 43 after his wife died of disease, he went back to university joined medical school and became a respected medical scholar and tried to find treatments for what affected his wife..
And later was selected to be the top EU scientist on the basis of his medical credentials.
