I think its similar worldwide. Like I said my brother quit. Its also true that IT people are ridiculously overpaid. Both problems will inevitably revert to the mean.
Hey, there is a reason you can use Internet and this is us :)
It is not that IT is overpaid, it is that doctors are underpaid - at least in France.
We are the world champions of strikes and yet, somehow, doctors rarely go on strike. I do not know why.
They also know where they are going, it is not like they discover the world of medicine after 8 or 10 years.
I am happy that they are people who want to help others, but they also need to eat, sleep and party. Nobody will give them that if they do not protest.
If you're talking about the situation here in France, it's a bit different regarding money.
Doctors are still paid more than most people in IT.
Given the IT money in the US, I'm not sure they have the same situation if we look at the hourly rate.
Regarding doctors strikes, I asked the question to multiple ones and the few explanations I got are :
- they are deeply regulated and organized, they rely more on acting behind the scenes (lobbying) than going public in the streets
- they still have a comfortable situation that they chose ; unlike blue-collar workers who can barely afford food/housing and have to take what job and salary is offered to them ; a GP can move to a private hospital if they want more money and less hours
- even though they are organized, they have much more individualistic views of their job than labor workers ; after all they mostly are their own company
I will have to look up actual numbers, but with 30 patients a day this is 25€x30x5x4=15000 a month pre everything. You take out taxes, costs, everything they need to pay in full and I guess the salary will not be very different from IT.
EDIT: I just looked up some numbers and you are right, MDs get about 5000€ net pour month in average, which is higher than IT
> We are the world champions of strikes and yet, somehow, doctors rarely go on strike. I do not know why.
When talking about public healthcare, strikes mean little. State won't care unless the strike is massive enough to attract media attention. Hospitals can't close down, a "safe" minimum of workers must care for patients so not a big problem for the state generally.
Except if that safe minimum is on strike as well. It takes a coordinated effort, sure, but we have role models such as the train conductors or other champions of strikes
Not everywhere though. The life of a doctor is much better in Costa Rica, even in public institutions. The extra time is paid. And the syndicates are strong (which has worked well)
The doctors in Nicaragua, the neighboring country, is as described in your comment, except the economy of the whole country is in shambles, and they also have to "voluntarily" participate in "government" political activities. Oh, and since the country is poor there are no immigrants waiting in line to fulfill those positions.
Wouldn't this partly be a sign of markets deciding what wait time is worth it? For non-emergency surgery, like cataracts or knee replaces cited in the data, people can live with the conditions. It looks like wait times are consistent, meaning the backup isn't growing steadily over time. I'm pretty sure that would mean different populations just have a different threshold for how long they're willing to wait. If it was a consistent imbalance between the number of surgeries needed and the medical capacity I would expect to see wait times grow over time.
> Its also true that IT people are ridiculously overpaid
Hard disagree here. I don't feel I need to state the reasons. If much of a business relies upon technology that the IT people ensure is up and running for the non-IT folk, I would say that is not overpaid.
This is such a shallow opinion with no forethought into the domino effect. I won't try to make a commentary on doctors, because I am not a doctor and don't pretend to say that "doctors are ridiculously overpaid" because I know it would be a wasteful opinion that does nothing for the conversation.
Absolutely not. Not all IT jobs & Doctor jobs are created equal. Entry-level roles might not warrant super high salaries in either case. Both IT and Doctor fields have a spectrum of jobs with varying pay scales depending on complexity and criticality.
