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by chillacy
3360 days ago
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> ... suffered a significant concussion, a broken nose and lost two front teeth in the incident, and he will need to undergo reconstructive surgery, Demetrio said. I can't contemplate the amount of money I'd have to get to make me willing to violently lose my teeth. He's a doctor too, so he's probably already making enough money. |
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Why do you assume that?
I get the reason for the stereotype that doctors are well-remunerated, but, real talk, the compensation varies immensely, especially for nonspecialist solo/family practitioners. They bill what strikes the rest of us as a lot, but also face very high expenses, particularly as they relate to liaising with insurance and beating claims out of them, but also malpractice insurance and staffing. And in low-income areas where they're stuck with Medicaid claims, well, that's not a good living.
This generalisation makes as much sense as saying that software developers make good money. Yeah, Full Stack JavaScript Ninja RockStars at VC-funded Silicon Valley companies do. Elsewhere in the country, there are a lot of financial services sweatshops and ordinary small businesses. I know lots of rather talented software and systems people with salaries in the $30k-$50k range as they work for some middle-of-nowhere county government, ordinary third-tier midsize municipality, urban school district, or soft drink distributor or whatever, and those are just the pay scales. About the only thing you can say is that they tend to be better paid than the general population as a whole.
Doctors work the same way, within their own sliding scale. There are lots of small-town solo practices that hardly make any money and at best yield a very ordinary salary for the doctor. Not enough for business class.
Lawyers are another good example. The lawyers we see do corporate litigation and make more money than god. But in the real world, there are lots of burnt out, woefully overworked public defenders who are paid beans. There are lots of associates at small to midsize firms who must endure a hazing ritual of 80 hour weeks and slightly-better-than-paralegal pay for ten years before they can move up. There are lots of mind-numbing in-house counsel type jobs for surplus law school graduates; reviewing vendor contracts in the dimly lit warehouse office annex of a fast food chain doesn't pay much. I personally know a lawyer who tried for ten years to get by as a solo family and bankruptcy attorney, and in the end found it too hard to survive. He wasn't a bad lawyer, it was just a time/place/demographic/market situation. He became a bus driver; he loves the superior steady pay and benefits.
So, it all depends.