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by priam 3134 days ago
Software engineers aren't $200k+ in debt at 32 either.

If you are an average salaried software engineer, you can accumulate more wealth than a doctor if you invest at recommended rates. The break even point is somewhere around 60-65 years of age.

3 comments

Really, I'm curious care to share your calculations? What salaries are you using? What about cost of living?
A doctor can work in any city in the world, an engineers can work in less than 10 cities.
What a ludicrous statement. Pretty much any mid-size to large city has jobs for software engineers.
Not if you want to make $200k.
Maybe I should have said "guaranteed employment for life" instead of just work.

Irrelevant of the salary, most medium cities will only have a handful of tech roles available, at best. It's super hard to find and hold a job.

It's more difficult to gain admission to veterinarian school than medical school (in America).

Veterinarians pay about the same for their schooling (but they don't really have residencies) and vets make ~70k-80k/yr.

If we think of a job's salary as a function of the talents used by the job and the cost of admission to the job, it's unclear why doctors and vets should earn substantially different amounts of money.

But I agree that it's easier to accumulate wealth as a non-doctor than a doctor. Just treat the first couple years of your career like medical school and it shouldn't be too hard to crack 6 figures - if you live modestly outside a megaopolis, you can save 40k/yr and get a six figure headstart over a doctor.