[_m8fo]

Unfortunately, in a classist society no one wants to do what they perceive to be "grunt work". The good news is that there's a natural equilibrium that will be met as the waves of graduates see their ROI decrease, save for those who attend a handful of elite universities.

[wufufufu]

I was just thinking about this. Even as an engineer (which I consider to be a trade job where it helps if you go to college), my social status won't ever approach that of a seasoned doctor, professor, and maybe lawyer. Even if I get up to L7, it's just not the same as perceived by society.

[lotsofpulp]

If engineers started making the same amount of money as doctors, then it would.

[wufufufu]

That's not true. Doctors have more process to go through to become legitimate (college, med school are both strictly required), where as you can become a SWE without those. You can be a successful SWE with only a high school diploma.

The occupation of a doctor is a position of power. You always have people working under you -- nurses, students, medical staff. The fundamental interaction between patient and doctor has a power imbalance. The patient comes to the doctor for help and listens to the doctor's authority in the subject.

It's also a more social position than SWE. You talk to people as part of your job. I can get by never talking to anyone as a SWE. It's easier to accumulate a balanced social group as a doctor.

[triviatise]

not entirely true. Socializing medicine has reduced their power significantly. Even in the mid 90s my father was friends with many doctors who wished they could switch into computer science. My GP just quit medicine because she was basically a grunt for the health system, the last straw was when they started to adjust her hours like a retail employee.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Tech doesnt have nearly the regulation, the slow pace of innovation, and lack of mobility that medicine has. Professors are the worst and are not well paid at all, unless they are able to do consulting on the side.

I personally have owned my own company for around 18 years. I dont care about status, but I want to generate enough $$ to not have to worry about money.

The money I make is about the same as my friends that are at top tier jobs in the bay area. Though my income fluctuates between 300-600k and theirs tends to be more steady.

My wife doesnt work and so many of my friends with two more modest tech incomes make about the same as I do.

[wufufufu]

Good points and informative response. You're definitely an outlier, though.

> Professors are the worst and are not well paid at all

Not from the professors I know (engineering fields). That information is also public in many cases. They're not making your 300k-600k, but it's extremely stable, a position of power, prestigious because of the requirements, and it gets more prestigious with time.

I suspect with software engineering there is age discrimination against older people. Older doctors are wise and more experienced, older engineers are outdated and retiring soon?

[lotsofpulp]

It's the exclusivity (mostly, in my opinion) that bestows the status. A retail store or hotel manager or any type of manager are similar positions of power, but obviously based on their lack of pay, it's not exclusive.

There is a bit of the life saving aspect of it, but people in my experience hold successful business owners, prominent lawyers, hedge fund managers and traders in similar regard. People that make more money useful and know other people who also make more money are or can be useful to you, hence the status. I'm sure some engineers working at Google/Facebook/Apple/etc have similar statuses.

[wufufufu]

Comparing these occupations has been entertaining.

A truly successful business owner is the best IMO -- it's the only one that isn't capped in the amount of money you can earn, but society is jaded by people who have "Entrepreneur" as their occupation on LinkedIn and just occasionally do photography or whatever.

I would say "EM at Google" is better than a GP, but orthopedic surgeon is better than "EM at Google".

[cimmanom]

Engineers do make as much money as GPs. Just not as much as prominent specialists and surgeons (unless the engineers themselves are experts in a high end specialty). Plus engineers don't have to take on hundreds of thousands in education debt or sacrifice the first 10 years out of college to unpaid or low-paid training.

[lotsofpulp]

The distribution of an engineers income is quite wide, whereas almost all doctors are $200k+, with (if I extrapolate from my network) many in the $400k+ range. The only people I know making that much who don't have their own businesses are lawyers/finance/programmers in the big cities. Also, doctors have historically made a lot of money, while computer engineers have only recently started making that kind of money.

[notyourday]

Very few doctors make that kind of money until they are in their late forties.

Also, do remember that the doctors that do make that kind of money, have student loan payments on $250k-$500k loans

[lotsofpulp]

Maybe I'm biased towards doctors in bigger/richer cities, but when I'm looking for investors, my first stop is doctors. Even the loans of a few hundred thousand are no problem for them to slay, especially since many get married to other similar high earners.

I don't know the most reliable sites for stating pay for doctors, but in my experience these numbers are accurate:

https://careertrend.com/starting-salary-doctors-right-out-re...

http://time.com/4408807/surgeon-salary-how-much-doctors-make...

[davidsawyer]

Doctor pay doesn't tend to grow all that much over the course of one's career. Their specialty is the #1 determining factor of pay, hands down.

https://blog.doximity.com/articles/doximity-2018-physician-c...

[ryandrake]

Reading HN comments, you’d think that all software engineers make 200k+ (and drive brand new Teslas and have supermodel spouses). Even in the Bay Area, median salaries are in reality in the $120k range, plus equity that can vary from $0 to who knows. $400k is for outlier employees of outlier companies. The vast majority of us are not making even close to what doctors are pulling down.

[chrisbennet]

Yeah, but we still get to have the super model wives right???

[Fomite]

Engineers don't have med school debt, which is a huge factor in MD pay (the number of doctors I know who think about financial decisions in terms of loan payments is staggering).

Also, one of the other cited professions, professors, are paid considerably less than that.

[jnwatson]

They do and can. According to Payscale, US GPs make an average of $170,955. Lots of engineers make that.

[asdsa5325]

But engineers that make 170+ are above average, not average.

[saint_fiasco]

I think doctors work harder, though. Do they earn more per hour or just per year?

[lotsofpulp]

Across the whole profession, they definitely earn more per hour. I'm sure some superstar engineers or AI people blow them out of the water with equity and whatnot, but you can't find a more consistently high paying field.

My dental surgeon was recently paid $650 to remove a wisdom tooth, which took him and 1 nurse a total of 5 minutes. Even if you assume 75% of that is overhead, that is still $170 per hour and he immediately went on to see other patients.

[saint_fiasco]

What about all the training they need? Maybe they make more per hour, and more per year, but also work fewer years because they have to study, or work for cheap, for a long time before they reach their top earning potential.

I googled for life time earnings by profession and found this document by the US census bureau that makes it seem like they earn similarly (and engineers make a bit more), but they mix nurses and technicians together with doctors and surgeons.

https://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acsbr11-04.pdf

[notyourday]

Are you making > 250k/year? If so you have just outscored most of lawyers and doctors.

You are still below professors if you measure success by the number of coeds that want to sleep with you regardless of how you look like but you can always find solace in being able to afford to spend $200 on dinner.

[wufufufu]

You can make 250k/year until your vesting period ends lol

[asdsa5325]

It's not classism, people don't want to do grunt work because it's tiring...

[no_wizard]

In my experience, and please remember, this is in my experience: I have straddled both sides of this fence through my life. My parents where "laborers" (my dad build boats & my mother was a cook at a nursing home). I also was lucky enough that my father was also somewhat intellectual and read a lot (not something I have found, again in my experience to be as common among the groups of people I was exposed to that you would typically associate with trades & manufacturing/construction laborers) so between that and being in the Army (which I also observed as one of the best upward mobility machines in terms of class, pay, benefits and achievement, ironically) he knew lots of people who were Engineers, Architects, Business owners etc. as well

From all that experience, as well as my own personal experience having friends from multiple types of backgrounds, I have observed the follow again, my own experience and opinions:

This is what I found to be true: - People who do trade jobs are respected by most (if not all) my quote unquote 'intellectual' or 'upper class' friends (those smart enough to value their labor, myself included) Even my friends or the friends of my parents growing up who where multimillionaires (including one family who had 2 state governors in it). I know this isn't universal, just a general observation. - They have always tended to favor policies (politically speaking) & outlooks that would actually benefit this group of folks the most - There isn't any classicism bias in as so far as I could tell among anyone I know who would be defined as well educated, wealthy, upper class etc.

However, I see this stigma come up a lot, and I have to wonder, is it those looking down or those looking above who perpetuate it? I say that because: - Being around a lot of families that had roots in working trades, I found they often would have resent against those who they considered 'upper class', without much or any evidence as to why this opinion has formed. I always found this fascinating, because its typically their target market (with exceptions of course). - Most trades people I knew typically didn't seem to value education as much (i know its a stereotype, but it did play out in my experience) - Many, many MANY (with the exception of the ever dwindling Unionized tradesmen) favored economic/political policies and had outlooks that would be long term damaging to them (One of the biggest protesters where I grew up of universal health care? Ironically, those who aren't poor enough for govt assistance but aren't well off enough to pay full flight for their medical care (even after insurance). E.g. Those who would benefit the most!) - And often, these are the folks who look down on their own jobs the most.

Now, all of these have caveats, exceptions, edge cases, what have you. I knew those who worked trades that did value education, had lots of logical & grounded philosophical beliefs, etc etc etc and I grew up around people who had carpentry businesses who were multimillionaires before they were 40. So its not hard and fast how this plays out.

I know i'm rambling a bit here, but I feel like this stigma may not be caused by those looking down, but perhaps, those looking up.

[seem_2211]

My dad was an auto mechanic (before he bought a small business), my mom hasn't worked since I was born, except for their business. Their friend group going back 25+ years were all pretty similar. All of their friends are now small business owners / self employed. And actually to date, I think they've been largely successful (I can't think of anyone who's gone bankrupt or had to close their business down involuntarily).

A few things I've observed: • My parents aren't intellectual, but they aren't stupid. They read a fair bit. My dad can be pretty dismissive towards academics, but is very pro-learning. • They're pretty conservative - both socially, but more importantly, financially. This seems to be pretty entrenched in their group.

This thread is pretty instructive, in that you've got highly paid techies saying "$60k isn't much money vs what I can make." I think the stereotype in tradespeople not being seen from a position of high status is that there's a very real ceiling on how much you can make (in the same way that there is working for the government).

But there's also got to be something said for the fact that the people making the big jumps in life (at least from a perception point of view) have all gone to college. My parents might have started their careers blue collar - and my Grandparents were all blue collar throughout their careers, but every single grandchild on both sides of the family to date, has gone or is studying at University.

[gnarcoregrizz]

I don't really get the stigma either. Maybe it comes more from women? I know a few who have outright stated they won't date someone that didn't go to college.

Meanwhile, I know some tradespeople that are 1. smarter than most people I went to college with. 2. make more money than most people I went to college with. 3. harder working and arguably more valuable to society than most people who I went to college with.