[pc86]

Look at the salary change between Principal and Distinguished Engineer, it's virtually non-existent. Most projects, even at the FANG level, do not require 30 years of incredibly specific technical experience. There just isn't an incentive to pay these folks a lot more, and this has a secondary effect of pushing them into things that can (management), or retiring. Realistically, if you've made $500k+ total comp for the better part of a decade, you can retire.

I used to work for a healthcare company and we often, if not routinely, had radiologists (avg. comp $600-700k plus bonuses, starting after residency so around age 30 or so) retire between 40-45. Our manager jokes that they worked 8 years to pay off med school and 8 years to fund their retirement, then they were done.

[lonelappde]

Is radiology still so profitable now that it is so easy to outsource?

[pc86]

Well I didn't discuss profitability at all, only how much the average individual radiologist makes in salary (at the one company I worked at). What do you mean by outsource?

If you mean to other people/companies, yes. Hospitals are much more inclined to outsource to private radiology practices precisely because they're so expensive ($500k cash comp plus bonus seems the average for a couple years post-residency). Smaller and even mid-size hospitals can't keep a radiologist busy all the time, especially off-peak hours, so even with a retail markup it ends up being cheaper to outsource.

If you mean to AI/ML, those applications are incredibly specific, usually hit-or-miss depending on the model, and I'm not aware of any that are actually approved for clinical applications prior to a physician reading the study anyway (they may exist I'm just not aware of them).