[haldujai]

I agree, I left a FAANG and startup to pursue medicine (not that finances were my motivation) and my co-founder who went back to a FAANG is earning more than most physicians now.

I’m far removed from this work environment now but at 10 years of SWE in a FAANG one seems to be making ~$350k-400k in total compensation? Not sure how many make it to L6 or higher, I defer to other commenters here.

If you consider the competitiveness of high earning jobs (especially in desirable markets, probably the top 20% of candidates), the opportunity cost during a decade of training I would imagine a similar %ile candidate in CS would be making more in major cities.

With that said physician income is relatively similar in metro vs cheaper COL areas so if you wanted to work in non-tech cities or smaller metros specialty physicians would probably make more.

With that said, with the hours and work intensity I put in now I could probably do 2 FTE SWE jobs (at least comparing to what it was like 10+ years ago).

[VirusNewbie]

Most people cannot last 10 years in FAANG. It’s up or out.

[MichaelZuo]

It's a pretty reasonable expectation for the 95th percentile. IDK how that translates to surgeons, maybe 70th-80th percentile?

[haldujai]

Hard to compare, the "high-income" specialties are either brutally intense (e.g. neurosurgery, cardiac surgery, vascular surgery), competitive (plastics, derm, radiology) or both (ortho).

The competitive ones are variable with ~50-80% match rates for US MD graduates. Generally hard to get employed in desirable markets (especially NYC, LA, SF, Boston) unless you trained around there so the "desirable" programs are harder to match to but numbers aren't released. Some residency programs are toxic dumpster fires.

Attrition is hard to gauge because once you're in you're kinda stuck due to loans, sunken cost etc. Completely made-up but I would consider any of the intense specialties to represent at least the top 10%ile of physicians for a combination of aptitude and work-ethic/masochism.

[djmips]

But is that high paid era over?

[haldujai]

Could be. Could also happen in medicine (many think the golden era for compensation is nearing its end)

A decade ago nephrologists in a dialysis unit were making high 6 figures until private-equity moved in and now they make 1-200k.