[marcus_holmes]

yeah, it's not an entirely fair comparison.

But from my understanding of the health industry, the consultants are absolutely the top of the food chain despite their whinges about management. This is not true of even highly-paid consultant programmers (and highly-paid tech consultants are almost never allowed to waste their time actually programming).

[learc83]

>and highly-paid tech consultants are almost never allowed to waste their time actually programming

There are plenty of niche programming consultants that are highly paid to actually program--firmware reverse engineering, and cryptographic security specialists are 2 of them.

There was a whole thread a few years ago where tptacek argued that $400 an hour is reasonable for certain specialty programmers, which is more than all but the highest paid surgeons make.

[jamessb]

The thread you're referring to is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5769506

He gave 4 example categories: "expert developers with domain expertise in finance" also "cryptographic security specialists", "hardware reverse engineers", and "high-end SEO"

[marcus_holmes]

true, good point, but I still think (from my vast stock of unresearched and ill-informed opinions) that the combination of authority and respect is massively more common in surgeons than it is in programmers.

And if it isn't actually, then it certainly is in the public consciousness.