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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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:
I would not put much stock into those numbers - for example, they are not even remotely close to who makes the highest - those are going to be neurosurgeons who start at over $250k and within a few years make close to a million - those numbers however should not be used for anything meaningful as there are so few of them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
