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.
