IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Khane

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I started when I was 30 because I went back to school later in life

Edit: And I know my starting salary was good, in comparison to doctors it is chump change
They also spend far more time in school and incur much more student loan debt.
 

Vinen

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I started when I was 30 because I went back to school later in life

Edit: And I know my starting salary was good, in comparison to doctors it is chump change
Man, figured you were younger. Didn't realize you were older then me... (31)
 

Noodleface

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Me and another dude started at EMC in the same job and were probably the top two paid people in the entire senior class for all engineering disciplines. He just left for google and I'm sure he's making over $100k now in his 2nd year out of school.

Keep in mind we live in MA as well, real estate prices are absurd.

Vinen I am actually 31 now
 

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Trump's Staff
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CS degree generates more life-time revenue than medicine does, because the pay is high and the barrier is low(so they're earning during those 10yrs of training), that said, their pay scale cap is much much much lower. You work less years, but after some experience you end up capable of 3/4/5/600k salaries and more or less capacity to start a successful business than they do.

I'd normally not encourage "Sunk cost fallacy", but your situation is a prime case. You're already on the other end of the sunk cost about to potentially reap the career rewards, if you switched careers solely cause of money you would significantly reduce your lifetime earning potential compared to where you are right now.
This is not true, a doctor over a lifetime makes way more than a developer. An average developer salary will top a around 125k. The base of a doctor salary is 189k, and that is without specialization. Also a doctor can practice pretty much until he is dead, and the older he is, somehow the better people perceive his work to be. This is not true for engineering, nor cs, where people perception of your work, decline with age. CS is 4 years, medicine add up 4 more, plus 4 as a resident but you are getting paid 40-50k to be a resident, which is similar to the starting salary for a developer.

Over the course of 25 years a doctor will make way more than a developer will. The ceiling is just much higher. Also it is much easier for a doctor to open his own practice, than it is for a developer to become his own boss.
 

Pasteton

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Where are you pulling this 'base' from? Surveys and publicly provided information is highly inaccurate, and it's an extremely mobile target right now with the current healthcare reforms. There is no such thing as a 'base doctor salary'.
Having said that, your average Gen practitioner makes 150-200k. I'd accept an 'average' ( not base) gp salary of 189k a reasonable. There are quite a few that make less (academics in some places make under 100k) , some make more. I personally knew of a nuclear medicine attending that made 95k at a university on the east coast.
 

Asshat wormie

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Getting back on topic. I decided to learn Ruby over the summer and at the same time am working on a c++ library for my school. The more i write ruby, the more i despise c++. :/ Sad times. Someone needs to come up with a language thats not dog shit slow and at the same time is pleasant and "artistic".
 

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Trump's Staff
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Where are you pulling this 'base' from? Surveys and publicly provided information is highly inaccurate, and it's an extremely mobile target right now with the current healthcare reforms. There is no such thing as a 'base doctor salary'.
Having said that, your average Gen practitioner makes 150-200k. I'd accept an 'average' ( not base) gp salary of 189k a reasonable. There are quite a few that make less (academics in some places make under 100k) , some make more. I personally knew of a nuclear medicine attending that made 95k at a university on the east coast.
Academics salary don't count. That is a teacher salary, and not someone practicing on the field.

Then lets assume for the sake of argument that the 190k is the average, when compared that to the developer average of 100k, which btw is correct. You still make almost double, on average. How is it mathematically more feasible to be in CS than on medicine?
Assume 200k in loans at 5% interest, that means that 10k are added in interest every year. You can easily pay that off in 2-3 years, so after that you recuperate way faster.
 

Cad

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I started work in 1997 making $38k per year. By 2002 when I quit my salary job to work as a consultant, I was making like $75k. This was while KILLING IT at my job. I was far and away the most successful developer in my whole area. We did Agile at one point and had the whole scrum board where people took assignments off the board and put them on the other side as they are finished. Manager came by like 3 weeks into it and asked me to stop putting my name on my assignments (which was part of the thing, it was supposed to be a competition) because it was discouraging the other developers from making efforts. And they were only paying me $75k. So I had an opportunity to quit and go to work as an independent, so I took it. Walked on to some accenture projects making 65/hr, and those guys were mostly on travel so if I just hung out at the office I could bill 60-70hrs/wk. By 2005 or so I had my rate up to $105/hr and I was doing architect level work, about 1/2 from home, 1/2 on-site. It was great. Started and sold a few business intelligence products and used the money from that to go to law school.

Now the bay area is different because developers make more there and there's more opportunity there, but at the same time the tax rates are atrocious and the cost of living is stupid. You're just not going to make the 300k+ unless you are VP of something at a successful company. And there's 500 dumb shit coders making 75k for every one of those.
 

Pasteton

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I think average to average docs do make more than devs. There's just mountains less stress and earlier pay days in comp sci, and arguably better lifetime salary when you compound savings from a younger age- but of course this varies depending on location, spending habits etc. anyhow I wasn't trying to debate that - just wanted to clarify average as opposed to 'base', which sounded to me like it was meant to be some low number that most doctors make more than, when in fact it's an average.

Academia in medicine is rarely a 100% teaching role. Usually most are 80/20 or 70/30 with respect to clinical versus teaching/research duties. The occasional power researcher will end up completely nonclinical but its the exception.
People take the academic paycut because of a sense of pride of being at an institution, more job security , and good malpractice coverage and other benefits, and enjoy the perks of teaching and research. But on a day to day basis there is still a lot of clinical responsibility , their job doesn't actually differ *that* much from a physician out in practice , atleast in that respect
 

Pasteton

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I have no idea what average salaries are for coders in sf.
But I do know that there are tons of those corporate buses that take them from sf to Silicon Valley every day, just crammed full of em , they block my ass all the time. And they sure as shit aren't living in this city at 75k a year
 

Cad

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My neighbor doing a pathology fellowship at Baylor (this should tell you about how wealthy this fucker is, that he's my neighbor) made $105k last year. I know because he asked me to help him with his taxes because he's fucking dumb. His wife is a dermatologist. They live in a $3M house. He moonlighted 1 shift a week and made like $20k extra.

This is while "training". When he was a resident he made like $75k. "Training". Only intern pay is like 50k. Doctors "training" pay is higher than 1/2 the normal devs out there. Then when you finish, you've "earned" your 300k+ because you "trained for so long". Guess what dude, everyone else is working for your training wage or less, and get no payday at the end. Kindly take your buckets of money and stop crying.
 

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I think average to average docs do make more than devs. There's just mountains less stress and earlier pay days in comp sci, and arguably better lifetime salary when you compound savings from a younger age- but of course this varies depending on location, spending habits etc. anyhow I wasn't trying to debate that - just wanted to clarify average as opposed to 'base', which sounded to me like it was meant to be some low number that most doctors make more than, when in fact it's an average.

Academia in medicine is rarely a 100% teaching role. Usually most are 80/20 or 70/30 with respect to clinical versus teaching/research duties. The occasional power researcher will end up completely nonclinical but its the exception.
People take the academic paycut because of a sense of pride of being at an institution, more job security , and good malpractice coverage and other benefits, and enjoy the perks of teaching and research. But on a day to day basis there is still a lot of clinical responsibility , their job doesn't actually differ *that* much from a physician out in practice , atleast in that respect
Then i don't understand what your point is.

Mathematically is not better to be a developer than it is to be a doctor. I can, other can post their lifetime earnings and u can compare it to yours, but I'm sure you have already surpass them, and if u are not, you are going to. That is a mathematical reality. Does medicine has more stress than development? Of course it does. Do you wish you were a developer because the stress will be less, that is up to you to answer.
 

Pasteton

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My neighbor doing a pathology fellowship at Baylor (this should tell you about how wealthy this fucker is, that he's my neighbor) made $105k last year. I know because he asked me to help him with his taxes because he's fucking dumb. His wife is a dermatologist. They live in a $3M house. He moonlighted 1 shift a week and made like $20k extra.

This is while "training". When he was a resident he made like $75k. "Training". Only intern pay is like 50k. Doctors "training" pay is higher than 1/2 the normal devs out there. Then when you finish, you've "earned" your 300k+ because you "trained for so long". Guess what dude, everyone else is working for your training wage or less, and get no payday at the end. Kindly take your buckets of money and stop crying.
Your numbers are off. You seem to know a lot of exceptional scenarios. Residents don't make 75k. Fellows don't even make 75k. As a senior resident I made 55k, fellow 61k. You know fellows that make 105k and residents that make 75k. Go post that shit on medical forums anywhere if you don't believe me, they'll all tell you how off the charts that shit is. Doctors don't live in/can't afford 3m homes. Tired of your cockamamie bullshit. I could talk about the literally dozens of tech people I know who are in their 20s and worth millions of dollars. but I don't because I know that's not the normal. So stop spouting your shit like a 3m dollar home and a 105k fellowship is anywhere near standard for a physician
 

Pasteton

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Then i don't understand what your point is.

Mathematically is not better to be a developer than it is to be a doctor. I can, other can post their lifetime earnings and u can compare it to yours, but I'm sure you have already surpass them, and if u are not, you are going to. That is a mathematical reality. Does medicine has more stress than development? Of course it does. Do you wish you were a developer because the stress will be less, that is up to you to answer.
There was someone else who said devs make more than docs over their lifetime. I didn't say that. I said its closer than people realize because of the backlog docs start out with. I also think its conceivable it could happen but I didn't say it was the norm.
My only "point" with regards to anything I was replying to you about was the misleading comment about base pay and the realities of academic medicine.

Just saw - Celestian was the one that said comp sci makes more over their lifetime than physicians, not me.
 

Cad

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Your numbers are off. You seem to know a lot of exceptional scenarios. Residents don't make 75k. Fellows don't even make 75k. As a senior resident I made 55k, fellow 61k. You know fellows that make 105k and residents that make 75k. Go post that shit on medical forums anywhere if you don't believe me, they'll all tell you how off the charts that shit is. Doctors don't live in/can't afford 3m homes. Tired of your cockamamie bullshit. I could talk about the literally dozens of tech people I know who are in their 20s and worth millions of dollars. but I don't because I know that's not the normal. So stop spouting your shit like a 3m dollar home and a 105k fellowship is anywhere near standard for a physician
UCSF Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine | Education | Residency Programs | Salary Benefits

rrr_img_100545.png
 

Pasteton

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You keep pulling shit out like ucsf. First of all that housing allowance is a pittance for what rent costs in this city. Second of all it's ucsf all their residents get a fucking Mac laptop the first day for work. Take a look at that left column, that was my salary ,slightly less since it was a few years ago. And no housing allowance. I did get an educational stipend, which went towards required accrediation and testing fees that can cost thousands a year on average. There, that's your normal.
 

Cad

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You keep pulling shit out like ucsf. First of all that housing allowance is a pittance for what rent costs in this city. Second of all it's ucsf all their residents get a fucking Mac laptop the first day for work. Take a look at that left column, that was my salary ,slightly less since it was a few years ago. And no housing allowance. I did get an educational stipend, which went towards required accrediation and testing fees that can cost thousands a year on average. There, that's your normal.
Oh, so, you were wrong. Thanks.
 

Pasteton

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Maybe I need to simplify -
Left column - accurate for most residents throughout the country, for most specialties
Remaining columns - not the norm and about as useful as posting a 520k starting salary as a counterpoint to someone trying to speak about normal scenarios.

So I have a friend who is 25, he sold a company for 2mil and just got 6mil in funding for another idea he was working on. I am now going to use this as justification that coders get paid too much. Am I doing this right?
..
 

Cad

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Maybe I need to simplify -
Left column - accurate for most residents throughout the country, for most specialties
Remaining columns - not the norm and about as useful as posting a 520k starting salary as a counterpoint to someone trying to speak about normal scenarios.

So I have a friend who is 25, he sold a company for 2mil and just got 6mil in funding for another idea he was working on. I am now going to use this as justification that coders get paid too much. Am I doing this right?
..
Your intelligence in this thread is showing why you can't get over median salary for your specialty.