What are the odds that this happens over the next decade? I'm only asking because I'm not sure where those engineers are going to come from unless we fix immigration laws.
For the past quarter-century, the American Medical Association and other industry groups have predicted a glut of doctors and worked to limit the number of new physicians. [1]
The problem is that the supply for doctors is artificially constrained leading to better salaries for them. If anything let's have more doctors so that the salaries are in parity with engineers.
All due respect, you could've chosen a better source for your bit of history than an article that uses a book by the name "The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy" as its only source.
When taking into consideration how much time an engineer has to spend educating himself and the salary he gets, it would take a while to match that from a doctor's perspective. For example, 4 yrs of undergrad and a starting job at Google can see you making close to over $100K in 3-4 years. As a medical student you have 4 yrs of undergrad and 4 yrs of medical school (that can be a tremendous amount of loans). Then throw in anywhere from 3-7 years of residency making $40K. Depending on the specialty you choose and how hard you wish to work the median salary can range from $120K to $450K.
They may not be equal, but I know developers pulling in $200K that are just turning 30. Not to mention their lifestyle is a lot less stressful.
I imagine that not a lot of people know what you can make as an engineer and too many people still don't give engineers the credit they deserve.
Yup, plus don't forget that the risk posed by having bad engineers isn't nearly the same as bad doctors. So to the extent that the control on doctors results in fewer bad ones, I am ok with it.
With engineers you can have one making 50K and another pulling 200K as you mentioned...despite similar degrees. I feel there is less variance in doctor pay at least partially because there is less variance in doctor quality.
> Yup, plus don't forget that the risk posed by having bad engineers isn't nearly the same as bad doctors.
I'm not sure that this is totally true. I don't want to drive on a bridge designed by an incompetent engineer any more than I want to take drugs prescribed by an incompetent doctor.
