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Medicine or Wall Street?
- Thread starter dazed101
- Start date
Quote from Chicago_CTA:
You're considering entering medicine for absolutely the WRONG reasons, and you won't make it through.
If you had medicine in your heart you wouldn't be on this forum. Study econ, learn the value of cash flow in your personal finances, and study price action for 10,000 hours with no indicators. Good luck.
Also, lose the cocky attitude. Nobody on the street wants to hire a dick.
Very nice response, I hope the OP takes it to heart. If so, he can profit by it.
Quote from heech:
One thing that's really scary about medicine... if you piss off the wrong people in residency, they can destroy you. They can end your career, and essentially end your life. Residency directors + attendings have the complete, total authority to permanently make you unemployable as a physician, while you still have your $250k in debt to deal with.
As far as medical innovation/advancements... I used to (and still dabble) work as an angel investor. I've invested in quite a few medical technology companies. It's a long, long painful process. Brilliant technologies often shrivel up and die because you can't get billions in capital, over many years, to get it through the regulatory process. And even then, it can still fail because 60 year old physicians are too stubborn (and rich) to change the way they work. (Look at the slow uptake on EMR, for example.)
Everything, abosolutely everythig except two things you have written, applies to some other fields as well: Phd. molecular biology, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, chemical physics, theoretical mathematics, and perhaps a few other fields.
The two things that don't apply are: 1) if you are working on a Ph.D. in the hard sciences or theoretical mathematics, you don't pay to go to school, you get paid; 2) when you graduate, if you do, and after you do a post-doc for several years, you make less money. You work just as hard, if not harder, than a physician, and you have to use far more brain power, but you get paid less. But the work is fascinating and you don't have to poke a light pipe up anyone's rear end..
There is a reason these are called the "hard sciences"-- not to include theoretical math, which is the most intellectually challenging of all, but not a science.
Medicine, as it is routinely practiced, is mostly a trade. The reason physicians can make so much money in this trade is two-fold: 1) medicine in the U.S. is a cartel where access is strictly controlled, as is the production of new M.D.'s, and 2) you are offering a service that can't be refused.
These latter two things are not true of the "hard sciences".
Quote from dazed101:
I'm graduating high school soon, and I'll attend a top university next year in America. It has a top 3 business school and a great econ department, it's very strong overall.
My problem is should I pursue medicine or try to get a job on wall street as a trader?
I know I can become a doctor and if I specialize in the right field I'll be making around $500,000 by the time I'm 32ish with potential to earn more later on.
However, I realize that good wall street traders can earn millions in their twenties! Money is not everything but the lure of millions is too great.
I don't know what to do career-wise (any suggestions?) I'm only asking this because the two fields are so different and I'll have to do different things if I'm to prepare myself.
Ok, so it's been over five years since your post. I haven't been through the whole thread. What did you do ?