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Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

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Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#71

Post by ses1984 »

modsWrk4Appl wrote: post #57
SkyPuncher wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is a resident. The salaries look nice when they're windowed to a single year. Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech - especially when you consider the hours and stress. * 4 years of med school - $0 income - $40k+ of tuition * 3+ years of residency, minimum (4+ for most fields, even more for surgery) - $60k/year ------ If my wife had gone straight into tech, we'd have been better off f…

160k of tuition. 80k x 4 = 320k lost wages. 30k x 3 Delta wages. 500k in costs before your first year of big earnings. You said 30 years. I'm counting 2. Disingenuous.

If you are smart enough and tough enough to go through med school and become a doctor you can easily earn $300k-$500k per year in tech, with much less stress.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#72

Post by d3ad1ysp0rk »

stronglikedan wrote: post #64
danans wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's amazing! Agreed. Now imagine being a similarly aged retail service worker, or agricultural laborer, and doing the same. Even more amazing, if rare. The point is: both the drive and capital are needed. This person clearly had both at their disposal.

Sufficient drive begets the requisite capital, but that's even more rare, and arguably more amazing.

"Sufficient" meaning "Extraordinary"? The data doesn't really show that being hard working correlates with creation of wealth. In addition, it seems wealth plays a larger role in medical school acceptance than one might expect/hope for.

"The AAMC explains that the percentage of medical students from families in the highest quintile of household income has not dropped below 48 percent since 1987—half of students come from the richest 20 percent of the population—while the percentage of students from the lowest quintile has never risen above 5.5 percent [9]"

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/sites/journalofethics.a...

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#73

Post by K0SM0S »

danans wrote: post #58
whoisjuan wrote: post #6

Holy Shit! Imagine being the CEO of a RadioShack, then saying "I want to become a Doctor" and actually doing it. That's amazing! Love this story.

> That's amazing! Agreed. Now imagine being a similarly aged retail service worker, or agricultural laborer, and doing the same. Even more amazing, if rare. The point is: both the drive and capital are needed. This person clearly had both at their disposal.

I reckon that in France, you can become a doctor without capital— although studies are long and absolutely not designed to help the student work a job part time, so there's an underlying social factor at play; gov help doesn't target 18-25s for some reason (most benefits start at 25).

It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than having to spend mid-five figures. That the student learns law, medicine, math, physics, biology or any other university discipline doesn't cost more or less to the family.

The benefit for the country however is massive. The "cost" of training a doctor is repaid infinitely by the benefits of medicine itself (and great tax contributions!) during their whole career (30+ years).

I wish it were like that everywhere...

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#74

Post by owl57 »

d3ad1ysp0rk wrote: post #72
stronglikedan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficient drive begets the requisite capital, but that's even more rare, and arguably more amazing.

"Sufficient" meaning "Extraordinary"? The data doesn't really show that being hard working correlates with creation of wealth. In addition, it seems wealth plays a larger role in medical school acceptance than one might expect/hope for. "The AAMC explains that the percentage of medical students from families in the highest quintile of household income has not dropped below 48 percent since 1987—half of students come…

Correlation or causation?

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#75

Post by jtsiskin »

mmmBacon wrote: post #25

His personal website is here. Sounds like we was about 48y.o when he started down the path of becoming a doctor. https://drbrianlevy.com/

He leans pretty authright. I don't think he would be very popular among most people here

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#76

Post by sharkweek »

mc32 wrote: post #24

One of my all-time favorite satirical articles from the onion: https://www.theonion.com/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-how-radios... I wish either one of its ex-ceos was like that in real life. But an ER doctor is pretty cool as well.

Ha, that's also one of my favorite Onion articles (besides the one that says Toyota issuing a recall on all 1993 Camrys because it's really time for the owner to get a new car).

Another great piece of RadioShack literature is Jon Bois' recap of working there for years. It's long but worth a read if you have 20 minutes.

https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulog...

I think if someone asked me to sort of define the 2000s, outside of some obvious life events, this article does a pretty damn good job of painting a picture of where we were.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#77

Post by Judgmentality »

K0SM0S wrote: post #73
danans wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's amazing! Agreed. Now imagine being a similarly aged retail service worker, or agricultural laborer, and doing the same. Even more amazing, if rare. The point is: both the drive and capital are needed. This person clearly had both at their disposal.

I reckon that in France, you can become a doctor without capital— although studies are long and absolutely not designed to help the student work a job part time, so there's an underlying social factor at play; gov help doesn't target 18-25s for some reason (most benefits start at 25). It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than having to spend mid-five figures. That the student learns law, medicine, math, physic…

> It's not perfect, but it's certainly better than having to spend mid-five figures.

It costs a lot more than that to become a doctor in the US. Typical student loan debt for doctors is well into 6 digits.

https://www.bestmedicaldegrees.com/is-medical-school-worth-i...

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#78

Post by SkyPuncher »

modsWrk4Appl wrote: post #57
SkyPuncher wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is a resident. The salaries look nice when they're windowed to a single year. Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech - especially when you consider the hours and stress. * 4 years of med school - $0 income - $40k+ of tuition * 3+ years of residency, minimum (4+ for most fields, even more for surgery) - $60k/year ------ If my wife had gone straight into tech, we'd have been better off f…

160k of tuition. 80k x 4 = 320k lost wages. 30k x 3 Delta wages. 500k in costs before your first year of big earnings. You said 30 years. I'm counting 2. Disingenuous.

> 160k of tuition.

Missing interest - unless you really want to fuck yourself in the short term. 160k of tuition costs more like $300k with the standard payment play. Good luck if you have undergrad debt. Could easily add $500k more to your debt load.

> 80k x 4 = 320k lost wages.

Try a number closer to $400k. Also a good portion of MD's take a gap year for research either during med school or before residency. Potentially adds a year.

> 30k x 3 Delta wages.

3 years is for family medicine, most other specialities are 4 years - so add a year. Surgery is more like 8 years.

This wage delta is more on the order of $80k to $100k+ per year. I have friends who are closer to $150k+ per year wage gap compared to their MD spouses.

For my wife and I this number will be $400k.

$300k + $400k + $400k = $1.1m+ difference.

> You said 30 years. I'm counting 2.

You're counting two because you're only looking at salary and not the salary difference. I'm counting 15 at minimum on a pure salary income.

My wife is also working 80/hours week. I'm working 40. It will take into our 50's before my wife makes more on a per hour basis than I do. If I worked 80 hours per week, my wife would never catch up.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#79

Post by lrem »

jjeaff wrote: post #35
refurb wrote: post #14

Recently, I was thinking about what I'd do if I retire early. I pretty much settled on going and getting a PhD in chemistry. Why? I always enjoyed chemistry and research. I would be doing it because I find it interesting, not for the multitude of reasons for my career choices so far - money, geography, future potential growth.

I have heard that getting a PhD can be so political and soul destroying that only those that really need or want it or have no other better options make it through. Not sure how universal that is though.

I did my PhD in the French Riviera. Some people were maxing out the extensions on their funding not because they couldn't defend on schedule, but they simply enjoyed their current work. But that might speak more to the misery of postdoc, than to the joy of PhD?

I remember doctoral studies very fondly. But finished on time and moved to the industry, because once you graduate, the academic job market is outright depressing.

Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

#80

Post by read_if_gay_ »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #12
aggie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are tech companies that only think they're doing good. But there are plenty that are doing good, and they would love your help. By all means pursue things elsewhere, but not because you think there are no opportunities in tech.

The opportunities in tech do not provide enough leverage for meaningful progress IMHO. Personally, I believe I can do far more good writing and pushing public policy than any amount of code. That is "operating at scale".

Code is the only thing in this world that is instantly replicable billions of times into the hands of close to every human being alive.

I doubt anything at all comes close in leverage. Maybe having mountains of money or being POTUS.

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