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.
I think the deciding factor is having the safety net of FU money.
Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
171–180 of 200 posts
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can corroborate. Schools care about GPA too much even in the face of work experience (most doctors on admission committees have never had another job..) + MCAT score. Median GPA is 5% of the grading in the US News research rankings and that matters a ton to the schools. Went from software to med school, now in my second year (4 since software). 3.67 GPA (bioinformatics)/ 3.55 BioChemMathPhysics GPA with 100th percent…
Why is there bias against software?
Probably jealously about people working at places like this getting paid more and more - https://c8.alamy.com/comp/W9509T/a-billiard-table-a-table-te...
Versus people working here having their per unit value of work cut by Medicare to 62% of what it was in 1998: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/02/17/opinion/sunday/17...
Have got to say though software/data skills have been super useful for research projects, which are the fun part of medical school vs the absolute grind of pounding facts in.
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people fail to become doctors and or lose their license for various reasons. So, it’s a huge gamble in the US that can easily cause massive financial issues.
What's interesting is that student pilots face those same issues now. To go from ab initio to an airline pilot role, the cost is in the area of $200,000 - $250,000 now and there's a lot of ways to end up not getting picked for an airline job. Entry salary is up from $18,000 to $40,000 or so now, but that's not much improvment considering the cost of training. Part of the issue is the 1,500 hour experience rule, which…
Yea, but that’s only half the story. Military pilots get training for free, which is vastly more and has massively suppressed airline pilot salaries. There are a few other approaches that can similarly reduce costs, but sticker shock is huge.
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#174When I was a kid, my dad sat next to a different RadioShack CEO on a plane. He mentioned that I was always in the store and Mr. Roberts gave him this, https://imgur.com/a/BolEA
That's very nice. What sort of use did you make of it?
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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...
It would cost even more trying to do it midlife. You have the cost of feeding/housing your family and other responsibilities. It's not an easy decision for anyone but the lucky wealthy.
The admission process is also very geared towards undergrads coming straight out of premed programs. I thought about going to medical school after finishing a biomedical PhD, where I had picked some relevant skills (large animal physiology) and worked on some translational stuff. We even had a semester of neuroanatomy classes with the med students.
However, when I talked to admissions staff, this counted for essentially nothing. My prerequisites were out of date—-I’d have to go take biology and physics (with lab!), even though I’d spent the last 6 years measuring the electrical activity of living brains in living animals. I’d need to volunteer in a hospital for....whatever reason. None of this would have been insurmountable but it would have added another year or two to the process, while making less than a grad student and pushing a real job even further into the future.
This is especially maddening since the NIH is particularly keen on training physician-scientists, but everything seems designed for physician->scientist and not the other way around even though we have a glut of biomedical researchers and not enough doctors!
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#176Holy 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.
A bit tangential, but this reminded me of Dexter Holland [0] the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Offspring. He went on to get a PhD in molecular biology (not an honorary one) and publish various papers about HIV. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Holland
There's also Brian Cox, who was in 90s pop band D:Ream and is now professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester.
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting because you know we are weeding out talent that comes from low socio economic backgrounds and who need cash flow to support their families. At end of the day, we shouldn't be weeding out our doctors to only be folks who don't need to support their families for the next 10 years.
There is a limit put in place on supply (seats at medical schools) already. Weeding out is part of that system already. The question is should cost be part of that.. we decided somewhat yes which is fair if you decide to limit supply in the first place.
The actual limit is residency slots. Every year there are many students who graduate from medical school but are unable to practice medicine because they can't get matched to a residency program.
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ouch. Worse than I thought. I suppose it's correlated to eventual revenue— doctors aren't nearly as rich in Europe, although they are clearly among the top earners. (what filoleg suggests in the other reply) There's an underlying premise, I think, that countries like France or Germany seek to minimize the cost of healthcare in general , because the bill is collectively paid— the bottom line is a direct cost on GDP, t…
Doctors in the UK are vastly underpaid compared to most other occupations with similar levels of intellectual rigor required
From what I’ve seen there’s a lot of occupations in the UK that are underpaid. Makes me wonder who is getting paid in the UK.
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#179Earlier 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…
> Career earnings, it's good but not that great compared to tech We are in a strange time when software engineer salaries can even be comparable to those of doctors. Rest assured that sooner or later tech workers will be middle-class schlubs like pretty much every other type of engineer.
I work remotely in the Midwest. I'm paid well, but I'm definitely not too far off from my physical engineering peers.
Re: Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s classism, and it’s reality. Correlation and causation are irrelevant.
Doctors kids become doctors and doctors are well paid. This is anecdotal, but my elementary school class was full of doctors kids and I can tell you that the doctor parents would almost disown their kid if they didn't get into medical school. Doctors seem to have a very strong opinion on the medical field being the only right option. So in that sense it's more of a correlation with money, and a causation through inhe…
Exactly. In my country it works the same way, and doctors aren't well paid here. Some of them then go to places where doctors are paid better. Thus, they don't inherit money indirectly through going to schools for well-paid professionals, they inherit profession.