Employed as a software engineer but want to become a doctor

[munusen2008]

I am 38 years old. I have had a career in programming for 17 years, however, I feel that I have reached a peak and now my job is either
a) boring and challenging at the same time
b) does not have mentors I need to rise up
c) intellectually, I just can't get any better at it

My job pays well, but I do not feel I am doing my best work. I have always wanted to go into a different field, and going into medical field has been an idea in my mind for a while. I have a CS degree from 2003, and I took some prereqs like Chem, Organic Chem from Hunter College in NY a few years ago, thinking I would quit work and take my MCATs and apply to school.

Then, my life took a bit of a turn and I had two kids (3 and 5), a husband (who works but isn't the primary provider), and some savings. I need to pay mortgage and taxes for a big house at 6K a month. And I have a new job for the last two years - rated as doing average work.

All paths seem bleak and wondering if any body has been in my position before and could give me advice:

1. Stay in my job, keep earning money, find ways to fullfill myself outside of work
2. Quit my job and still have enough money to continue living as I do, take loans, go back to school, become a doctor

Am I falling into "grass is greener on the other side" mentality?

I will be close to 50 when I finish schooling, will that give me enough time in my life to enjoy my children, husband, life?

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[Campana]

I am 38 years old. I have had a career in programming for 17 years, however, I feel that I have reached a peak and now my job is either
a) boring and challenging at the same time
b) does not have mentors I need to rise up
c) intellectually, I just can't get any better at it

My job pays well, but I do not feel I am doing my best work. I have always wanted to go into a different field, and going into medical field has been an idea in my mind for a while. I have a CS degree from 2003, and I took some prereqs like Chem, Organic Chem from Hunter College in NY a few years ago, thinking I would quit work and take my MCATs and apply to school.

Then, my life took a bit of a turn and I had two kids (3 and 5), a husband (who works but isn't the primary provider), and some savings. I need to pay mortgage and taxes for a big house at 6K a month. And I have a new job for the last two years - rated as doing average work.

All paths seem bleak and wondering if any body has been in my position before and could give me advice:

1. Stay in my job, keep earning money, find ways to fullfill myself outside of work
2. Quit my job and still have enough money to continue living as I do, take loans, go back to school, become a doctor

Am I falling into "grass is greener on the other side" mentality?

I will be close to 50 when I finish schooling, will that give me enough time in my life to enjoy my children, husband, life?

@munusen2008 I was in your shoes several years ago and when I asked those "what am I doing with my life?" sort of questions about fulfillment and potential, I started off with volunteering at a hospital. It's a good first step to validate if you'd enjoy the field, and to try to see how it feels to squeeze a little bit more into your day, it's good for the community, and its a legitimate step towards applying. If you like it, you can start to look into adding more classes. I hear you on the mortgage payment - I did not quit my job while doing my pre-reqs at night. Good luck!

 

[futuremdforme]

I switched from software to medicine. I'm glad with my choice but I also started my journey around 10 years earlier than you. I didn't have kids, and my husband had equal earning potential to me. Personally I don't think I could do loans that I couldn't start to repay until 50.
A good number of people do and are happy.

I think volunteering in a clinical setting is a great idea, as well as exploring better options in software engineering. I continued to pursue promotions, new companies during my path and it helped with motivation actually.

 

[Goro]

I am 38 years old. I have had a career in programming for 17 years, however, I feel that I have reached a peak and now my job is either
a) boring and challenging at the same time
b) does not have mentors I need to rise up
c) intellectually, I just can't get any better at it

My job pays well, but I do not feel I am doing my best work. I have always wanted to go into a different field, and going into medical field has been an idea in my mind for a while. I have a CS degree from 2003, and I took some prereqs like Chem, Organic Chem from Hunter College in NY a few years ago, thinking I would quit work and take my MCATs and apply to school.

Then, my life took a bit of a turn and I had two kids (3 and 5), a husband (who works but isn't the primary provider), and some savings. I need to pay mortgage and taxes for a big house at 6K a month. And I have a new job for the last two years - rated as doing average work.

All paths seem bleak and wondering if any body has been in my position before and could give me advice:

1. Stay in my job, keep earning money, find ways to fullfill myself outside of work
2. Quit my job and still have enough money to continue living as I do, take loans, go back to school, become a doctor

Am I falling into "grass is greener on the other side" mentality?

I will be close to 50 when I finish schooling, will that give me enough time in my life to enjoy my children, husband, life?

Wanting to go to Medicine because you're bored with your current career is a really bad reason to pursue Medicine. Go with option 1.

 

[hamiltonnyc]

Wanting to go to Medicine because you're bored with your current career is a really bad reason to pursue Medicine. Go with option 1.

Agreed. As a software engineer, I'd say it's much easier to find the things you're currently lacking in software than starting medicine.

 

[munusen2008]

Wanting to go to Medicine because you're bored with your current career is a really bad reason to pursue Medicine. Go with option 1.

Hoping that I'd get bored with medicine around the same time I would be retiring

 

[munusen2008]

Agreed. As a software engineer, I'd say it's much easier to find the things you're currently lacking in software than starting medicine.

I am fixated with the idea, so I am sure I am blind to the obvious. My fear is I won't find it in the next 17 years. Also is medicine that much harder?

 

[munusen2008]

I switched from software to medicine. I'm glad with my choice but I also started my journey around 10 years earlier than you. I didn't have kids, and my husband had equal earning potential to me. Personally I don't think I could do loans that I couldn't start to repay until 50.
A good number of people do and are happy.

I think volunteering in a clinical setting is a great idea, as well as exploring better options in software engineering. I continued to pursue promotions, new companies during my path and it helped with motivation actually.

I am fine with borrowing money, people do for houses, why not for their careers. Both they keep for a long time.

I would like to explore volunteering in clinical settings. Do you have any suggestions of how to find a good avenue for volunteering experience?

 

[Campana]

I am fixated with the idea,

Also is medicine that much harder?

Good reasons to give it a free test spin - go volunteer and shadow.

It'll hopefully give you a better feel for what you might be getting into. And, luckily, they're both needed for your application should you continue down this path.

 

[TheIllusionist]

NO! NO! NO!

 

[ArdorAyurveda]

I am fine with borrowing money, people do for houses, why not for their careers. Both they keep for a long time.

I would like to explore volunteering in clinical settings. Do you have any suggestions of how to find a good avenue for volunteering experience?

check your local hospice center or nursing home. You could also check out the local free clinic for uninsured/indigent patients, but I doubt they'll let you do anything that would count as clinical contact. At the nursing home/hospice center, you'd probably get more patient interaction. You'd get to talk with the patient, maybe even feed them if the patients/medical staff members are okay with it.

I'd say volunteering is the first step to seeing if this path is right for you. Keep your job -- you have two other mouths to feed besides your own!

Whatever path you choose, good luck!

Edit: And definitely don't let your age discourage you from applying. I know a woman with 9 kids, and she is currently an M1 going into M2! She's definitely over 30 y/o!

 

[munusen2008]

NO! NO! NO!

LOL, ok! Got the message!

 

[hamiltonnyc]

I am fixated with the idea, so I am sure I am blind to the obvious. My fear is I won't find it in the next 17 years. Also is medicine that much harder?

Well, I think 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile of physicians work harder than the corresponding percentiles in software. But that's comparing a clean start, what I was referring to is the career switch. There's a lot of friction to starting something as opposed to continuing something else. In another analogy, consider the overhead when a cpu core context switches from one thread to another.

I don't know your life, but from my perspective if those are the only things that you value in your career, it's much easier to find them staying in software than switching to medicine. I didn't see anything about the medical field itself, like the desire to treat patients, which is in my opinion the only reason to get into this long road.

 

[futuremdforme]

I am fine with borrowing money, people do for houses, why not for their careers. Both they keep for a long time.

I would like to explore volunteering in clinical settings. Do you have any suggestions of how to find a good avenue for volunteering experience?

Try something you can do on weekends. Hospice is nice because the hours tend to be more flexible, and you can try hospitals -- anything with really sick patients. You want to smell patients who are too sick to bathe, who have infections, etc -- because there's a gross aspect to medicine that you have to be okay with.

And yeah, medicine is that much harder. It's more fun, but it's definitely harder. (And I worked in a competitive startup environment, not a big company with 9-5 hours or anything). You are constantly learning new things, and being pushed to your limit. And constantly criticized -- because as a learner, everything you can do is not at staff level so you need the feedback, but it's still really harsh when you're not used to being told to fix everything about yourself constantly. (And I hardly a struggling student, this is the experience of everyone in my class).

And the sleep deprivation is real, especially when you're not 23 anymore. Based on the hours alone, I ruled out about half the specialties because I would be really unhappy working shift work or 24 hour shifts. I will do it for residency but after that, I want relatively normal hours.

 

[twospadz]

Stay in your career. You can do other things to get involved in medicine besides being a doctor. Trust me, its not worth switching.

 

[Moko]

I will be close to 50 when I finish schooling, will that give me enough time in my life to enjoy my children, husband, life?

Only you can answer this question. Becoming a physician is a lengthy process that requires a lot of sacrifices along the way -- both physically and emotionally. I've lost count of the number of times I needed to cancel dinner plans with my partner, or adjust my personal life in order to be compatible with my work schedule. Granted, much of this is worse during the clinical rotations, residency, and fellowship; however, even as an attending, sacrifices continue to be made (though thankfully less often). Are you willing to give up time with your family in order to pursue medicine? Are you willing to put yourself into debt and delay retirement for this? This is the struggle that we commonly face, and you need to be okay with it.

I am fixated with the idea, so I am sure I am blind to the obvious. My fear is I won't find it in the next 17 years. Also is medicine that much harder?

Medicine is hard. I personally cannot imagine starting this at the age of 40, let alone 50 -- but there's plenty of people here who have done it at those ages -- so really depends on the individual. Kudos to them. You should only pursue medicine if you cannot imagine being happy doing anything else. If there is another path with less resistance that can offer you meaning and joy, take that path instead. Good luck with your decision

 

[chooks]

The trip through the medical education grinder and beyond will take a toll on every relationship you will have. It will strip you down to your barest essentials of being a machine that eats, sleeps (usually), and studies even if your aspiration is a less competetive specialty (which will make probably not much more money than you do as a software engineer). There will be a cost to your husband and your children to the point where you will essentially miss a good chunk of their childhood years.

That is not to dissuade you - you have to make your choices yourself. Older non-trads with kids do go back to school and are successful. But there is always a price to pay.

I switched from a career in software to medicine at 32. I still write software because, well - I just really like it. Medicine is becoming more corporate so knowing how to navigate that type of structure is helpful (my purgatory years at Large Telco have actually been quite useful in that sense). Volunteering and shadowing is a good way to start, but given the costs (financial and personal) as others have said going into medicine should be something to do only if you think you won't be happy doing any other (combination) of things.

 

[jlit]

I am in a similar place. I have been an electronics technician for 10 years (currently 28yo). I don't find my career fulfilling. To be honest I have never found it particularly fulfilling. It pays the bills very well though. I have always been fascinated by medicine. My only hesitations are I have been dealing with major depressive for a long time, but with a combination of therapies I have been doing in the last year and a half I feel great again I am hoping to pursue this by taking a phlebotomy course this fall and getting a part time job on the weekends to make sure that I enjoy the medical environment. I am pursuing an electrical engineering degree at the same time so I will be very busy but I hope to use it as a litmus test that I can handle stress like I used to.
I say go for it if it is something you truly want. However, don't do it just for the challenge. You have to have a desire to help others as well.
All the best

 

[Whale]

I am 38 years old. I have had a career in programming for 17 years, however, I feel that I have reached a peak and now my job is either
a) boring and challenging at the same time
b) does not have mentors I need to rise up
c) intellectually, I just can't get any better at it

Then, my life took a bit of a turn and I had two kids (3 and 5), a husband (who works but isn't the primary provider), and some savings. I need to pay mortgage and taxes for a big house at 6K a month. And I have a new job for the last two years - rated as doing average work.

So why not change job and find a company that has mentors, rewards innovation and efficiency?
Missing challenges? Why not start studying/applying to companies that has very difficult interview pass rates (google, facebook)?
Join a medical tech startup or healthcare tech group in a larger company: Apple, etc.

Unless you're a genius I don't quite understand you can't find enough challenges in tech to work at and solve, when there are so many new startups with the tech field moving and changing at such fast pace.

How are you paying for your family with 250,000 tuition debt and about 4 years of no income? Better join a tech group/startup with a difficult mission and be rewarded with 6-figure base salary and stock/bonuses.

 

[RNthenDoc]

As a nontrad myself I am usually very pro "follow your dreams," but the logistics of what making a career in medicine work look like for you make me think you'd be happier taking a different life path.

You're currently spending 72k/year on home expenses alone, so obviously your financial situation isn't terrible *now.* You have to realize that that aspect of it would likely be deleterious for you. A decade of six-figure salary lost puts you a lot farther behind as a 38-y.o. than it would a 20 y.o.

The saying that gets posted here a lot is to only pursue medicine if it is the only thing that would make you happy. You definitely need to decide if that is true long before you make any commitments.