The thing about the IT industry which I tremendously dislike is that they favor youth. So the greybeards and old Fortran programmers aren't worth much to the powers that be. The pay goes lower if you've been working for a while and dont do anything to increase your skillset. If you are fresh out of college you get the same wages as someone else who is hired for the position. Fair enough. I agree with you on longevity and I am not naive to believe that age discrimination does not exist in the industry. But he doesn't have to go into IT if he becomes a computer engineer. And he doesn't even have to go into computers, the top paid bachelors is with petroleum (chemical) engineering.
In fairness, Silicon Valley is similar to Wall Street in that they only want the "stars" but will pay you well to live out there which is one of the reasons why that article mentions the high salaries coupled with the location.
Many people would argue the same of medicine, what with the ACA and increasing competition from midlevels.
This is what I was going to suggest. Get into a petro engineering program or similar and work for a fracking company. You'll make well over 100k out of school. If you're good at it and start your own exploration company, 7 figure incomes are possible. The sky is the limit in petro, and you'll always be able to find a good paying job, in this country or another.
Yes basically anyone who does actual work for a living is in a bad predicament right now. I would say medicine is a better position to be in than most, since at least there are a limited number of residencies (for now) and only so many people can become doctors (for now...) No industry is safe from capital aggregating all work into low paid meaningless BS. The only way to stop it is to build stronger unions but LOL if you think gen Y is up to that challenge.
This is such a silly argument. O&G is extremely profitable yes, RIGHT NOW. Part of the reason is the large number of retiring professionals with few new guys to replace them. But why aren't there enough middle-aged workers? Well, do you remember what happened in the 80s? Terrible decade for the industry and for my city which depended upon it (Houston, TX). The poor conditions/outlook drove huge numbers of young people away. The industry is inherently much more volatile than medicine, and heavily dependent on external factors and global conditions. This instability must be considered, particularly when you post silly lifetimes earnings charts that obviously cannot be projected into the future on the basis of current income. Yes O&G is a great field to go into RIGHT NOW. But we'll see if this is still the case in a couple of decades.
This applies a thousandfold to IT related jobs.
This is what I was going to suggest. Get into a petro engineering program or similar and work for a fracking company. You'll make well over 100k out of school. If you're good at it and start your own exploration company, 7 figure incomes are possible. The sky is the limit in petro, and you'll always be able to find a good paying job, in this country or another.
Also, chances are, if you go to medical school in the Caribbean, you will end up in IM or FP. It is possible that you will not, but that is where the majority of grads end up. Given that you have not been exceptional thusfar in your life, and that I expect this trend to continue, let me refer you to this article:
http://www.er-doctor.com/doctor_income.html
Keep in mind this article is somewhat old and assumes you will have about 200k less debt than you will graduate with these days, while income is still sitting between 160-210k for IM/FP, depending on where you practice.
The outlooks is better for petro overall than it was in the 80s because of global diversification in net energy consumers though. China, Brazil, and India need oil and natural gas to continue their growth. It is very unlikely that a crash back to $40 a barrel will ever happen again. It may not be a perfectly stable situation till the end of time, but -no- job is these days.
His chart assumes working 80/week at two separate jobs for the first 8 years, then 60 hours per week, making 60k at the first job and an additional 30k at the second job for the time after that. Many physicians do actually work 60 hours a week. Many also work less, but if you look at most surveys of physician hours per week, it is generally around 52, with no specialty working less than an average of 44 hours. Is the example of the UPS driver perfect? Obviously not. But it clearly shows that there is a good deal of opportunity cost to becoming a physician, and that it will take you nearly 17 years to catch up to someone who makes a decent wage out of high school, and several more years to catch up to them if they work more than 40 hours a week. You'll outearn others over a lifetime, but if you're starting med school at 30, you won't be seeing returns until a long ways down the road.
Do the hospitalists have to be in a specific specialty? Or will the family docs hospitalists make the 200-250k?
