This figure via 2Blowhards: “After I sketched this out, it dawned on me that
there were a number of professions that were way off the general curve.
Doctors, lawyers, and accountants, for example, made a lot of money but
did not have to put much money at risk to earn it … Yep, those risk-averse New Classers definitely know something the rest of us do not. But what is it? How do they so successfully defy the risk-reward curve? How do they float above the rest of us earth-bound types?” Read the whole, insightful thing here.
February 19th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Doctors and lawyers put anywhere from 100K to 200K into their training. This is the ‘money up front’. This is an obvious one. Not a whole lot to discuss.
February 19th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Doctors and lawyers put 100K to 200K into their training. This is the money up front. And then, doctors in particular are at huge risk for being sued. I sometimes wonder why we do it. High investment, high risk, increaingyl lower rewards.
February 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am
The following was sent to the site administrator:
Doctors… risk avoiders… Nay nay
Most doctors have no time to read this misinformed blowhards self congratulations. They are too busy caring for people who need their expertly trained help, so let me offer a word of education for those who may read the inaccurate diatribe featured on Creativeclass.org today.
People preparing to become physicians spend 8 years (B.A. 4 years; plus MD 4 years) plus another 3-9 years of internship/residency training. Family practice has a shorter residency, surgery and neurosurgery are longer. Investing 11-17 years of time between the typical ages of 18 to 30 years old reflects a tremendous investment of youth, study time and personal energy. There is also the cost of the BA and MD education ($50,000- $300,000 public vs. private) which most aspiring physicians pay for out of personal savings, family contributions and loans (no time for spare jobs). Add the 3-9 years of residency training where the pay is extremely modest for a maximum of 88 hours per week — the grocery store clerk makes a similar wage but works fewer hours. No need for more money, there is little time for recreation anyway.
By the time the newly minted M.D. has completed residency at the ripe old age of 28 – 32 and is ready open a practice or join a group, the school loans are big enough to terrify any entrepreneur, but the investment of one’s life…. that is an investment that cannot be measured in the simple dollars the supposed big risk takers quickly spend. Try spending your youth and young adulthood in a hospital 88 hours per week. The older doctors put in more, but in the last decade, it has been legally and humanely limited to only 88 hours per week in most states. Imagine staying up all night to care for patients whose families long since went home to eat and sleep. Most doctors are indeed risk takers. They have risked it all…. and are repayed by the warm smile of the mother whose son’s fever breaks; and the woman’s hug whose cancer was completely surgically removed, and by the tearful handshake from father whose new baby born six weeks early when he is told “she’s going to make it.” These physicians have risked it all and no $ reward comes close to the smile, the hug and the handshake.
Sadly, physicians face an ever increasing parade of whining entrepreneurs who resent doctors’ business survival and lawyers who, while seeking to protect wronged patient’s rights, increasingly find themselves being asked to represent patients whose ultimate grounds for complaints are that aging, disease, accidents and life happen. Most physicians are just trying to do a good job and help where they can. That is all most want to do and have been trained to do.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am
While I agree with the spirit of these comments, the graph tells me something different. It doesn’t ignore the fact that becoming a doctor is an expensive proposition, not just in terms of the cost and grind of medical school, but all the development leading up to that. Philip Longman estimates that it takes MILLIONS in parents time early on to create a doctor.
What the graph suggests is that these costs are all investments that are virtually guaranteed to be repaid. Once a doctor, the risk of earning a good living is small. That is the point, as I see it. The “entrepreneur,”the graph seems to suggest, has a very different risk profile.
I am curious,however, what our site administrator has to say on this matter (:-) wink, wink
)