Ask HN: Should I leave web development to study medicine in my mid-30s?
Alt account for obvious reasons. For a while, I’ve been quite demoralized about my job. I just can’t take pride in what I do as a web developer anymore. I don’t know if that will ever change. I can’t help feeling that a lot of dev jobs out there, whether highly or poorly paid, are kind of pointless in the grand scheme of things. I apologize for being so blunt: I just want to convey where my mind is at the moment. I struggle to see my own work as useful, and it’s seriously affecting my self-worth. It’s bothering me to the point where I’m seriously considering a career change. The alternative I keep returning to is medicine. I feel drawn to work with a clear human purpose, in which my knowledge could directly help someone. Between self-study and late-night deployments, I already work long hours anyway. Part of me thinks I might as well redirect that effort toward something that feels like a net positive. However, I may be idealizing a profession I haven’t experienced firsthand. If I were younger, I would go for it. But I have to be realistic about my age, finances, and the skills I’ve already acquired. I live in a European country where medicine is a six-year degree and tuition itself is manageable, but I don’t know if I can afford to put my life on pause for so long. In hindsight, I can’t help but wonder whether coding was really a self-imposed limitation born from familiarity and fear. As a teenager, I spent an awful lot of time on my computer, so I grew up within that world. Maybe I shortchanged myself by not considering other life paths. Meanwhile, I increasingly feel detached from and disappointed by the direction of the modern web. AI tools are one of the few silver linings: ChatGPT and Claude have genuinely improved many parts of my life. I’d be very grateful for any thoughts or advice. For the sake of my privacy and well-being, I won’t be responding to comments, but I will read and carefully consider all of them.
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I am slightly older than you, and a physician working at a academic center in the US. Going into the field has placed me in close contact with persons from all walks of life, which I doubt I would have been exposed to had I picked another profession. I am grateful for how much it has taught me about life, death, families, and human resiliency. With that in mind, I still advise NOT going into the field if you already have a stable career with above average income. It will take at minimum 10 years, of doing little else, before you will become a fully independent physician. Although some of this time can be shortened if you choose to become a PA/NP (sorry I don't know their equivalent in Europe, they are essentially clinicians with shortened training with some but limited individual practice autonomy). If you work in a hospital every day is stressful. It is increasingly thankless although you still bear the brunt of responsibility and liability. You are also interchangeable. I don't know if this helps explain my perspective of it's just a weird analogy, but being in a hospital feels like working in a grocery store now. You're told the margins are slim and you need to move produce (patients) faster out the door so that more produce can come in. A lot of the times the produce is not safe to sell but the managers pressure you to do it anyways. You could ask the managers (who were mostly at one point produce managers) to sell it but they would never. But if that apple you sold was mealy or at a rotten core its going to be on you.
Web development is the lowest form of programming, it is the easiest to learn, is very transient, and has a lot of competition for low wages. Doctor though is hard to learn, is highly skilled, the peak of their professional space, and so on. I fell you've picked two alternatives that are poles apart. Surely there are choices between those 2? Have you considered moving up the programming food chain? Or perhaps a medical role that's not a doctor? I'll be honest, once you said you won't respond to protect "well being" I don't think you'd like being a Dr. Sounds like you're looking for a low-stress environment (and medicine is not that). How are you going to cope with patients dying? I think it would be helpful for you to see a psychologist to really understand your current feelings and motivations before you make large life choices. Jumping randomly out of the frying pan doesn't always end well.
The path to board-certified MD is long and I know my share of people who decided to get the MD but skip the residency and go into startups. There are a large number of healthcare related jobs, such as nursing, psychotherapy, physical therapy and such that you can get into with less training and that you might even like better.
Medicine is a very satisfying profession but the road to it is long and winding, and not always fun. I'm an MD and data science major and at this point I would never do medicine again (although I'm obviously not neutral). Also because life changes and you get different responsibilities (e.g. mortgage, kids, partner etc). I agree with PaulHoule that healthcare-adjacent professions may be more in reach and equally satisfying. Psychotherapy, if you like the idea of it, is a beautifully deep and endlessly fascinating profession that is very far out of reach of anything AI.
1) it is VERY common for people with a college degree to change careers in their 30s and 40s. 2) take a Career Aptitude (or assessment) Test. Make sure the next profession matches what brings you happiness.