Is leaving surgery for finance worth it?

If you want to enter finance do it the Healthcare PE route. Know multiple people who started as surgeons and now run PE firms that LBO small private practices / hospitals

Physician here. Feel free to PM me. I left after my first year of ortho. Curious what subspecialty you’re in.

And no at your level I’d generally advise against leaving. I left when I was 25 for SSER and am now on the BS. At 32 to join ER is actually insane.

You’d have to bust it for 2 years min make at MOST 200k and likely lower. Tbf others have done it, but to give up on that comp upside is hard.

Top biotech analysts (ER) make 3-5M a year (10+ year experience and II ranked). For other analysts (5+ years exp), it can be anywhere from 600K to 1M or a bit over. You’ll come in as an associate/Senior associate and can exp to make 250K or bit less (total comp). The hours can be pretty terrible. It’s technically a 24*7 job. You’ll have to cover medical conferences on weekends depending on your coverage. Compared to the hours you laid out, ER hours are bad if not as bad as banking. If you don’t wanna stay long term you can try your luck on the buyside. 

Bro that is a lot more lucrative than anything in finance at least in the next 5 years, and even more so given your hours.

As long as you don’t hate your surgery specialty, I’d say work for a few years, save enough, in the mean time network with the PE firms, don’t do ER.

But your hours will be a lot worse with lesser income to start with, but can make more as you have your own skin in the game as you rise up.

But leaving now would be an absolute regret.

You’ll earn way less in finance. The hedge fund guys you see bringing in millions a year are the outliers 

You need to consider that the majority of finance jobs are in HCOL cities (New York, London, Tokyo) where living costs make high 6-figure comp packages unremarkable. You don't tell us where you are based so it's hard to answer your question. Making 600k in Nashville will feel very different from making 600k in NYC. 

I would say stay, the money and hours sound better. 

Just to hear it out though, what made you get into surgery vs how you feel about it now. Also, want would make you want to get into finance? Could it be just, the grass is always greener. If you're trying to retire early as said, just stay on your currently path. I know with a lot of doctors they get in financial trouble because, although they make big money, they spend big. I use to work at a firm where we had an asset manager/wealth management arm, the guy who ran it had a decent amount of doctors come in talking about wanting to retire, yet had no money. 

Grass is never greener!!

My advice would be to do what Michael Burry did at the beginning of his medical to finance transition and start out investing on the side. It sounds like you're about to have plenty of capital and time to develop a strategy. Your downside risk is pretty steep in straight jumping ship to "finance". 

However, this has to be a troll post. 

You've done all of the hard work of med school and residency and are finally going to reap the rewards. You'll probably start enjoying it more once the hours decrease and the $$ starts rolling in.. absolutely do not restart your career/life at this point. 

The grass is always greener, my dude

No! I have doctor friends and i'm jealous of their 500-1mm jobs with ultimate job security and good hours. out here grinding for a buck and/or to stay employed.

If there was ever a time where the "sunk cost fallacy" wasn't actually fallacious in nature, it would be this situation. Why would you leave? You're at the end of the rainbow, the pot of gold is right there- even if you have no passion, what makes you think you'll have passion for anything in Finance? Most people here do it just for money as well- you just have to choose your vice. Besides, you're about to make money that people in Finance won't see until they're much older than even you, as a 32 year old.

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here and guess that you're doing Vascular based on the figures that you presented and the fact that you're getting bored. Brother. You're working only 40 hours with one weekend being on-call and the rest to yourself, making bread, all while repairing aortas and saving lives. This is a dream life dawg

are you more interested in the ER/HF or the IB/PE (deal making) side?

Why are most of these comments about money? You’ll make $$ in both. OP, what would you be happy doing? Legit only thing that matters fuck everything else. If ur good at either job, money will come 

Honestly stay the course bro. All these comments aren’t lying. If u really care about job security and finances be a doctor for as long as you can. If you are trying to be something like Michael Burry MD, it’s possible but how he got started was essentially a lucky network. I would start building your own personal portfolio. Can’t lie I feel like starting off in the sell side just ain’t worth it given your current career level. The buy side managers (Wellingtons, vanguards etc) of the world are good spots to be and there are plenty of healthcare and biotech focused Researchers and PMs with MD’s and or Phd’s if you can try to reach out to one of them on LinkedIn or something.

Absolutely fucking not…you will eventually have some level of autonomy over your life whereas in finance you have to check that at the door.

“High finance” is also filled with a lot of sick people

40 hrs a week my ass esp as a non partner, also where are you practicing North Dakota? You don’t get paid like that in major cities. 
 

this is a troll post but for the hypo the goal here is maximize net worth. Just invest your money and do the surgeries, it’s all the same. 

well, people are literally dying from overworking and stress in finance for like $200-300k, and you'd like to compete against them instead of taking a 40h job where people treat you with respect and admiration for $700-800k.

and you're talking about not having passion for surgery. if you don't have passion to save people's lives, why do you think you'll have passion to pull all nighters to create intricate excel models and sparkling powerpoint slides that don't make much impact on decision making, all that while a greedy selfish boss treats you like garbage.

No

Don't be a moron.

If you honestly think finance is going to be more interesting that surgery you are off your rocker mate

Have you ever considered exploring different specialties in medicine before jumping into finance? Just a thought. Your projected income sounds pretty good, but it really depends on what will make you happiest in the long run

Name checks out. Keep doing surgery and be active in investing your money to cure that finance itch.

Be like Michael Burry, do medicine and on the side read finance and invest 

but your question is fucking crazy. People stay in finance because of the money and probably you'll have to put at least 10 years of hard work to get to 1.5-2m compensation that you can get it now.

In such scenario, I am sure that 90% of finance guys will leave their finance role to be in yours and get paid really well while also being more respected and impressive in social settings ie I'm a surgeon

tl;dr HELL FUCKING NO

Ha. I’m also a 32 y.o. Physician in last year of residency looking to get out. I’m in Radiology/IR. Nowhere near the ceiling you’re talking about but looking at $500k as associate and 900k-1M as partner. What these other non-med guys don’t see is the absolute beat down of nonstop, stressful high-liability work on top of the long hours. Reimbursement going down. Patients largely entitled without any sort of gratitude. Long term I think the play is to jump ship and grind in Finance, but certainly would be painful to start over. 
 

I am planning on making a switch after I finish training. Fortunately Radiology is incredibly scalable and flexible so I can make $400/hr from home literally whenever I want which opens up more options to peruse something else while still living a decent lifestyle.

alexander Dibelius:
med -> BB -> CVC partner -> bench press wife

Tough one. Similar situation as you, but as a medical student. I would say the TLDR is: Given that you find your work tolerable (i.e. you don't hate it) and you don't have a passion for investment/equity research, leaving to make more money only is not a good reason to live.

• Finance is tougher than you think. Tougher to break in, as you are competing with uni grads. Low job security, you have to compete to stay alive, and someone younger than you can replace you at the early stages
• I thought finance was easy at first, and that they just sat in a Herman Miller chair in a sea view office collecting cash. Not true. In equity research you would have to do 10-12 hour days of intense company research and then write detailed dense reports on the stock. You would have to suffer through 4 earnings seasons a year & clamour to meet your KPIs. Worst of all you can't be completely objective so your analysis is at best pseudoscientific. If you choose IBD then it is residency all over again – and you will still join at the lowest/2nd lowest rung – working from 9am to at least 12am M-F doing DCF models, merger/comps/LBO models, writing "pitchbooks" to convince companies to choose your bank to conduct an acquisition/raise debt or equity, and executing the administrative procedures of a deal. Then your 4 bosses above you will each tell you to revise the final product leading to your staying up very late – All this for the chance of becoming a salesman after 10-15 years 

I mean seems like you made it past the three hardest hurdles. Getting into medical school, graduating from medical school, finishing specialty training. It's just not prudent to leave. Unless you hate medicine or you love finance (i.e. corporate finance/equity investment research/operations and bus dev) I don't see a strong case for leaving

My humble opinion, $600k base, that’s a lot of money to leverage after 5pm —> Make the base, spend your non-working hours on work you love. Buy a house, buy multi family RE, spend $25k to start skincare / nutrition product line, pay an Indian $2k to build your app idea, etc. Soon you’ll have enough assets / side hustles to make them your main gig. THEN move to finance if you want.

I bet you could network into early-stage investment funds that would bring you on an investment committee to vet out surgery tech / concepts for less-than-part-time commitment.

But to trade $600k / 40 hours for $300k / 60 hours, with all that debt… looks like you’ve heard it from everyone by now.

Let me keep this very simple: medicine is an annuity. Finance is extremely vol and one's role can easily go away and be very hard to replace. 

The is a ridiculous case of the grass is greener. Look, I'm not in medicine so I can't related to the annoyances of the job. However, all jobs are annoying. The main difference between these to career paths is medicine is not going away. Within reason, no one in surgery loses their job and is unable to replicate that earning power. Whereas in finance its extremely common, especially as you get older. The NPV of a lucrative field in medicine compared to the average in finance is much higher in medicine if I had so speculate. 

So if you want to walk away from an annoying but certain paycheck for the rest of your life for an annoying but volatility paycheck by all means go right ahead but it does not seem prudent. 

can I pm you? 

Stay in surgery bro

I am in very similar boat in final year of subspecialty IM fellowship. Expected earnings 600k starting, likely 800-1ml in average city metro. Realizing total lack of passion for medicine. More thinking law school which is probably even crazier than OP. I think ceiling is higher in both finance and law. Short-medium term pain, but if you spreadsheet it out I think you can come out on top in 15 years . Obviously need actual passion and not "grass is greener" to sustain this sort of grind. Also, I would like to think we have some cachet due to medical background. All of us are definitely crazy though.