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Thursday, December 22, 2005
I Love Google
So here I am, a relatively young physician with a growing practice, doing OK, reasonably happy with my work and my life. And there they are, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two guys who are a few years younger than me and they have this great business going that's all over the 'Net, in the MSM, with blue skies ahead. Page and Brin are the founders of Google, which between its search engine, Froogle, GoogleEarth, GoogleMaps, Picasa and Blogger seems to be one of the pieces of Internet real estate that I use the most, and for free! And they are raking it in.
Not that I'm jealous, well, maybe a little. Sometimes I just wonder about the road not taken - I mean I was in medical school as these guys, and the Jerry Yangs (of Yahoo!) and the Jeff Bezos (of Amazon) were getting their educations and starting up. Was I in the wrong place at the wrong time? I love Yahoo, Amazon and Google and sometimes I think well, gee, I could have done that. At the very least, maybe if I could have invested the $150,000 I owe in student loans for my education in Amazon, Yahoo or Google stock when they IPO'ed I wouldn't need to work at all, and could be thinking about the next Google. Maybe not. - posted by wanderer @ 9:20 PM
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Yeah, I know what you mean, Wanderer...I'm about the same age as Oprah, and I've always thought, hey I could have done what she did. (okay, I'm a white Jewish girl who grew up in L.A. instead of the South,with no interest in journalism, or being a talk show host, but a girl can dream can't she?)
But it shouldn't just be a fantasy. What I found sobering is that the appreciation in my house has been more than I've made in all my years practicing medicine added up. That means had we just borrowed more money and bough two houses on the same block, I could be playing with my kids all day and still would have made just as much. We should think carefully about what we do for our carreers and whether our services are really valued. If not, we should do something else. We should also invest wisely.
cruisin' mom- I'm trying to think of a talk show hosted by a white Jewish girl who grew up in L.A. and I can't think of one. Maybe you've got an idea there!
Bean & Mirty - agreed, especially the part about our services being valued. Medicine is the only career in the United States I can think of where the prices we charge our "customers" are set by the government (or some derivation thereof). Individual physicians are occasionally able to extricate themselves from this pricing system, but the majority of physicians have no choice in the matter.
To me this is less relevant then the issue of feeling trapped in a career. I have never seriously considered leaving medicine, but when I toy with the idea I am confronted by hard economics: student loans totaling more than $100,000, a mortgage, a family, etc. So Bean, it is a fantasy only because I honestly don't know how I could pull it off, and Mirty correctly points out some of the uncertainties involved.
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Bean & Mirty - agreed, especially the part about our services being valued. Medicine is the only career in the United States I can think of where the prices we charge our "customers" are set by the government (or some derivation thereof). Individual physicians are occasionally able to extricate themselves from this pricing system, but the majority of physicians have no choice in the matter.
To me this is less relevant then the issue of feeling trapped in a career. I have never seriously considered leaving medicine, but when I toy with the idea I am confronted by hard economics: student loans totaling more than $100,000, a mortgage, a family, etc. So Bean, it is a fantasy only because I honestly don't know how I could pull it off, and Mirty correctly points out some of the uncertainties involved.
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