A viral Reddit post from a laid-off IIT graduate has reopened one of India’s most enduring arguments: which is the better career path – doctors or engineers?
The anonymous engineer, who said he had recently lost his job at a major American tech company, described months of unsuccessful job hunting despite graduating from a top institution. Looking around, he saw something that many anxious professionals have been noticing lately: doctors appear insulated from the uncertainty affecting parts of the tech sector.
“I always feel MBBS is safest secured and stable field,” he wrote. “Like no layoffs tension and 100% job security and respect is on another level.”
He went on to describe seeing luxury cars outside hospitals in Mumbai and argued that medicine offers stronger long-term security than engineering, particularly in an era of layoffs and artificial intelligence.
The post quickly gained attention, but what followed revealed something deeper than a simple doctor-versus-engineer debate.
It exposed how differently the two professions are perceived, and how often people compare the rewards at the end of the journey without examining the vastly different roads required to get there.
THE DOCTOR PEOPLE ENVY IS USUALLY NOT AN MBBS GRADUATE
One of the biggest misconceptions in these discussions is that people compare a BTech engineer with a doctor and assume the two qualifications occupy similar positions in their respective professions.
In reality, they often do not.
A BTech graduate from a reputed institution can immediately enter the workforce and begin building a career. Many engineers never pursue an MTech and still reach senior positions, start companies or move into leadership roles.
Medicine operates very differently.
The doctors people typically associate with prestige, authority and high incomes are usually specialists or super-specialists. An MBBS degree is increasingly viewed as a starting point rather than a finishing line.
Dr Ranjit Bhosale, a cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon, says the educational journey in medicine is much longer than most outsiders realise.
“For a doctor, first of all, there’s NEET, which year after year is getting more and more difficult to crack,” he says.
The challenge does not end after admission.
“Graduation takes almost six years. After that, there’s post-graduation, which takes another three years. In today’s day and age, post-graduation is not adequate, so there’s a super-specialisation that takes another three years, says Dr Bhosale.
That means the doctor driving a BMW outside a hospital may have spent 12 years or more in education and training after Class 12.
THE SEAT CRUNCH CHANGES EVERYTHING
The difference between engineering and medicine begins long before graduation.
Engineering is one of India’s largest higher education streams, while medicine, despite expanding in recent years, remains far more selective.
More than 24 lakh students appeared for NEET-UG 2024, competing for roughly 1.18 lakh MBBS seats (60,000 govt college seats + 58,000 private college seats). In simple terms, around 20 students were chasing every available seat.
Engineering operates on a completely different scale. India had nearly 15 lakh BTech seats (4.5 lakh govt college seats + 10.5 lakh private college seats) in 2024-25. While engineering has a broad entry pipeline, medicine remains a narrow funnel with intense competition at every stage.
Engineering aspirants have multiple pathways into the profession, while medical aspirants face a far tighter bottleneck.
THE HIDDEN COST OF BECOMING A DOCTOR
When families discuss doctors’ earnings, they often focus on income while overlooking investment.
The financial commitment required to become a doctor can be enormous.
Students who secure government medical seats can study at relatively affordable costs. However, competition for those seats is intense.
Even a strong NEET score may not be enough to secure an affordable government medical seat, without which one can expect to shell out Rs 60 lakh to over Rs 1 crore for a private college medical seat – beyond the reach of most families.
Access, affordability and institute or education quality are the main reasons a small number of medical seats still go vacant each year. Despite the challenges, demand for a medical education remains high.
Engineering can also be expensive, particularly at private institutions, but the financial burden is often significantly lower than what many medical students and their families face.
This difference matters because the eventual income cannot be separated from the cost of reaching that point.
A specialist doctor earning several lakhs a month may also be recovering from years of educational expenses and debt. An engineer earning a similar amount may have entered the workforce nearly a decade earlier and accumulated savings during that period.
WHILE DOCTORS STUDY, ENGINEERS BUILD WEALTH
Perhaps the most overlooked difference between the two professions is time.
Consider two students who complete Class 12 at the age of 18.
The engineering student enters a four-year BTech programme and starts earning at around 22.
By the age of 27, that engineer may have five years of work experience, multiple salary hikes, investments and professional networks. By the age of 32, they may already have a decade-long career behind them.
The doctor’s timeline looks dramatically different.
MBBS alone takes around five and a half years. Post-graduation adds another three years. Super-specialisation can add another three.
By the time many doctors complete their training and begin establishing themselves independently, they are often entering their thirties.
This is the part of the comparison that is rarely visible from the outside.
The surgeon driving a luxury car may be earning substantially today, but the engineer may have spent the previous ten years building wealth while that surgeon was still attending lectures, preparing for examinations, working hospital shifts and completing residency programmes.
THE YEARS NOBODY SEES
The glamour associated with medicine often obscures one of its defining realities: exhaustion.
Medical training is not simply longer. It is also unusually demanding.
Resident doctors routinely work overnight shifts, handle emergencies, manage large patient loads and prepare for highly competitive postgraduate examinations while simultaneously treating patients.
Many spend years operating on minimal sleep.
The twenties of an engineering graduate and the twenties of a medical graduate can look completely different.
One may be exploring jobs, changing companies, travelling for work or building financial independence.
The other may still be studying for entrance examinations, completing clinical duties and trying to secure a specialisation seat.
This is one reason many doctors reacted strongly to the IIT graduate’s observations.
The luxury cars are visible. But the decade of preparation behind them is not.
THERE ARE FEWER CELEBRITY DOCTORS THAN PEOPLE THINK
Another reason the debate resonates is because public perception is often shaped by outliers.
People remember the highly successful surgeon, the celebrity dermatologist or the specialist with a thriving private practice.
They rarely notice the thousands of doctors still trying to establish themselves.
“There is so much competition for doctors that living a luxurious life and earning a lot of money is a fallacy. It is just a figment of people’s imagination,” says Dr Bhosale.
“Of course, there is one celebrity doctor. But behind that one celebrity doctor, there are at least one million regular doctors who don’t even make their ends meet, who are burdened by loans, who are burdened by the responsibilities of their families,” he says.
His observation strikes at the heart of the Reddit post.
The engineer was looking at the most visible examples of success. But every profession contains a large number of people whose careers look far less glamorous than public perception suggests.
The same is true in engineering, where headlines often focus on crore-plus placement packages while ignoring the broader employment landscape.
IS ENGINEERING STILL THE BETTER DEAL?
Many students believe it can be.
Khushil Raval, a first-year BTech Computer Science student at MIT World Peace University, argues that engineering’s biggest advantage lies in how quickly students can begin their professional lives.
“Most engineering students complete their degree in four years and can begin earning immediately, whereas doctors must spend many additional years in medical schools, internships and specialisation before establishing their careers,” he says.
He also points to factors such as flexibility and work-life balance: “Many engineering jobs offer flexible schedules, remote work options and a healthier balance between personal and professional life.”
Yet the concerns raised by the laid-off IITian are not entirely unfounded. The technology sector has experienced repeated waves of layoffs in recent years, with companies citing restructuring, slowing growth, automation and AI-driven productivity gains.
While engineering still offers faster entry into the workforce and broader career options, many professionals are increasingly aware that high salaries can also come with greater employment volatility.
The appeal of engineering has always extended beyond salary. The profession offers pathways into technology, consulting, finance, entrepreneurship, research and countless other industries.
That flexibility is difficult to replicate in medicine.
IS MEDICINE REALLY AI-PROOF?
The viral Reddit post was driven partly by fears that artificial intelligence is reshaping the technology industry.
Yet even medicine is not immune.
“And as far as AI is concerned, it is encroaching every field,” says Dr Bhosale.
He points to radiology and diagnostics as examples of areas where machine analysis is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
While AI is unlikely to eliminate the need for doctors entirely, the assumption that medicine is completely insulated from technological disruption may be overly simplistic.
The reality is that both professions are evolving.
Technology is changing engineering jobs. Technology is changing medical practice too.
The difference may lie in how that change manifests rather than whether it happens at all.
WHAT STUDENTS SEE IN THE DEBATE
For many students, the discussion says more about anxiety than about either profession.
Shrika Rana, a BTech student in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Woxsen University, believes the frustrations expressed in the Reddit post are understandable but incomplete.
“Lay offs are real and the frustration is not only understandable but to some extent justified too. But comparing medicine and engineering, like this Reddit thread, is a bit like comparing two different kinds of responsibility,” she says.
She adds that success depends on understanding the trade-offs associated with each profession rather than focusing solely on job security or income.
Anshika, a biotechnology student at Manav Rachna International Institute of Research and Studies, echoes that sentiment: “MBBS generally provides a more stable career path, while Engineering offers greater flexibility and the opportunity to work in a variety of industries.”
Meanwhile, fellow biotechnology student Preeti believes healthcare retains an advantage because demand for medical professionals remains constant across generations.
“Technology and industries evolve rapidly but the demand for doctors continues across generations,” she says. “While engineers build solutions that improve the way we live, doctors help preserve life itself.”
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER
The laid-off IITian was not wrong to admire the stability that medicine often provides.
Nor are doctors wrong when they point out that the public rarely appreciates the years of sacrifice, study and financial investment required to reach that stability.
The truth is that the two professions operate on entirely different timelines.
Engineers typically earn earlier, build wealth sooner and enjoy greater career flexibility. Doctors often spend much longer in training, carry heavier educational burdens and enter their peak earning years later, but they may benefit from more stable long-term demand.
When people compare the two, they often compare the beginning of one career with the middle of another.
The engineer sees the doctor’s BMW.
The doctor remembers the 12 years it took to reach the driver’s seat.
And that difference explains why this debate keeps resurfacing, generation after generation.