It seems that way, when compared to other professions:
William Weeks, a Dartmouth professor, has done a number of studies on the work life of physicians. He found that, if you view the expense of going to college and professional school as an investment, the payoff is somewhat poorer in medicine than in other professions. Tracking the fortunes of graduates of medical schools, law schools, and business schools with comparable entering grade-point averages, Weeks found that the annual rate of return by the time they reach middle age is 16% per year in primary care medicine and 18% in surgery. That compares with 23% for law and 26% for business.
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Not sure how “middle age” is defined, but don’t physicians reach their peak earning years in their middle age? So why would you stop there?
You don’t stop because you can’t afford to (and hopefully don’t want to) because you didn’t start earning until your 30’s.
But unless you are built better than most, by 50, you can’t work as fast and as hard anymore and can’t tolerate the sleep deprivation that you once could. Unlike other occupations where you work less hard but get paid more becuase you are higher up the ladder, you get paid per unit or work. Unlike law where you charge higher hourly rates for being older and wiser and better, in medicine, most of the services are price-fixed–the same fee for everyone: the best, the worst, the most experienced, the least experienced, the virtuoso, and the quack–all get the same fee for the same procedure.
So when you start to back off, take off a long-weekend every now and take care of yourself a little and try to keep it to a reasonable 45 hour week–then your earnings start dropping. You get on antihypertensive, maybe get a bad cath–start to see that you are not immortal.
Another way of looking at it is you sprint at first, and then start to realize you are actually in a marathon and start pacing yourself. You see that you will not be able to afford to retire until 70 or so, and need to pace yourself to make yourself last that long if you can.
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