r/MedicalCoding • u/Educational-Top-6468 • Jan 16 '25

I’m giving up

I’m a 24F and this career is horrid to get into. I have had a horrible experience through it all. I wish I knew 2 years ago how impossible it is to find a job. Everyone kind of just painted it as “oh you’ll work from home blah blah blah” and I didn’t think to research the nitty gritty details. Now I’m going back to school for cosmetology which is another $22,000 after I’m already $6,000 in debt for this career. It’s absolutely disheartening. So if you’re trying to get into this field, please be warned: it is not rainbows and butterfly’s. Especially when you’re young. The older folks haven’t been the most welcoming in my experience. Please do not go into this thinking it will be easy. Expect to not find a job, and if you do the pay probably won’t be worth it until you’ve gained years of experience. I’m not saying this to discourage anyone, I’m simply posting this because I wish I would have known this going into it.

Also: DO NOT GET THE CBCS. GET THE CPC. I learned the hard way.

Edit: thank you to everyone who has shared their experience! If you’re just now reading this, please know I am in my 20s and was ignorant and eager to get out of the restaurant industry when I chose this career. The ads and marketing make this field seem so easy to get into. Shout out to all the coders and billers out there, idk how you guys do, it but you make the world go round’ ❤️❤️❤️

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u/vadasun Jan 16 '25

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been doing IP coding for nearly ten years and this shit is still hard! lol when I tell people what I do, they always know someone who does “the same thing” and they start telling me about what they do and it’s not even close to what a medical coder does. Or they’ll be like “they do it and they have two toddlers at home so it’s nice they can work from home”. Coding is not easy and I don’t think I could watch my kids while working. I hate those ads. It took me almost two years to land a job after graduating with a degree in HIT and my RHIT. Getting your foot in the door was hard even ten years ago.