I don't think it is irrelevant.
My of my friends are specialist surgeons ( I was meant to be one but had a far greater draw to mathematics, computing and engineering) and the extra research and learning work I have to put in far exceeds theirs. Admittedly, in the first 15 years (ages 18-33) they *may* have been ahead given the exams they needed to pass to qualify for 'x', but since, their research hours have dropped substantially. Mine however are as high as ever. I would easily put in an average of 20 hours per week of extra study, reading, investigation and experimentation. That would be averaged over the last five years (I'm 36).
It is Saturday morning here, I have my coffee and am doing the quick fly around of 'technical' websites first before I do a deep dive into how I can efficiently and reliably get seamless, high (ish) data volume exchange from a multitude of browsers to a backend compute cluster for interactive data exploration securely. It will take most of my time up until Christmas Day. I'm on 'holidays'.
This is normal. Those that do this stay relevant. Those who don't will not have employment in 5 years.