> If you can write solid C, ring 0/EL3 doesn't scare you off, or you can figure out how to cram 10 pounds of hard realtime code into a 5 pound microcontroller... yeah, you'll go far. Come out having done the minimum, knowing Python and Javascript, well... there's an awful lot of competition for most of those positions if you're just a basic coder, not skilled at using those to accomplish interesting real world tasks ("make those images slide across the webpage" is not particularly novel or interesting anymore).

Go take a look at salaries and get back to me. Embedded does not pay as well as React/Rails, for the sole reason that React/Rails developers are closer to business problems.

Wonder on which world you live - around here the salary for hard real time on embedded are around 30-40k. Personal data point : a few years ago, after my PhD (revolving around some aspects of real-time), I did some interviews to stay fresh and was offered 35k to work on embedded chips used in Dassault missiles. I told them that I was already making more from freelance consulting at that time, they said tough luck.

35k per month? Per year?

Year

"Past performance is not a predictor of future results". The gravy train might keep going for as much as another decade but, as more and more people are flooding into web development every year, at some point demand is going to be saturated and then ...

There are also way more web jobs than embedded though, but you're right that another .com bubble will be bad for web devs (especially juniors, the seniors should do fine).

Is being "closer to business problems" really the sole reason? Or even a big reason?

From the numbers I've seen, DevOps people are the best paid of all types of developers, but they aren't closer to business problems than React/Rails devs.

I think it has more to do with the fact that most embedded developers are working on niche platforms and niche problem domains, so they don't enjoy the same level of job mobility as React/rails devs, who in turn don't have as much mobility as a DevOps person.

Moving companies is by far the easiest way to get a pay rise. Job mobility gives you more negotiating power, and thus a higher salary.

> Is being "closer to business problems" really the sole reason? Or even a big reason?

It's got to do with visibility. Those people more visible to the holders of the purse strings get paid more than those who aren't. The closer you are to the business side of things, the more visible you are to the profit line.

Compensation is very closely tied to how visible the role is to the company profits and/or leaders. A highly skilled DBA who ensure the most profitable application's DB is up, running and tuned is less visible than the business major who uses QlickView to send reports to the CEO. Guess who has more leverage to ask for money.

Sidenote: Skills have nothing to do with compensation. For a long time I used to feel guilty whenever I learned that I was making similar money to someone who was more skilled at my role than I was.

Now I don't feel guilty at all if I find out I'm making more than that person, and this is because I realised that the HR head, who has few relevant skills and can viably be replaced by a mollusc, makes more than I do.

I don't feel guilty making more than others anymore, because other people making more than me don't feel guilty about making more than me.

So true. I recall early in my career an older engineer telling me the closer you are to the money the more money you make.

> I realised that the HR head, who has few relevant skills and can viably be replaced by a mollusc, makes more than I do.

=)

I get what you’re trying to say, but then how come frontend developers tend to get paid less than backend devs, who in turn get paid less than devops engineers?

Because front-end developers are the least visible to the CEO (the furthest away from the business data).

Backend developers are a little bit closer to the business data than backend developers.

Devops are even closer to the data that the CEO wants.

The "visibility" is not "visibility relative to the product" but "visibility relative to the profit".

If you draw the entire business as a series of concentric circles, with the circles representing the business, the centre of the circle (the heart of the business) is Accounting, the next layer would be HR, the next would be sales, then marketing, then maybe advertising, then product development...

The only people less visible (further away from the business data) than the front-end devs are the data entry people.

There's also supply/demand in play. There are a lot of front-end devs out there. Normally when I see someone advertise themselves as full stack, they are backend heavy and can create passable front end code. Not often I see it the other way around which adds even more supply.

You’re absolutely correct. I can write solid C :) but I make ok salary (155 base) and the vast majority of my work is doing architecture diagrams and writing reference code, most often in js. I also write a lot of sql.

The pay people are getting with their basic Python skills still outstrips non-programming professions at the same level of experience by a large margin. I also would like to express some skepticism about the embedded development pay scale idea, because a lot of those jobs are at engineering-first firms that put software, and by extension programmers, last.

> because a lot of those jobs are at engineering-first firms that put software, and by extension programmers, last.

I may be wrong, but I’m also skeptical of ever applying to these sort of positions because I feel they’d likely carry other aspects of engineering firms like heavy credentialism. l.

I don't mind the idea of applying, as long as you negotiate seriously.

I have an MIT degree with coursework in operating systems and a lot of ring 0 experience and my well-paying job has me writing Python and JavaScript. As far as I can tell I'd be taking a significant pay cut if I went into embedded dev.

Supply is higher for "basic coders" but demand is also much higher. There are a whole lot of images that need to be slid across web pages; there aren't that many CPU architectures that need Linux ported to them.

This is correct. At a hedge fund (ostensibly one like HRT given the pedigree you mentioned) geofft makes on the order of $500-700k or more, unlike mere mortals like me that went to a state school that make just $200k. Of course, I didn’t take any embedded classes and got an A- in my C class so perhaps I deserve nothing to begin with.

Speaking of hedgefunds. Those are unlikely to hire embedded software developers but they may need a lot of "basic coders" and they can afford to pay them a lot even if the job is simple.

hedge funds are not uniform enough to have any predictable set of skill requirements

some need a node js script, some swear by python because an area of computational finance has gathered around it, some swear by languages closer to the metal, some have use cases that are better off with low latency stacks, others dont

some are modifying FPGAs, others have simply negotiated a payout from a court case and will teach you F to analyze a dataset faster

if they need coders at all, they all mostly need some level of quicker analysis but not possible to predict what kind of coder a hedge fund will need

Yup; all they need is high IQ people, preferably with pedigree (something I don’t have and am still sad about)

Its useful to understand where you are on the totem pole.

You may come from a background where “college” was a given, or a background where college was quite a dramatic feat as nobody else in your family had done it before, but either way while they are praising you its important for you to know the limits of the “any college” experience early on

Nobody has ever praised me. I have nothing thanks to my state school degree and its apparent I'll never amount to anything because of it.

I'm still not sure why I should even keep going on given my life is basically already over now because I went to "any college" because I only got a 1500/1600 on my SAT.

I disagree with that conclusion.

FAANGs dont care about that and will still pay you mid six figures.

There is also a global boom town in crypto, where you can build and release anything you want and earn more than FAANGs will pay you. You dont even have to speculate on any coin or token. Just launch products and earn.

Boost your serotonin levels and look at the possibilities again.

I already work at a FAANG and only make $200k 3 years in. I really have no hope of cracking any of the others (I work at the least impressive one, naturally).

Seems like being intellectually inferior will stunt me for literally everything - I have fewer positive life experiences than a Stanford pre-freshman

I would suggest toning this down it’s really painful to read your self flagellation all over Hackernews. Your tone comes across as people in non Amazon FANGs are gods.

I’ve worked at both FB/Apple in the ML space and have been promoted multiple times. I can promise you people aren’t throwing themselves at my feet to bow down to my amazing intellect. I do not sit and laugh with my heaps of cash at the poor peasants who only make 100K a year. My life is not perfect! People in FANG are not perfect, a lot of the tech there is also not special at all.

Stop obsessing over your career I can promise you no one is paying attention to where you work so closely. Get some friends you’ll see how little this matters. I have many CS friends in non FANG jobs and I do not care where they work nor think less of them. They’re some of the smartest and happiest people I know. Do you really judge people who don’t work at FANG like you judge yourself, because that really makes you a rude misguided person.

By the way I went to a state school not even in the top 50. I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world, I had an amazing time. No one cares where you went to school two years after you graduated. And no one definitely cares about your SAT scores how do you even remember that anymore?!? Seek professional help, stop whining so much, and do something else besides freaking out about Amazon.

I mean, to people like me they might as well be. Even if people don't bow down to you, it's still better than being dismissed and ridiculed for only making $200k at Amazon from a state school with a < $300k net worth. Fwiw, my smartest friends all work at better companies than me (Google, FB, Airbnb, trading firms) and make quite a bit more than me - somewhere between $80-250k. If anything that makes me feel worse. I have friends that are students and they're all miserable, poor, and I can't really do things with them for a lack of money on their part. On the other hand, I can't do anything with my richer friends because I lack money and can't go on expensive vacations or do expensive activities. It's not great for me. It obviously doesn't help that everyone assumes people like me to be stupid, again, due to my lack of pedigree - every year of my (top 200? 250?) undergrad felt like a stab in the chest, I worked so hard to get so little (a resume that can't get me an interview at Jane Street and or a shot at a top school's grad program). I honestly don't have much hope for the future anymore as a loser in meritocracy. There's just no point if anything I do is just going to lead to the same suffering and derision from the meritocrat elites.

You’re missing my point.

You say “ It obviously doesn't help that everyone assumes people like me to be stupid, again, due to my lack of pedigree”. I am telling you with 100% certainty this is false. People do not think like this.

You should seek therapy to challenge these assumptions you hold.

If I can give you one more anecdotal evidence my partner works at Amazon. I make more than them by over 100K. I do not care, I do not view them any differently. My partner is also proud of their job and likes it. They are smarter than me, it’s just through various circumstances I got a higher paying job. They actually don’t want to leave Amazon right now. They are not depressed that I make more than them. I also try and model my life after them because I view them as more successful than me at life.

Also your friends sound crazy it they are going on trips that you cannot afford on 200K salary. You can definitely afford a few trips to Hawaii a year. Also going out to eat, movies, shopping, camping, hanging out, video gaming etc. are all activities you could do year round on your salary.

I’m done talking back and forth but if I could give you one last message. Use Amazon’s insurance to see a therapist (my partner does and it’s covered). Show them your hacker news comments. Just see what they say. I promise you, you will feel better about these thoughts a few months in the future if you do.

By the way, the reason why I took the time to write out such a long response, is I worry about people like my partner who might read this. While they are quite mentally healthy and I’m sure would brush off your comments I can see someone else slipping into your mindset and getting stressed.

Comments like “FANG gods, I make only 200K, etc.” are really out of touch. I actually hope you someday get a job at Google/Apple/etc. and see that it really is not all that it’s cracked up to be :)

> you can make lots of coin, but they're rare, and most tend to involve an awful lot of years of hard learning before you're competent (embedded dev and firmware/OS dev are some fields desperate for competent hires).

Embedded dev and firmware both seem to pay comparatively poorly, despite the expertise required to do it well. Last year I discussed a number of contracts in this area, and when I found how much was on offer, they were all distinctly low compared with other contracts.

OS dev, I will grant you, can pay well, eg kernel development, graphics drivers, storage layers. I think that's driven by servers and mobile devices more than embedded.

> If you can write solid C, ring 0/EL3 doesn't scare you off, or you can figure out how to cram 10 pounds of hard realtime code into a 5 pound microcontroller... yeah, you'll go far.

Oh if only! Doing that stuff is fun.

I think cramming hard realtime into microcontrollers is best kept for hobby time if "coin" is what you're after though.

Perhaps it's different for big, serious controller projects (like say a Mars rover or satellite), but I think mostly, embedded/microcontroller type things seem to be paid closer to mid-level electronic engineering levels. I don't know why, because there's a lot of expertise involved, but electronic engineering seems to pay considerably less than software at the moment.

> (embedded dev and firmware/OS dev are some fields desperate for competent hires).

There's a Samsung R&D center in my country where they do very cool and tough stuff and they ARE desperate for hires - mostly because their salaries are a laughing stock of the entire city. Web and data/backend pay best and the "tough" fields are trying to get by on sub-web salaries.

I agree that knowing only basic Python or JavaScript isn't that useful today. In the companies I've worked at we've never hired a fresh grad or career change person whose skillset was described as "basic Python skills." We've only hired if they have professional experience, a compelling portfolio, or show some exceptional talent for a junior level. I think this is the norm.