Indeed, the pay for embedded development is curiously low especially given the wide range of skills you need - both software and hardware knowledge as well as debugging skills that take years to develop.

I think there's been a lot of market distortion over the last 15 years or so due to the way money has flowed. VCs haven't been very interested in funding startups making hardware so they tend to be self-funded as in funded on a shoestring. There's not the money sloshing around for these companies.