> If costs get too high Asian companies win

Wouldn't this apply to software companies as well? Yet we see higher pay, rather than imports/outsourcing.

The key difference, I think, is that software is user-facing, whereas hardware no longer is. The bigwigs and bean counters who make the hire-versus-outsource decisions can tell that lowest-bidder outsourced software sucks and so don't go for it, whereas the outsourced hardware "works" well enough to ship, so they keep outsourcing it.

Interesting. I wonder if this distinction applies within software as well. For example, systems programmers getting paid less than application programmers because the latter makes software "closer" to the user, and backend programmers getting paid less than frontend programmers for the same reason.

Do backend engineers get paid less than frontend? In my experience its been the opposite.

Yes, backend engineers do get paid more in general. I was just wondering why this runs contrary to OP's explanation that "closeness" to user triumphs job difficulty (when it comes to leverage/salaries).

There's more software engineering companies, than "hard" engineering companies.