It's even crazier when you consider that readily available knowledge for cutting edge hardware is much more scarce compared to software. There are no massive communities of knowledgeable people all trying to show you what you are doing wrong.

Especially for something like silicon design, there is virtually zero knowledge available outside of institutions.

I think in some ways this actually is better though. I find that when I want technical info about hardware-specific topics, I do not find the same kind of dumpster-fire articles like I would about say, ReactJS, or something similarly trendy. Its always some basic html/css website with extremely well written technical information from an old-head that is a master of whatever he is talking about.

I understand what you mean by better but you have to admit the much lower compensation is weird given how much higher the bar is to be an SME and how many fewer the engineers are.

Software doesn't require a few billion in capital as a complement.

I meant that it might be better that there aren't massive communities of them. Didn't mean anything about compensation.

It won't stay like this. Engineers are figuring out that they are making much less than their peers in software and it is not sustainable.

I wanted to go into ASIC design a few decades ago, but the level of pay was hordendously low compared to IT.

Sounds like nothing has changed

There is nothing "sad" about it. It is simple economics. The return on investment (ROI) is so much higher in software, compared to hardware. Correspondingly, the profits margins are way higher in software, compared to hardware.

Related: When you look at salaries for robotics engineers who work in a factory, the salaries are so much lower than you would expect. Plus, your factory is probably in a rural area due to very cheap land prices.

One more: Anything "embedded" usually pays surprisingly low salaries considering their skill-level (much higher than mine!).

> There is nothing "sad" about it. It is simple economics. The return on investment (ROI) is so much higher in software, compared to hardware. Correspondingly, the profits margins are way higher in software, compared to hardware.

I've seldom seen a more classic example of econ bro arrogance than this comment. Apparently economics doesn't just tell us which neoliberal policies to support, it also tells us when we can be happy and sad too?

I think you're close:

There are relatively fewer employers seeking hardware skillsets compared to employers seeking software skillsets. People may say, "there are way more software engineers though! hardware is SO hard!!" as a counter, but they don't realize there is a proportionally crazy amount of software employers out there trying to hire engineers.

Your pay is capped by what you make your employer (the ROI you mention), but actually determined by how hard it is to replace you. Hard being defined as the difference between "# of Positions" and "# of Employable People". You could make your employer 10 million a year but you won't see a dime of that if anyone on earth can replace you within 5 minutes.

The fact that rural areas pay less has more to do with lower bargaining power of the employees than it does the cost of living. If one quits, the literal million dollar question is where are they going to go work instead? The other major manufacturer out here in the middle of nowhere? "Shut up, take what you get."

If the rate hikes cause a mass startup extinction we'd see an equalization of pay.