News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The US is building factories at a wildly fast rate by no_wizard on Thursday June 08, 2023 @05:22PM (#36249295)
Maybe not surprisingly, the real money in this field is in maintenance and ensuring uptime. The robots are cool to develop too but its really hard to get a job doing that directly unless you're a startup with funding from a VC or have an incredibly good resume, but there is a cottage industry of people (businesses or business units usually) that make lots of money maintaining deployed fleets and developing patches / augmentations for existing robotics.

I think its hard to break into in some respects, compared to other fields (you need some certifications iirc in addition to a degree) but my limited, anecdotal exposure suggests its quite interesting and lucrative.

That said, my sample size is small, and on the other end of the spectrum, I know a few folks who maintain complex CNC equipment and develop software for it (using a language I don't recongize, I think its proprietary) and while they make good money, its not better than you can make as a senior engineer at a reputable place as a web developer, for example.

Re:The US is building factories at a wildly fast rate by AlotOfReading on Thursday June 08, 2023 @05:31PM (#36249445)
Maybe it's different where you live, but here in California you don't need a degree to do industrial robotics. It certainly doesn't hurt, but unless you're in controls people aren't too picky.

You would make more in webdev or ML though.

Re:The US is building factories at a wildly fast rate by no_wizard on Thursday June 08, 2023 @09:43PM (#36252082)
Not all of industrial robotics, but what they do, which is maintain and develop software for robotics in critical settings and oversee maintenance related to, I believe did, or at the very least, they are highly incentivized to get them after getting hired.

The one outlier example I gave is specifically tailored for medical equipment.