I feel like a large part of embedded is just telling people to stop counting BOM pennies and buy COTS. It ends up cheaper a shocking majority of the time. I've toyed around with the idea of moving up the stack, but I don't know if pushing protobufs around full-time is any less tedious.

Depends. I've done embedded in high margin products like precision measuring equipment and semiconductors and low margin products like automotive or advertising electronics. Pay and software is mor or less the same, what varies is the amount of bureocracy, documentation and requirements engineering.

I'm not too upset with the pay because I have a nice niche in the FANGoverse. It's mainly the short-sighted muntzing that I find tedious, where tens of millions in development costs are spent to avoid tens of thousands in BOM costs over the product lifetime.

Robotics and custom silicon stuff. I used to do consumer electronics, but that was pretty terrible.

seems to me like buffer pushers would be more viable for FANGS. embedded is fun and interesting but for individual contributor / engineer there is not much money in it. might as well open up a shop backing up ssd drives and reinstalling windows for grandmas.