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Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

Where I work we have both embedded firmware and software developers. The firmware devs are largely EEs and get paid less due to lack of demand and market competition. If they paid the software devs the same there would be a mass exodus.

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Yep, this is why Intel reported $60 billion in 2017 revenue at a gross margin of 63 percent. [1] Many profitable hardware companies seem to be case studies for what I think of as corporate atherosclerosis.

[1] As mentioned in the article attached to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16194011

Good firmware engineers are incredibly hard to find. I know, I’ve hired two dozen. If you’re a firmware engineer and you’re getting paid less than the software people, leave.

So sad to hear this, as it is much harder to study EE and embedded programming is much much harder than software programming.

They are both equally difficult.

Dunning-Kruger effect applies here. The levels of confidence/validation are completely different. Good luck fixing a software bug on a toaster after-the-fact.

Also, performance is regularly an annoyance, especially if you have to do something non-trivial like process ethernet frames or talk on USB. Sub 8-Mhz processors for embedded processors still extremely popular and the flash size constraint leaves no room for huge libraries or ROM waste.

Completely different.

Hardware and software are two deep domains that can be incredibly complex and challenging.

You're doing a disservice to both by taking a toaster without QA as an argument.

I used to work for a company where the complete opposite has always been true[0]. The EEs make significantly more and are generally held in higher regard.

I guess it depends on owners[1]/managers and maybe what type of product is being produced, also.

[0] Still is true. [1] This was a small, private owned company.

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