That is the confusing part say you need to hire 100 people at 1 mil. per year comp to get drivers to a good state. Thats 1/3 of their quarterly profit but would prob double the revenue in a few years.
More likely, they wait to see how the AI HW startups shake up and then acquire the ones that have anything worth paying for.
Seems like a common thing in hardware companies, they chronically underpay, which for some reason hardware/electrical engineers seem to accept, but that makes them a last-choice for competent software engineers, who have much better-paying options.
Didn't you just explicitly say the reason? A SWE can go off and make Google in their Gargage; a EE can't make a fab in their garage.
It may be relatively easier for people to make new chips without needing AMD/Intel (see all of fang company making their own). But it's still companies with lots of money making new chips and not people in their garage.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Non_sequitur_(fal...
You could probably get 80% there by dedicating enough AMD developers to improving AMD support in existing AI frameworks and software, in parallel with improving drivers and whatever CUDA equivalent they are betting on right now. But it would need a massive concerted effort that few companies seem to be able to pull off (probably it's hard to align the company on the right goals)
Salaries at semico companies are not even close to this
Also why would you even need ppl this good? People who earn 1 mil offer way, way more than just tech skills