First of all, I’m not referring to hardware jobs in software/Internet companies such as GF. I recently talked to a friend who started working as a hardware (analog design) engineer in one of the well-known semiconductor companies. I was very shocked to know that his TC was only 110k, being fresh out of master’s. That’s half of a new master grad’s TC in top software companies. I always thought that hardware engineers are in tech just like software people, so the TC should be comparable. Was my friend lowballed? If not, what resulted in this huge comp difference, given that HW jobs often require more education and a more demanding skill set?
thank you for your compassion
No he is not. Just to give you two more data points: Bay area, PhD, doing algorithm design for the company's core business, TC was 130k in 2015. Another PhD, same location same role, TC 135k in 2017. Many people jump ship to software companies because the pay gap is too large. For example one of my colleague jumped to FB in 2017, same qualification as the above two data points, TC was 270k with 100k sign on.
How long did you colleague do the EE work before going to FB?
5-6 years at the company and 5-6 years for the PhD; huge opportunity cost.
There are many posts on the same topic. Unfortunately that is the reality, hardware pay is roughly half of that of software.
Maybe not pay, moreso TC
What’s the difference?
He is not. Pays at HW companies usually are far less than SW companies, including SWEs working there. Even at GF HWE pay is relatively low comparing to SWE.
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It’s normal. In general even SW folks in HW companies make relatively more. A few HW companies like Apple, Broadcom do pay their HW engineers decent