Hi guys, I think I am going to middle age crisis regarding my career. Now I look back at the decisions that I have taken and time that I have spent sleepless at school in learning about semiconductors and other electronics. Now I feel that there is a huge income disparity among software and hardware engineers ! I feel like shit when people in SDE quote their TC. It occurred to my mind that I should switch my career just for the money. I am just wondering if any of you guys in hardware engineering or any other field feel like switching to SDE for the big bucks ? Yoe: 6-7 years hardware engineer
Yup. HW is dead. TC at HW companies except for Apple and Nvidia is crap. You are better off getting a HW position at a SW company like Google. My company has thought that it could make do with third tier talent (TTT) for the past 20 years. The chickens have finally come home to roost. Thank you PSU, SJSU(BK was from there), ASU, Birla, Anna grads! You are still relatively young, 30? Switch before it is too late.
Yeah . At 31 !!
I switched from a tier 1 HW company to SW. Honestly my co workers were much smarter in the HW company and my software company (tier 2/3) paid a lot more but It was almost depressing to work with them and that will stay with you too. I know I’m not comparing apples to apples but try to get into Fang or don’t switch . Anyone can become a software engineer and you run into all sort of oddballs who have a ton of personality issues.
Hardware has mostly been commoditized and/or monopolized depending on which part of the stack you’re talking about, largely due to the cost of entry into the market. Lots of specialized knowledge and tooling is needed. It’s much cheaper to build general-purpose hardware and do customization in software, even with the salaries that engineers are getting.
Other that that switching worked out well for me in terms of TC but honestly I’m dumber now than I have been . Most of my knowledge has sadly been self learning and I constantly feel that my superiors ( in experience or rank ) either have some weird personality issue or are unwilling or unable to teach. I’ve mentored a ton of people though but there is simply no reciprocal
How did you prepare for the transition? Is leetcode enough? Do they ask like "prove your algo"?
Yes leetcode is enough to switch . Then just read a lot of blogs and try to always improve your code when you get a job . First year isn’t easy but second on is fine
If you are doing ASICS look at companies like MSFT and google and Facebook, they all started to do ASICS as they realize apples success with vertical integration. Try get a few offers from those companies, and let them compete, I do think top quality hw engineers will see comp go up as the ai and ml wave continue to come. After all, you only need google fb and Apple to fight for you to drive up tc
I'd say try to switch to SW before you get too old and lazy. There are always going to be hw guys who make a lot more than the average but most people are average. If you feel like you're some hw genius, go ahead, show yourself and get that exceptional tc otherwise you'll live the rest of your career with this frustration. But the exceptional sw guys will still make more than you :) I'm in the same bucket, doing low level software. Blind and housing cost in the Bay Area made me give up psychologically. I'm going to JavaScript or whatever as soon as I can.
Keep in mind that you're reading about salaries from people who are "in the know" enough to be reading blind and most are from top companies... add to that some selection bias due to the fact that average joes have no need to post their TC but top dogs really wanna flex. I'm sure the there are a handful of REALLY highly compensated individuals out there who can't even be bothered to type out their tc (so that would be the right tail of the distribution curve) but I'm sure there are maaaaany more people who are pretty low in comp and aren't even aware of it and haven't posted on forums like this - so the left tail is probably pretty hefty. If you enjoy hardware and make a decent living AND you think you'll continue to enjoy it... keep doing it
Yea, blind is a shitty place to gauge average TC.
My friend was a fresh hire at General Motors in Atlanta made $62,000 per year as a front end developer