I see a lot of software developers are going to software companies only... Any particular reason A Player SE’s avoid going to hardware companies like cisco, Arista,HP, Brocade, A10 networks The only apparent reason to me is Pay. However, I have seen people making 450k with less than 10 yoe in HW industry what are your thoughts? Is work at HW companies less intersting or outdated ??? TC 340k
TLDR; it's easier to be a generalist in software cos. joining a hardware co is the start of a path toward a specialty, not just a job. Skills don't seem as transferable. It's likely that doing embedded, firmware, etc. will leave you starting from scratch elsewhere unless you're an expert your domain
Hardware pays less.
Personal view: Most exceptional hardware companies don't need software that badly, as people will buy from them even is the software isn't great. Exceptions exist, like Tesla (no WLB), Apple (where a lot of people do go to) and small startups (risk + pay is usually bad to terrible). If the hardware is not exceptional, like HP, I wonder if there's any future for them at all.
Another reason: At a hardware company you’re usually considered part of a cost center as the main product is not software. In contrast, if you join a software company you’re part of the profit center hence much better outlook in terms of pay, growth, etc.
Have had the same question for a while now. Working at Arista. Some of the reasons why I would prefer to move to a SW company now, are: 1. Definitely much higher pay in a SW company. The HW industry in all doesn't pay as much as the SW industry. Well, maybe if you are an absolute expert at something in particular, but that's only for the top few percentage of people I would say. 2. The stuff that I am working on isn't helping me at all in gaining much transferable skills. Yes, if I move to another routing/switching company then I might have some advantage, but that's it. If I move to a HW company in a different domain then my transferable skills are even less. Stuff like these are already going to reduce my options further more the longer I stay. 3. Much fewer technologies to work with. To be honest, cloud is driving the software industry right now. But working in HW makes you deal with the usual low level stuff like C, automake, gdb MOSTLY. You aren't really developing much experience in the popular tech stacks. This, atleast for me, is a deal-breaker because I am not working with the latest stuff at work (except if I devote my personal time in doing side projects or something like that). I have felt this while talking to recruiters from SW companies. They don't seem to care much about my current work at all, except for things like whether I was leading a project or how important my role was in terms of my responsibilities. Whenever the discussion moves to languages and technologies, they are usually more interested in my side/short term projects that dealt with the newer tools and technologies. I definitely love what I do. Working with low level code which lives near the metal makes me feel closer to the computers, and I feel like I am learning a lot of cool stuff. But looking at the future, it seems difficult how I could leverage these skills to get a job at another company (which are mostly SW based), and the limited earning potential here makes me want to leave too.
Thanks for such a thoughtful response 👍 I am pretty sure you would have a nice WLB though
No doubt about that. My current WLB is far better than what I would have in a SW company. I barely hit 40hrs a week. But that's the thing. I am young now, and actually can work more than that. If I was older, had a family to take care of, then I would have probably been better off staying here.
OP, are you HW engineer? What your YOE?
ARISTA pays less.
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