6 ms·

You still get paid a lot more working at google working on generic backend protobuf shuffling than you will working on SSD firmware at a hardware company or int

You still get paid a lot more working at google working on generic backend protobuf shuffling than you will working on SSD firmware at a hardware company or intel's C++ compiler.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
monocasa 8y ago
For those doubting you, the going rate for embedded engineers out here in the Denver area where a lot of these SSD controllers are designed is ~$90k. Embedded engineers get peanuts for some reason.
- vermilingua 8y ago
  ~$90k is now peanuts. Interesting.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    That's less than 30k in 1980 dollars. Yeah, that's next to nothing.
    - checkyoursudo 8y ago
      For example: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...
    - losvedir 8y ago
      Er, what? Are you thinking of "$30k" in today's terms. $30,000 in 1980 was a lot of money! That's more than $90k in today's dollars...
  - zanny 8y ago
    If you took the doubling of productivity since 1975 and inflation adjusted the median income from then ($7750) you would get about $68,000. In practice wages haven't risen against productivity and GDP so the real figure is $45,000. To make it look even worse, the GDP tripled but population only rose 50%, so if you adjusted wages against total economic growth instead of productivity median should be around $110,000. Median. So yes, $90k is pretty much peanuts for how much money an embedded engineer would be on average making for their employer.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  Weird, I thought embedded would be much more sought after and rare.
  - Matthias247 8y ago
    There's A LOT less people. But the demand is also lower than for people than can build simple websites. It seems like the latter is a lot more important than the first for setting the market rate on salaries. Or maybe it's about the fact that embedded work is often done be electrical engineers, which are seen in a different pay category in some countries.
- Moral_ 8y ago
  Can confirm former Intel SSD in longmont 95k -- shit RSUs.
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  I've noticed the same thing, and suspect that it's related to the way that higher level software scales compared to embedded. If a line of code is written to run in a customer's browser, then that line of code may be deployed to millions, maybe billions, of customers. But, if an equivalent line of code goes in to firmware for some widget, then you're doing pretty good to get that line in to a million widgets at all, and it's going to take a lot longer too.
  - londons_explore 8y ago
    Write an embedded bootloader and there's a good chance your code will be used by a billion people within a few years of writing it. You'll still get paid peanuts for doing it.
    - ajmurmann 8y ago
      I think it's a issue related to the visibility of the quality of the work. If the product is even 20% more reliable (whatever that exactly means), hardly anyone will actually notice. Nobody notices the absence of an error. That's although it probably took a huge effort to achieve this. Making a user flow just a little bit nicer is very visible and gets attention. I always felt that ISPs suffer a similar problem. Nobody cares if everything works as expected, but we'll get upset of it doesn't. However, there is hardly anything outside of what we take for granted they can do that we will actively appreciate. What could a embedded engineer working on SSDs do that will be noticed, appreciated and not taking for granted by customers?
    - bacon_waffle 8y ago
      Yes, and that's just it. If a software product takes off, that can happen incredibly quickly, and the new product is primarily composed of code. If a hardware product takes off, the change can't be nearly as fast as it's bound by manufacturing, and the code is just one component in each thing. I happen to be working on firmware for a VOIP phone today - we'll end up making N million of these things, over some number of years. If I were working on an Android app with similar functionality, that app could conceivably go to N million people tomorrow, or 10N, or 100N... Anyway, I don't think I have a particularly clear or concise (or even correct) argument here, but it's the only way I've been able to rationalise what we've observed.
- kabdib 8y ago
  In Xbox, many of the firmware hires the hardware folks made seemed to be payed poorly. Also, there were tons of contractors, and not much institutional knowledge was retained. (At one point they had to pay a consulting firm to decompile the firmware for a controller because they had lost the source code). "Why do we need source control? It's all there, right on my laptop. Source Depot is just a bunch of trouble." [rough quote from memory, maybe conflated from a couple of engineers]. I'm happy to report that things got better. On the software side of Xbox the people were much better compensated, and we wrote lots of firmware, too. It was probably harder to be hired, though.
  - optimiz3 8y ago
    "Why do we need source control? It's all there, right on my laptop. Source Depot is just a bunch of trouble." I've threatened to withhold paychecks from employees who have said this to me. The job isn't done till the code is checked in, building, and backed up.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  I know what you mean--they could get paid a lot more elsewhere--but it still weirds me out that techies consider $90k/year "peanuts". I know people trying to raise children on one-third of that.
- sytelus 8y ago
  The hardware companies are not super profitable in the first place. Most just struggle to keep light on in their quest for hitting the margin bottom. Also, lot of these improvements don’t usually translate to higher sales because MTBF data is typically not even published for many consumer SSDs. The solution for this would be to open source such projects so engineers from many smaller companies can collaborate. These companies needs to understand that they will not be able to attract top talent and collaboration instead of competition is the way forward.
barrkel 8y ago
Compiler hacking, OTOH is a lot of fun and actually quite rewarding when other devs use your product.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Intel pays not so well, other companies pay better, like apple, fb, google, etc for doing compiler work.

You still get paid a lot more working at google working on generic backend protobuf shuffling than you will working on SSD firmware at a hardware company or intel's C++ compiler.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

monocasa 8y ago

For those doubting you, the going rate for embedded engineers out here in the Denver area where a lot of these SSD controllers are designed is ~$90k. Embedded engineers get peanuts for some reason.

vermilingua 8y ago
~$90k is now peanuts. Interesting.
- monocasa 8y ago
  That's less than 30k in 1980 dollars. Yeah, that's next to nothing.
  - checkyoursudo 8y ago
    For example: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-...
  - losvedir 8y ago
    Er, what? Are you thinking of "$30k" in today's terms. $30,000 in 1980 was a lot of money! That's more than $90k in today's dollars...
- zanny 8y ago
  If you took the doubling of productivity since 1975 and inflation adjusted the median income from then ($7750) you would get about $68,000. In practice wages haven't risen against productivity and GDP so the real figure is $45,000. To make it look even worse, the GDP tripled but population only rose 50%, so if you adjusted wages against total economic growth instead of productivity median should be around $110,000. Median. So yes, $90k is pretty much peanuts for how much money an embedded engineer would be on average making for their employer.
brokenmachine 8y ago
Weird, I thought embedded would be much more sought after and rare.
- Matthias247 8y ago
  There's A LOT less people. But the demand is also lower than for people than can build simple websites. It seems like the latter is a lot more important than the first for setting the market rate on salaries. Or maybe it's about the fact that embedded work is often done be electrical engineers, which are seen in a different pay category in some countries.
Moral_ 8y ago
Can confirm former Intel SSD in longmont 95k -- shit RSUs.
bacon_waffle 8y ago
I've noticed the same thing, and suspect that it's related to the way that higher level software scales compared to embedded. If a line of code is written to run in a customer's browser, then that line of code may be deployed to millions, maybe billions, of customers. But, if an equivalent line of code goes in to firmware for some widget, then you're doing pretty good to get that line in to a million widgets at all, and it's going to take a lot longer too.
- londons_explore 8y ago
  Write an embedded bootloader and there's a good chance your code will be used by a billion people within a few years of writing it. You'll still get paid peanuts for doing it.
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    I think it's a issue related to the visibility of the quality of the work. If the product is even 20% more reliable (whatever that exactly means), hardly anyone will actually notice. Nobody notices the absence of an error. That's although it probably took a huge effort to achieve this. Making a user flow just a little bit nicer is very visible and gets attention. I always felt that ISPs suffer a similar problem. Nobody cares if everything works as expected, but we'll get upset of it doesn't. However, there is hardly anything outside of what we take for granted they can do that we will actively appreciate. What could a embedded engineer working on SSDs do that will be noticed, appreciated and not taking for granted by customers?
  - bacon_waffle 8y ago
    Yes, and that's just it. If a software product takes off, that can happen incredibly quickly, and the new product is primarily composed of code. If a hardware product takes off, the change can't be nearly as fast as it's bound by manufacturing, and the code is just one component in each thing. I happen to be working on firmware for a VOIP phone today - we'll end up making N million of these things, over some number of years. If I were working on an Android app with similar functionality, that app could conceivably go to N million people tomorrow, or 10N, or 100N... Anyway, I don't think I have a particularly clear or concise (or even correct) argument here, but it's the only way I've been able to rationalise what we've observed.
kabdib 8y ago
In Xbox, many of the firmware hires the hardware folks made seemed to be payed poorly. Also, there were tons of contractors, and not much institutional knowledge was retained. (At one point they had to pay a consulting firm to decompile the firmware for a controller because they had lost the source code). "Why do we need source control? It's all there, right on my laptop. Source Depot is just a bunch of trouble." [rough quote from memory, maybe conflated from a couple of engineers]. I'm happy to report that things got better. On the software side of Xbox the people were much better compensated, and we wrote lots of firmware, too. It was probably harder to be hired, though.
- optimiz3 8y ago
  "Why do we need source control? It's all there, right on my laptop. Source Depot is just a bunch of trouble." I've threatened to withhold paychecks from employees who have said this to me. The job isn't done till the code is checked in, building, and backed up.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I know what you mean--they could get paid a lot more elsewhere--but it still weirds me out that techies consider $90k/year "peanuts". I know people trying to raise children on one-third of that.
sytelus 8y ago
The hardware companies are not super profitable in the first place. Most just struggle to keep light on in their quest for hitting the margin bottom. Also, lot of these improvements don’t usually translate to higher sales because MTBF data is typically not even published for many consumer SSDs. The solution for this would be to open source such projects so engineers from many smaller companies can collaborate. These companies needs to understand that they will not be able to attract top talent and collaboration instead of competition is the way forward.

barrkel 8y ago

Compiler hacking, OTOH is a lot of fun and actually quite rewarding when other devs use your product.

woolvalley 8y ago
Intel pays not so well, other companies pay better, like apple, fb, google, etc for doing compiler work.