3 ms·

In my humble experience, slightly less ≈ 30% to 40% less.

by pjbk 6y ago

AlotOfReading 6y ago
Wow, that's a much bigger differential than my experience. Are you comfortable sharing the general region so I can avoid it?
- pjbk 6y ago
  I have been involved in embedded systems for more than 25 years now, and I barely do "pure" embedded development these days. That is projects that comprise only designing a specific PCB hardware, or writing the firmware drivers and top level application for them. Except for a couple of years I have resided mostly outside of California, but when doing consulting I have mostly engaged with companies in the Bay area. In the past when I did pure embedded development I had to fight tooth and claw to get rates close to $100/hour, while at the same time iOS app developers or webdevs were starting at $120-$140/hour easily, even after the mobile app craze. Despite taking into consideration that I am both a hardware and a software engineer, and rates outside of California were much lower ($45-$70/hour at the time). Which was one of the reasons I pushed hard to find my clients in the Bay area instead. These days since I have more experience and business contacts I have diversified into more complex projects that have embedded components and pay me better since they belong to regulated industries. Even now I work with full-stack software programmers in AWS/GCP cloud apps, React/Vue frameworks, modern databases and connected middleware that make around $200/hour. For comparison, in the last years I have been involved in the development of a medical device where I did the hardware design (MCU/FPGA, signal acquisition), HDL/firmware programming (Verilog, RTOS, Linux, BLE), technical host tools (C++, Python, Qt) and was paid $180/hour, and lately a mobile robot project where I did the hardware architecture, integration and system control loops (MCUs), and prototyped the high level software application (RT-Linux, ROS, Nvidia Jetson) for $150/hour. An acquaintance in the valley that was working for a similar project but entirely in the ML/CV stack was billing $270/hour. That may be a bit extreme example since ML is hot today, but nevertheless.
  - ducktective 6y ago
    Is this the same in Europe or outside of Bay area? It really isn't fair since you are doing the actual full-stack (from F_freaking_PGA to C++/Vue on host) but the ML type is invoking an amalgamation of libraries to do something with 90% confidence level.

In my humble experience, slightly less ≈ 30% to 40% less.

by pjbk 6y ago

In my humble experience, slightly less ≈ 30% to 40% less.

Wow, that's a much bigger differential than my experience. Are you comfortable sharing the general region so I can avoid it?

pjbk 6y ago
I have been involved in embedded systems for more than 25 years now, and I barely do "pure" embedded development these days. That is projects that comprise only designing a specific PCB hardware, or writing the firmware drivers and top level application for them. Except for a couple of years I have resided mostly outside of California, but when doing consulting I have mostly engaged with companies in the Bay area. In the past when I did pure embedded development I had to fight tooth and claw to get rates close to $100/hour, while at the same time iOS app developers or webdevs were starting at $120-$140/hour easily, even after the mobile app craze. Despite taking into consideration that I am both a hardware and a software engineer, and rates outside of California were much lower ($45-$70/hour at the time). Which was one of the reasons I pushed hard to find my clients in the Bay area instead. These days since I have more experience and business contacts I have diversified into more complex projects that have embedded components and pay me better since they belong to regulated industries. Even now I work with full-stack software programmers in AWS/GCP cloud apps, React/Vue frameworks, modern databases and connected middleware that make around $200/hour. For comparison, in the last years I have been involved in the development of a medical device where I did the hardware design (MCU/FPGA, signal acquisition), HDL/firmware programming (Verilog, RTOS, Linux, BLE), technical host tools (C++, Python, Qt) and was paid $180/hour, and lately a mobile robot project where I did the hardware architecture, integration and system control loops (MCUs), and prototyped the high level software application (RT-Linux, ROS, Nvidia Jetson) for $150/hour. An acquaintance in the valley that was working for a similar project but entirely in the ML/CV stack was billing $270/hour. That may be a bit extreme example since ML is hot today, but nevertheless.
- ducktective 6y ago
  Is this the same in Europe or outside of Bay area? It really isn't fair since you are doing the actual full-stack (from F_freaking_PGA to C++/Vue on host) but the ML type is invoking an amalgamation of libraries to do something with 90% confidence level.