EE here and done a lot of software. The economics of software vs hardware remuneration goes something like this. Doctors and Lawyers provide skilled service t

EE here and done a lot of software. The economics of software vs hardware remuneration goes something like this. Doctors and Lawyers provide skilled service to untrained individuals, and they make decent money. As a hardware engineer you provide your labour to a company that typically knows at least as much as you do about your work. And the company has usually at least handful of people on staff who can take over your work if they decide to let you go. So, not surprisingly, it comes down to power in the value chain. Doctors and lawyers have it, hardware engineers do not. Software engineers on the other hand deal with code that few people beyond a handful would really understand your code. It's not as easy to swap you out for another guy. Then, the cost of producing a new instance of a piece of software that is already working is very low. You make one website, tomorrow 100,000 people could use it. Hardware on the other costs typically at least a few hundred dollars for each unit. Software creates much more value especially on the web with zero marginal cost ... except maybe a bit of marketing until it goes viral. So, software engineers create much more economic value (typically) because zero marginal cost and are harder to replace because software is inscrutable. So they make more than hardware engineers that do harder stuff much less cash. Not unlike comparing the salaries of NBA players vs underwater hockey players.