It is weird that software engineering (especially cloud and web) pay very highly while other highly skilled jobs like hardware programming typically pay much le

It is weird that software engineering (especially cloud and web) pay very highly while other highly skilled jobs like hardware programming typically pay much less. My suspicion is that its related to capital requirements. A web dev has extremely low capital costs related to his work product. He can walk out of the job and be running again on a $500 laptop. A hardware engineer is restricted by the fact that his work product is reliant on combination with large manufacturing orders. He can't fund a order for 1000s of IC units himself. Because of this we see a lot more talent shift into the software world while other areas stagnate.