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Of me and my friends that finished a master in EE, everyone went into software (well, one in mechatronica instead). Not for the lack of love, but for the lack

by 317070 3y ago

Of me and my friends that finished a master in EE, everyone went into software (well, one in mechatronica instead). Not for the lack of love, but for the lack of pay. I would love to go back to EE, but I'm making 5x-10x now in ML software. I don't even understand why the pay in EE is so low. They have healthy profit margins, yet tend to complain about the lack of finding skilled people.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>I don't even understand why the pay in EE is so low. They have healthy profit margins, yet tend to complain about the lack of finding skilled people. Because: 1) EE profits are not healthy at all. Ignore Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, QUALCOMM, which are the outliers printing money due to their market dominant position bordering on monopoly. Most other HW companies have super thin margins by comparison because they're in a race to the bottom with Asian companies which improved a lot, and R&D costs in HW eat up a lot of the profits, leaving you almost nothing for wages. I worked at a German company building super cool X-ray machines for the semiconductor industry and the wages were relatively poor because despite those machines costing as much as an apartment, most of that price is eaten up by components, manufacturing, Q&A and R&D that very little is left for high wages. 2) Much more cheap labor competition from abroad due to offshoring because HW is not user facing so it can be offshored without any drops in UX, as the user facing SW is kept in the west. Since HW offshoring has been going on for much longer than SW and with far more investments in getting it right, meaning companies have a lot more experience with offshore HW dev on the cheap while maintaining high quality. SW hasn't (yet) seem the same push.
- jpgvm 3y ago
  Pretty much this. I worked at a HW company and we did our board design, bring-up etc all in Taiwan, board production/population, enclosure, power, final assembly etc all in Shenzhen and firmware/software as global remote but US centric. It wasn't just that it was cheaper, it was faster, more accurate and more flexible. With collocation of everything you need to build HW (i.e all the inputs, parts etc being made in the same place) it was just so much faster not only to do initial product dev but also to spin revisions/iterate. It's going to take a long time for similar density to build up somewhere else to enable to same sort of super rapid HW development cycle.
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  You are describing the right symptoms but pointing to the wrong cause. There is nothing abnormal in EE profits _if_compared with any other physical widget manufacturer. What is abnormal is the zero copy cost of Software, as a product, and the scalability of Software services in an online world with a _world_ of customers. Nothing in the physical world (other than maybe Financial Products) compares to the margins and scale that you can achieve in Software. This means that for golden geese like AdWords paying 500k to a SWE is just a rounding error. We all see the problem but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of Engineers from other fields won't rightfully jump on that opportunity and profit from the current imbalance in terms arbitrage of Engineering time.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >What is abnormal is the zero copy cost of Software, as a product, and the scalability of Software services in an online world with a _world_ of customers. Not really, abnormal also in the low barrier of regulations in terms of privacy and use of data, compared to traditional engineering jobs, but that is slowly changing, at least in Europe. >his means that for golden geese like AdWords paying 500k to a SWE is just a rounding error. Not every SWE in the world works or can work for golden geese. Most SW jobs in the world aren't for global titans but average jobs like any other paid average. The US skews this because it's full of golden geese with global dominance. Europe and other places not so much. >a lot of Engineers from other fields won't rightfully jump on that opportunity and profit from the current imbalance in terms arbitrage of Engineering time Won't? I'm currently in the process of trying to jump but aren't' allowed to. 100% rejection rate. The market is brutal for side entrants.

by 317070 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>I don't even understand why the pay in EE is so low. They have healthy profit margins, yet tend to complain about the lack of finding skilled people. Because: 1) EE profits are not healthy at all. Ignore Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, QUALCOMM, which are the outliers printing money due to their market dominant position bordering on monopoly. Most other HW companies have super thin margins by comparison because they're in a race to the bottom with Asian companies which improved a lot, and R&D costs in HW eat up a lot of the profits, leaving you almost nothing for wages. I worked at a German company building super cool X-ray machines for the semiconductor industry and the wages were relatively poor because despite those machines costing as much as an apartment, most of that price is eaten up by components, manufacturing, Q&A and R&D that very little is left for high wages. 2) Much more cheap labor competition from abroad due to offshoring because HW is not user facing so it can be offshored without any drops in UX, as the user facing SW is kept in the west. Since HW offshoring has been going on for much longer than SW and with far more investments in getting it right, meaning companies have a lot more experience with offshore HW dev on the cheap while maintaining high quality. SW hasn't (yet) seem the same push.

jpgvm 3y ago
Pretty much this. I worked at a HW company and we did our board design, bring-up etc all in Taiwan, board production/population, enclosure, power, final assembly etc all in Shenzhen and firmware/software as global remote but US centric. It wasn't just that it was cheaper, it was faster, more accurate and more flexible. With collocation of everything you need to build HW (i.e all the inputs, parts etc being made in the same place) it was just so much faster not only to do initial product dev but also to spin revisions/iterate. It's going to take a long time for similar density to build up somewhere else to enable to same sort of super rapid HW development cycle.
DoingIsLearning 3y ago
You are describing the right symptoms but pointing to the wrong cause. There is nothing abnormal in EE profits _if_compared with any other physical widget manufacturer. What is abnormal is the zero copy cost of Software, as a product, and the scalability of Software services in an online world with a _world_ of customers. Nothing in the physical world (other than maybe Financial Products) compares to the margins and scale that you can achieve in Software. This means that for golden geese like AdWords paying 500k to a SWE is just a rounding error. We all see the problem but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of Engineers from other fields won't rightfully jump on that opportunity and profit from the current imbalance in terms arbitrage of Engineering time.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >What is abnormal is the zero copy cost of Software, as a product, and the scalability of Software services in an online world with a _world_ of customers. Not really, abnormal also in the low barrier of regulations in terms of privacy and use of data, compared to traditional engineering jobs, but that is slowly changing, at least in Europe. >his means that for golden geese like AdWords paying 500k to a SWE is just a rounding error. Not every SWE in the world works or can work for golden geese. Most SW jobs in the world aren't for global titans but average jobs like any other paid average. The US skews this because it's full of golden geese with global dominance. Europe and other places not so much. >a lot of Engineers from other fields won't rightfully jump on that opportunity and profit from the current imbalance in terms arbitrage of Engineering time Won't? I'm currently in the process of trying to jump but aren't' allowed to. 100% rejection rate. The market is brutal for side entrants.