These all sound like factors that make hardware a better long-term prospect to build a career around. Basically every single thing you just mentioned makes the field more resistant to automation.

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0xffff2 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Except for "You make less money, often half.", which is a hell of a pill to swallow. As someone ~10 years into my software career, I'm pretty confident that even if I got laid off tomorrow and never found work as an engineer again, I'd still be better off now than if I had stuck with ME or EE as I originally planned.

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dublinstats 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the real deciding factor is government policy. So far they have favored software and services companies, letting them eat the lunch of the hardware producers.

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WarmWash 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The reality is that software is valued like it is hardware, but has a teeny fraction of the input costs and running costs. The government didn't have to do anything, investors naturally ran to the software "copy+paste" money printer. Build it once with only labor costs and then copy for nothing infinite times.

To build a $100M software company you need 5 capable friends and a cloud account. To build a $100M hardware company you need $500M.

	▲	dublinstats 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The government heavily revised and reinterpreted patent law many times in favor of software companies starting in the 80s. Otherwise hardware companies would have the only real moat since, as you say, software is relatively cheap and fast to produce.

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high_priest 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

There are far too many Asian electronic engineers for NA or EU based craftsmen to gain easy living. You have to make a viral product and find a way to satiate the demand, to find similar success to software & AI bros.