[alecdibble]

As a former embedded developer, there is another aspect of difficulty that hasn't been touched on. Dealing constantly with physical hardware introduces a host of challenges.

* If you or your coworkers are not organized, you can waste a lot of time looking for proper sized wrenches, proprietary screw heads, speciality crimpers, oscilloscope probes, etc. etc. The more hardware the company makes, the worse this problem can be.

* Most internal connectors are not meant to be constantly plugged and unplugged. In a testing scenario where you have to change connectors or test harnesses frequently, it is common for the connectors to break or wires to become loose. Then you have to waste time figuring out why your hardware stopped working.