[alain94040]

IC design can still pay very well in Silicon Valley. So you are on right track with that, if that's what you really enjoy. Also, people who can wear both hardware and software hats are extremely valuable (aka highly paid), but for very specialized jobs. For instance, embedded programming for high-end chips.

[hw_engineer]

Yeah, but IC design would be a long shot to me. I have lots of board level experience, but just the odd academic course on IC design. If needed, I'll do, but I'd rather leverage my board and system level expertise.