[dachworker]

The job is too niche. This means there are very few employers worldwide that can make use of your experience. That actually puts downwards pressure on your salary (the employer is a quasi monopsony), not to mention that you are tied to a few locations.

[bamboozled]

It's quite hard to get motivated to study anything for a career when everything is posed to be replaced by AI. Not saying that is what will happen, but it seems daunting to spend 5-6 years getting into chip design only to be replaced...

[worldsayshi]

I'm surprised if a chip expert wouldn't be very employable by various downstream businesses?

[vlovich123]

The reason software pays so well is that there’s a lot of demand by a lot of companies for the best in a global market AND the enough of the best can counter those offers by going to VCs to fund their own company. EE market is not as global and much more difficult to fund. The only ones paying the biggest salaries are the big companies

[jvanderbot]

I this strikes me as less than half the reason, though still a very big factor.

If I had to guess it would be that every business needs (or thinks they need) a custom website, and often some custom software processes, and definitely their own custom network and IT, and likely some slightly customized ERP. But rarely, very very rarely, do any businesses want custom chips or computers such that a CE is required. The demand for software is so high.

[MrBuddyCasino]

> The demand for software is so high.

What is interesting in these kinds of discussions is that intuitively, nobody really beliefs in the law of supply & demand. On an emotional level, people always think that effort and difficulty should be rewarded on their own - which is actually correct from a social and ethical POV, and yet:

markets are markets operating under the iron law of supply and demand.

[cityofdelusion]

It is more intuitive if you spend more time in academia / higher education. Even around me, with a bunch of mid-lower tier schools, PhDs and masters are being pumped out semester after semester in very niche areas. In all my time searching through job boards, I've probably seen a tiny handful of chip design jobs compared to the absolute boat load of things like more generalized engineers, business analysts, financial/accounting, and so on.

[MrBuddyCasino]

> It is more intuitive if you spend more time in academia / higher education.

And this is precisely why credentialism and large parts of academia must go. The incentives are perverse.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Yep, just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's valuable. E.g. a lot of art is extremely difficult to create but not desired by anyone other than the artist. The value is not proportional to the difficulty.

Likewise just because something is potentially worthwhile doesn't mean it's valuable in a specific instance. E.g. drinking water is required for survival and thus extremely worthwhile, but so cheap that restaurants give it away for free when you order anything else.

[lotsofpulp]

Employable by multiple downstream businesses able and willing to pay high prices in the location you want to live is the full parameter.

[bradfa]

If you can do ASIC design, you can probably do FPGA design. FPGA design is a pretty easy thing to do remotely, it's not ALL that different from software work. I know a bunch of consultants who make very good money living where they desire, working from home, doing FPGA design for industrial customers. Granted, these people aren't fresh college graduates since they're experienced engineers, but there are a good number of them out there.