At least in the US, yes. Check out general1465's reply to me.
The problem, I think, is that there are many competent hardware design engineers available abroad and since hardware is usually designed with very rigorous specs, tests, etc. it's easy to outsource. You can test if the hardware design engineer(s) came up with an adequate design and, if not, refuse payment or demand reimbursement, depending on how the contract is written. It's all very clear-cut and measurable.
Software is still the "Wild West", even with LLMs. It's nebulous, fast-moving, and requires a lot of communication to get close to reaching the maintenance stage.
I'm talking about chip design: Verilog, VHDL, et al.
Very specifications-driven and easily tested. Very easy to outsource if you have a domestic engineer write the spec and test suite.
Mind you, I am not talking about IP-sensitive chip design or anything novel. I am talking about iterative improvements to well-known and solved problems e.g., a next generation ADC with slightly less output ripple.
Sure, so, yeah "general1465" seemed to be talking about PCB Design.
And from what I know of SemiEngineering's focus, they're talking about chip design in the sense of processor design (like Tenstorrent, Ampere, Ventana, SiFive, Rivos, Graphcore, Arm, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc.) rather than the kind of IP you're referring to. Although, I think there's still an argument to be made for the skill shortage in the broader semiconductor design areas.
Anyway, I agree with you that the commoditized IP that's incrementally improving, while very important, isn't going to pay as well as the "novel stuff" in processor design, or even in things like photonics.
Definitely not. You do normally have pretty good specifications, but the level of testing required is much higher than software.
> Very easy to outsource
The previous company I was in tried to outsource some directed C tests. It did not go well. It's easy to outsource but it's even easier to get worthless tests back.
> the level of testing required is much higher than software
No dispute there. I suppose I meant "simply" instead of "easily".
Outside of aeronautics software (specifically, aviation and spaceships/NASA), the topology of the software solution space can change dramatically during development.
Stated differently: the cyclomatic complexity of a codebase is absurdly volatile, especially during the exploratory development stage, but even later on... things can very abruptly change.
AFAICT, this is not really the case with chip design. That is, the sheer amount of testing you have to do is high, but the very nature of *what you're testing* isn't changing under your feet all the time.
This means that the construction of a test suite can largely be front-loaded which I think of as "simple", I suppose...
The problem, I think, is that there are many competent hardware design engineers available abroad and since hardware is usually designed with very rigorous specs, tests, etc. it's easy to outsource. You can test if the hardware design engineer(s) came up with an adequate design and, if not, refuse payment or demand reimbursement, depending on how the contract is written. It's all very clear-cut and measurable.
Software is still the "Wild West", even with LLMs. It's nebulous, fast-moving, and requires a lot of communication to get close to reaching the maintenance stage.