[user_7832]

I'd imagine it's access to capital and resources. I suspect many engineers/professionals (especially in eg consulting or manufacturing) would start their own business if they have the financial stability to do so.

A lot of market forces tend to "naturally" create monopolies/oligopolies. For eg if you're the biggest steel plant you can operate efficiently and keep moderate margins, beating any plants not as big (economies of scale). An independent guy (or even the entire team) can't just open a new steel plant shop down the road, even if the current one sucks.

[noobermin]

Haven't software engineering salaries been like 200K for almost a decade? With very little actual need in capital requirements relative to a host of industries with expensive equipment, I'd say of the class of workers most poised to start their own businesses, I'd say you guys are the best placed.

To be a bit honest, I'm a computational scientist who's never seen anything near 100K and likely never will. It's hard to imagine not having around 4 times my salary and not being able to start something myself.

[WarmWash]

To start a $100M software company you need 5 engineers and 5 laptops.

To start a $100M hardware company you need $500M.

Software is a tragedy of the commons situation where anyone smart enough to engineer is smart enough to learn pointers and objects instead of shear stresses and voltage fluxs.

Nevermind that software pays much more with a much lower barrier to entry.

[radicalbyte]

It gets sucked up into housing. So if you're in your early 50s that's fine as you probably brought very cheap. Mid-40s and under? Unlikely unless you were extremely lucky. I'm 45 by the time I've been able to buy housing it has always been peak despite having very high earnings at times.

[user_7832]

> I'd say of the class of workers most poised to start their own businesses, I'd say you guys are the best placed.

I think your premise is significantly correct; things like launch HN (and even YC startups) are heavily software biased. I suspect you'll find about a hundred product hunt products for every physical kickstarter/indiegogo.

[singpolyma3]

You might be surprised how easy it is for some people to make 200K and end up in debt...

[throwaway173738]

In most companies and industries it’s closer to 100k to start.