> Hardware companies simply don't pay as much as software companies in industry. I don't fully understand the reasons, because hardware is often more difficult to deal with than software.
My theory is it comes down to the margins on software vs hardware products. If you look at software, in a certain sense, your unit margins are infinite - your variable costs are nothing(well, besides the literal bandwidth) to copy a piece of code and sell it to a second customer.
With hardware, for every unit of your product, you have raw material cost, mfg, transport, etc. At scale, there's less $ to go around.
My theory is it comes down to the margins on software vs hardware products. If you look at software, in a certain sense, your unit margins are infinite - your variable costs are nothing(well, besides the literal bandwidth) to copy a piece of code and sell it to a second customer. With hardware, for every unit of your product, you have raw material cost, mfg, transport, etc. At scale, there's less $ to go around.