And then goes to show how a SW engineer makes 30% more. Where’s the myth? Especially given that EE requires a lot more work so that 30% gap is actually worse.
"It is hard to make any sweeping conclusions that software pays more than hardware, or vice versa. The myth of software always being more lucrative may be unfounded, but the sentiment does exist among young professionals looking to choose career paths."
I.e. there surely exist hardware positions that pay better than some software position.
One has to be careful with statistics, you can't start with the aggregate and predict the individual case.
My degree is in EE. I do software now. In the groups that I've worked in at large and small companies, the talented software people have always been paid better than the talented hardware people. But, on the consulting side for experienced engineers, the hardware people seem to get the same or better pay than the software people.
I’m a SW engineer at Arm, and as far as I know (and what I see on levels.fyi) the hardware guys in the same level (e.g. Staff vs Staff) make about the same as I do. The apparent difference is probably more caused by the type of companies that employ lots of hardware engineers. Chip designer at google probably makes about the same as a software engineer at google, but both make way more than the chip designer at Intel. But Google employs mostly SW people and Intel employs mostly HW people.
And then goes to show how a SW engineer makes 30% more. Where’s the myth? Especially given that EE requires a lot more work so that 30% gap is actually worse.