Are you me? Honestly, that all sums it up even better. In an embedded role, you are always a second class citizen. After 6-12 months of planning by the hardware folks: "The hardware is all done. Where's the software? What do you mean it's not finished, you had all year...?" You're a complete afterthought, and it's only amplified when working with a team that doesn't really "get" that without access to the actual, finalized hardware you're extremely limited in capabilities. It only gets better when they decide to go with one-off vendors who have a single product support engineer and its pulling teeth any time something goes wrong. It's often hardware related, but who cares -- you're the guy at the end of pipeline who's tasked with making it work, so yeah, you feel the wrath.

I'm only extra cynical because I'm dealing with that right now. As I have many times before, though. It's part and parcel.