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Comment by sannee | Hacker News Reader

> increasingly smaller number and expensive lot of folks.

There is this sentiment on HN that people in EE/embedded space don't really get paid well (compared to the average Javascript-slinging frontend dev). Is this not true for HDL folks?

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We get paid bank, there are very few of us, and the older you get and the more horror stories you've seen the more you're worth (unlike software). Gray in your beard is a feature, not a flaw.

You're responsible for time critical and/or DSP things that are critical system architecture, and will never be outsourced (it's key IP, you'd be stupid to outsource that).

Don't let anyone know, we have a good thing going on.

How do you define "bank"?

Getting paid bank means getting paid a lot of money.

EDIT: You may also hear the phrase "making bank" to mean making (earning, not printing) a lot of money.

I think they were probably looking for a salary range.

lol, you might be right. I thought it was an honest question from someone of a different native tongue.

I get paid 130k with a phd EE from tier 3 with <3 years industry experience. If you want to get in get ECE and study computer architecture and RTL. I am doing hardware modeling to predict future performance. It’s difficult to get in the industry from a tier 3 w/o experience but it’s worth it. My counterparts in FAANG are no doubt getting 300k/year. Sometimes I think maybe I should leetcode and get a software job @ FAANG because HW is difficult.

all of my offers out of undergrad were more than that and I’m considered below average ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

interested to hear what bank is here too

> it's key IP, you'd be stupid to outsource that

That doesn't usually stop companies. At best it creates an opening for new companies to recapture some high-value markets once the dust from the off-shoring stampede settles.

Would you like to share how does one get into this line of work?

I don't suppose there's an appropriate tutorial on egghead.io.

The standard path is more trodden than software development jobs -- ECE grad at a school with a good program.

I know I took a digital logic course and did some fpga implementations in it, man that was hard. I am petrified of having to deal with HDL in the near future for my research, maybe I'll take a class or something.

In school they make you do it the hard way. I find verilog to be very similar to my process of how I write embedded C code.... short version is if you can make block diagrams and write good C, you can learn verilog.

If you want to learn, there’s a ton of free training on the major vendor’s sites (Intel FPGA and Xilinx), and a development board with everything you need might run you a few hundred. But I don’t know what your job prospects would be without a degree in EE/CompE or experience in the hardware industry...

Hey, thank you for that. I really needed this motivation at this point in my life as an EE (RF, RTL and PCB level).

How would you recommend getting into the field?

Electrical Engineering college degree. That's the only option.

I've never seen non-college degree electrical engineers.

Allow me to introduce myself... not really becsuse anoniminity. But I’m effectively an EE at my company with no degree. Hardware, firmware, software, sourcing, production, validation/testing, and low volume assembly, all self taught. I’ll grt into FPGA when I have a use for it, but it certainly won’t be FFTs and DSPs but still.

I’m glad I don’t have to job surf, it would be hard without paper, but my experience would be very valuable in my tiny field.

For sure technicians that do these are a thing for finishing work, who may have AS degrees instead of BS EE. I've worked with them as well. They were always referred to as technicians that EE's hand-off more of the board-level debugging to (or even GDS II for ASIC design..). The core datapath processing algorithms were always done by EE's, though.

I'm another one. Embedded Engineer, no degree, works on core datapath and high level design, in addition to debug work.

We outsourced HDL validation.

It does get outsourced. I worked on a team that did a dsp/crypto multi core chip. The funny part is 90% of the team has now moved to US because they got paid better.

I work on operating systems, which is similarly niche (but probably overall easier to learn and low risk vs fabbing ASICs) an it is very bi-modal. Sr. circuit designers can write their ticket, but you have a lot of warm bodies surrounding them at large companies.

Hi, does your team have an opening? I work on performance modeling and am always curious if I could make the jump to low-level system software and learn a ton of stuff for a while.

say EE/embedded space people are paid the same as average Javascript-slinging frontend dev, would you call this paid well?

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