Ask HN: Career options for digital hardware engineer? Startup? Relocating?
I am a passionate digital hardware design engineer (keywords: VHDL/Verilog, DSP, custom MCUs, all that good stuff) and I am beginning to doubt my career choice. Reading about JS coders or DevOps earning 100-120k in UK or 200k+ in US (++stocks) while I make my ~80k in Germany (nothing else) is seriously discouraging, so I wanted to ask your opinion on what are my options. Since digital hardware design is such a rare profession, I thought that at HN I would have higher chances getting good advice. So, my options are:
a) re-qualify as a regular programmer (and maybe move to US/UK). Should be a no-brainer, since I have lots of experience with C, so buffing up some hip and fancy JS stack in about a ~year would be feasible.
b) move to US as a hardware engineer. I have absolutely no idea what the market is there. More importantly, my opinion about the US was shaped (and skewed) for a long time by Reddit as a horrible place with high crime, poverty, highly expensive medical care and sleazy lying politicians. I know that most of it is prejudice, but still this option is kind of scary.
c) startup? Theoretically, we (me and my good friends, a total of 2 design & 3 verif) can squeeze out own savings to finance ourselves + several Cadence/Synpsys simulator licenses for ~year or 1.5. What can we develop that would be sellable? Full-blown SoC is financially impossible, which leaves only options to sell some IP or do custom design/verification contracting work. But that market is really taken by serbian & asian suppliers with highly competitive price points.
Maybe some of you can share some success stories about digital hardware startups or individual careers? Or maybe give some guidance on how to re-qualify quickly? Any advice is highly appreciated.
Thanks, HN.