Having professionally been doing embedded/kernel/systems development since 2011 and a variety of software and hardware engineering before that, I'd say embedded software pays decently, but I'm definitely not making $400-500k USD/year, not even half that. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
In my experience, pretty much all software engineering positions pay better than hardware engineering positions with equivalent experience. I don't fully understand why, as hardware is hard and if you have a really good hardware engineering team you can shave months off your time to market, so those engineers should be just as valuable to a business as systems/embedded software people.
I've found it mostly true during my 20+ years career in IT (mostly devops, but also "solution architecture", cloud migration of legacy software, and even integration early on, etc) that if one wants to make more money there is almost always an opportunity to do so if one is willing to work hard and take risks for it.
Switching jobs every 2~3 years and doing it with a plan in mind is one way of doing it.
Based on that people end up earning what they consider "a comfortable wage". Some people are not going to feel comfortable until they can buy a jet for their acro-flying hobby, some are happy when they can afford to easily save 1 year of income and being able to afford to buy a new pc every 3 years.
Other people have no idea these opportunities exist and they are miserable working in one place for a decade. Or they are not willing or can't take risks.
That's how we end up with two people doing similar jobs one earning $100k and the other $500k. In days of remote work the biggest differentiating factor in the earning potential IMO is your English (if not a native speaker) and willingness to work in timezones 6h+ away.
I have a company (only me in it but having an actual company looking pro Does make you more money and gives more freedoms like wfh for all years I have worked after/during uni) for 30 years that works for other companies creating products for/with them. If you work like this for a company like Gemalto or startups with VC invest, 250-300/hr are on the table. I have almost no overheads and invest almost everything so the gross has been close to net for practical purposes.
But you are right; the hardware market is harder than making web stuff. I just enjoy hardware/firmware more. Currently I am starting a new hardware/firmware project for a US company that will last 3 years with this income.
It depends where you live, spend and how you count; i optimised everything for the past 25+ years around making sure I never have to think about money if I would drop everything today. Your situation might be very different of course.
No, the entire setup I have is geared to function as company: I have many clients (who keep coming back because they can kick me out any time which is a bit of an issue in the EU, but then they don't) and I also make products which even more cements me as 'defacto employee'. I had many discussions (especially) with the dutch taxes who tried to catch me out; never worked.
Pretty cool, thanks for sharing with us! It originally sounded like you were earning this from a specific job, but yes if you can build a successful business then your earnings can get arbitrarily high. I'm not sure most of us would describe it as "not hard" though! Congrats!
