Software companies have focused on efficiency, which is why the cost of building software has steadily decreased over the last 30-40 years.
From my perspective a lot of that is because the tooling and mindset for hardware is stuck in 1980s/90s. Compared to modern software development, there is very little to no automation in hardware design.
Things like CI for hardware designs and even automated version control are just starting to become a thing in the embedded space. Automation like building Bill of Materials, build pdfs, gerbers are not in any way optimized.
Scaling embedded stuff (design, manufacture, etc.) is very much a linear thing today, which is why salaries are low.
From my perspective a lot of that is because the tooling and mindset for hardware is stuck in 1980s/90s. Compared to modern software development, there is very little to no automation in hardware design.
Things like CI for hardware designs and even automated version control are just starting to become a thing in the embedded space. Automation like building Bill of Materials, build pdfs, gerbers are not in any way optimized.
Scaling embedded stuff (design, manufacture, etc.) is very much a linear thing today, which is why salaries are low.