Is the hardware better or the software better now?

With the coverage of 5G network, traditional industries and industries have begun to transform unconsciously. For non-related technical workers, the first feeling is that society is becoming less and less in need of simple operators. The employment pressure is great, and the employment situation is grim. However, for practitioners related to embedded, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, it seems that there is no such pressure. On the contrary, they feel that the technology has been iteratively updated faster in recent years.

For job seekers, the salary of computer-related technology has been high in recent years. For computer-related technologies, we can simply divide them into two directions: hardware and software. Today we will briefly talk about which is more popular, hardware or software.

personally, I don't think this question is very meaningful. I have always adhered to the principle that "what suits me is the best". However, the reality often gives people the impression that this is not the case, especially for young people who have just graduated. Nowadays, young people have to face a series of life events such as work and marriage just after graduation. Marriage, in particular, has become the most anxious problem for young people.

Because getting married means some hard requirements, such as buying a house, buying a car, and having a stable job, it becomes a more important thing which is more popular, more stable and better developed, hardware or software. Next, let's analyze which is more popular, hardware or software:

1. Entry salary

The above are the recruitment requirements for PCB engineers in two companies in Xi 'an and Guangzhou. From these data, we can easily find that PCB engineers are not friendly to young people who just entered the industry.

The above are the recruitment requirements and salary of junior embedded software development engineers recruited by two companies in Shenzhen and Xi 'an. It can be seen that the basic salary of software development is slightly higher than that of hardware junior engineers, and the average salary is slightly higher. It can be seen that software development is slightly better in this dimension.

2. development prospects

when it comes to employment prospects, it is nothing more than what stage the industry is in and its future development trend. Personally, I think the development of embedded hardware is relatively stable and generally will not change much. The design of the chip and peripheral circuits is relatively stable. However, new AI chips and new sensors generally have little influence on peripheral circuits, and the hardware mainly relies on the experience accumulated from long-term work and the number of layers of integrated development boards that can be designed. It can't be said that it is a sunset industry, but in all fairness, there are not many innovations.

Software has developed quite rapidly in recent years, especially the development of artificial intelligence, network access and intelligent equipment.

as far as the development prospect is concerned, personally, software is superior.

3. Correlation between salary and working years

From the above recruitment information, we can easily find that software is easier to get high salary.

4. Job age

After 1 years, from the perspective of long-term migrant workers, the demand of hardware engineers is higher than that of software engineers, so in terms of working years and long-term work, hardware is slightly better.

finally, let's take a comprehensive look. The implementation data shows that most embedded practitioners are more popular in the software direction. Everyone's choice is different, so I also hope that every practitioner can choose whether to engage in hardware research and development or software research and development according to his own real situation.