Last weekend there was an "Ask HN" question about engineering careers [1], mainly in CA, that reaches 300k+ salary. All the answers were by software engineers and the like, which is expected here at HN.

So, the question is: is there a highly profitable career (150k+) in your region (specially CA) or company for hardware-focused?

Which are these careers and what skills are in demand for them?

To give a more concrete situation (and avoid the XY problem): I feel a bit like the top answer of this thread[2]: I fell I'm wasting my skills and the prime earning ears in a not-so-high-paying industry (scientific facility) in a low-wage region (not EU or USA).

So, I'm planning to both relocate to US or EU, maybe China or Japan; and probably also change market so I can get my career in a better-paying track. I consider myself very broadly skilled, having designed high-performance electronics (board level, never IC level),done FPGA development, including DSP, and programming from embedded up in a few programming languages, even occasionally contributing to some open-source projects. I also oversaw several short-run manufacturing and deployment, which is a skill set by itself.

However, I have some anxiety on which path to follow. Should I focus on:

* learning a particular set of board-level design tools for getting my foot in SV consumer electronics companies?

* try to get a PhD and learn analog IC design?

* using my current experience to get a decent paying job in a FAANG (all of them seem to be doing HW now, except maybe Netflix) and set foot on the door?

As you see, I have some anxiety and maybe people here could help. Maybe my software skills could put me in a better track, but I first want to check if I can make better use of my 10+ hardware-focused career.

Thank you.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811454 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16811968