The last time I searched for jobs, there were two competing automotive makers among the prospective employers. The one that offered the C++ position for programming Lidar systems offered a lower salary than the one that just wanted a generalist to wrangle scripts and systems. Beats me.
Auto companies notoriously pay their people poorly. They are losing many talented engineers as a result. I know quite a few in the industry here in Michigan. The engineers who remain at the autos, are blown away by the salaries their former colleagues are getting from SV companies.
I was mentoring a EE who wanted to up his game. He wanted to get into programming, and I pointed out that Python, C++, etc. are in demand at many companies right now. I asked him for his salary range, and for a 50+ year old engineer with 20 years of experience, it was pretty awful. Though, completely normal for the autos and their suppliers.
I found it equally hilarious that (at the last place I was) the Python devops jobs paid 50% more than the core developers of the company's core product.
