I have a theory that most companies run by people who had harder education programs than CS... will misunderstand software engineering, underappreciate the difficulty of doing it well, and undervalue the people who can do it well.
Not only EEs, and not only any real engineer, but the hard sciences, as well.
Because MechE are even worse than EEs at doing software (and yes, having worked at EE companies it was 90% cluelessness)
(also let's not pretend that HW companies ran by SW people don't have multiple issues neither ;) )
And as per other commenter
> Because everyone is making $300k+ at MAGA and they're offering half, if that.
Yes. That as well