Hmm, I think there are a few reasons for software people getting into other industries over vice-versa:
Software has been very profitable, largely because of how ad-based the US economy has become. So a lot of the available money is from the software side.
Because code scales and software doesn’t require as much capital investment as heavy industry, there are more wealthy founders who did some code themselves than wealthy founders who do, say, chemical engineering themselves. That means you have wealthy people who a) like starting companies and b) are engineering-oriented.
American companies seem to have more of a competitive advantage vs Japan/China for code than manufacturing. Note that I said companies; Japan actually makes lots of high-quality open-source software.
Hmm, I think there are a few reasons for software people getting into other industries over vice-versa:
Software has been very profitable, largely because of how ad-based the US economy has become. So a lot of the available money is from the software side.
Because code scales and software doesn’t require as much capital investment as heavy industry, there are more wealthy founders who did some code themselves than wealthy founders who do, say, chemical engineering themselves. That means you have wealthy people who a) like starting companies and b) are engineering-oriented.
American companies seem to have more of a competitive advantage vs Japan/China for code than manufacturing. Note that I said companies; Japan actually makes lots of high-quality open-source software.