better. My answer is, does it matter? They are almost completely different disciplines. I don't know many software engineers that would want to work with hardware or write machine code/firmware. In the corporate world the is a dichotomy between hardware and software people. I am hardware (degree in comp eng) and when we work with software folks, there is definitely a bit of competition between the two in terms of who takes blame when something goes wrong, etc. So if this question has anything to do with deciding between two majors, I think you need to take a long hard look at each one and figure out which one you really want to do regardless of which one pays more. Both are going to be marketable.