The margins really aren’t that much different, the overhead between infrastructure/etc. between the hardware and moving parts between the two aren’t that much different in my experience.

Software positions (at least the ones I’m familiar with) revolve around products. If you are a software engineer at Cisco you either work in sustaining/maintaining/troubleshooting products for customers, or you work on developing the product itself. You are “ahead of the curve” I would say with regards to contracts or procurement. In other engineering fields, the only difference is that a company is contracted to do XYZ, but based on work and engineering hours and deliverables as opposed to being product based. This essentially creates a bunch of middlemen between money received and work being done, where companies are paying realistic amounts (or getting paid) for work, but that money is cut tenfold before getting to the people doing the work.

Creating a similar example, you could be testing a spacecraft assembly at a company like Rockwell or a smaller company, who is then contracted by Lockheed for a spacecraft or hosted payload, who was originally contracted by NOAA or NASA or whoever. Your actual work has the same value as a software engineer, you’re just getting bent over because many companies are trying to get their dirty hands on the pie.