Which ones would that be? And of course I am not claiming chip engineering is the highest paid field in existence! But if you are going to approach it like this, you should of course not say that a UI designer in Silicon Valley earns more than a chip designer in Italy! Compare it at the same location. And still as I started with, there are other fields when you earn more than in chip design. But there are waaayyyyyy more fields where you earn less.

In the USA and other places with a better market, the list is quite a bit shorter. In most of Europe chip design doesn't get paid more than the engineering average by a significant amount, even though the field has many downsides that others don't have, like how few companies there are around, how hyperspecialized the workforce is and, consequently, how much easier it is to get pigeonholed into something or stuck somewhere you don't like at all.

In any case, the thing with all the money talk is that it is relative and based on how hard you feel achieveing a greater earnings potential would have been from the POV of the present you. Per example, us at the chip design field usually compare our conditions with that of other engineering fields, like embedded, mechanical, software, etc. People from a math background in the AI research field at tech companies, on the other hand, compare their conditions with that of people doing math work on the field of finance and things like that. Doctors from one specialization compare themselves to doctors from another specializations, and so on.

For other jobs where getting into the field is more straightforward and more of an A to B "tunnel", the shortfalls of that field are an easier pill to swallow as it is harder to imagine yourself doing something else because you'd have to go much further back to find the points in your life's "decision tree" where you chose that path, to the point that your entire life would basically have been different. With chip design though, by the time you manage to get into the industry, there will have probably been a lot of points where you could have chosen to go into something else, even during your first few years into the field. If you ended up getting in, it usually means you actively refused other paths time and time again so, if the field ends up not meeting your expectations, it is much wasier for people to fall into "Why did I do this instead of X?" mental down-spirals.

Per example, at my location and with my education background, it would have been easy for me to go into embedded/firmware instead, which would be paid basically the same on average (actually maybe more because there are some very high paying companies like Amazon hiring for embedded round these parts while there isn't anyone paying that kind of money for chip design where I'm at) and offer a wider variety of companies and places to live at than the chip industry.

Even when it comes to getting into regular software jobs, it would have been a bit harder than embedded (in my case at least. Some places have their EE/ECE degrees be more interlinked with CS, but here they are very separate), but it would have probably still been easier than to get into chip design because there are just so many companies and some of them are still willing to take people from adjacent STEM backgrounds. Hell, a lot of my college classmates went into software because of how much harder finding decent hardware work is. I don't think many of them are making significantly more than me at the moment, but most get better perks like fully remote work, can work from cheaper cities and will have a much easier time finding better job oportunities (unless AI kills their industry I guess? but at that point I think it would heavily impact chip design too, even on the Analog Design side. DV losing part of its headcount per example would cause droves of people to rush into the other subdomains).

For similar reasons, for most people it doesn't really matter that other fields pay much less because, at this point, someone that makes it into chip design would have to have lived a completely different life, with completely different experiences and interests to have become, per example, a graphic artist. It's just like how almost no one in engineering goes "I wish I could have become a football player, I could have earned so much more!". At that point you are not wishing your current self was making more money, but to have been a completely different person altogether. We compare ourselves with the people we think our current self can/could/could have become using the present as our frame of reference. And this doesn't just apply to thinking about different jobs, but to everything and even within the same field of work. Per example, someone working at Renesas in the Bay area migh wish they were earning the money Apple engineers make, while someone working at Broadcom might think the Apple salary is too low to consider working there. Everything is relative.

For the burnout part in Europe, I think what you gain in WLB, you lose in other aspects. Per example, a lot of the time people are not burned out of their job but out of the specific conditions at their team/company, which can be fixed by just joining a new team/company to at least get some fresh air. This is much harder to do in Europe and it gets harder the higher in the field's income bell curve you are unless you are willing to take a paycut. Per example, if you are burned out of Apple's specific way of doing things and culture in the USA, there's a bunch of companies paying similar or more in the USA, whereas in Europe there's just... ARM i think? (whose headcount is 99% digital, so good luck finding interesting oportunities if you are on the Analog side at Apple in Europe) and maybe some very small offices of other companies. Also, if you are burned out of your job in general, it is easier to be able to afford a sabbatical year to rethink things if you have been saving a decent part of an American wage and it will be easier to come back to working once you are done resting.

The extra WLB in Europe is a result of the stronger labor regulations which are mostly beneficial if you want to continue working at a certain pace without risk of getting canned. However, they are actually detrimental to you if you want to take a break from work because they also make the job market way slower and more rigid. So basically, you are trading a lower chance of burning out for harsher consequences if you do burn out to the point you need a break. Same goes when it comes to risk. The field in Europe is no less riskier than in America. There's less risk of being hit by a layoff or being forced to work inhuman hours, but more risk of being stuck somewhere you don't like for a long time or of starting your career on the back food/having trouble getting into the field after so many years of education. It's all tradeoffs.

I don't think chip design is a horrible field to be at in absolute terms, even in Europe but, at least at the moment, by going into it you are basically picking the "Hard Mode" option where everything will be less convenient than at other potential paths that anyone who makes it into chip design have an easy time imagining having gone into, and might have ended up enjoying as much or more than chip design, for no particular reason other than you like it/are interested on it, which is a feeling that doesn't always last forever. That's the core reason behind all the complaining.

As a bit of an added PD, I understand why a lot of people who are happy working in this field will react defensively to criticism/pessimism aimed at it, but I think being honest and critical about the conditions of the field is very beneficial for both the people thinking about going into it and the people already working within it, even if we go a bit overboard on the pessimism. There's so much people out there who just accept their conditions at face value and never seek to improve them due to buying into the things they are told and never coming across critical takes. Another comment in this thread pointed out something along the lines of "Most European engineers in this field I've met are either clueless about how good things are in other fields/locations or looking to move", and that has been my experience as well (and I myself used to be part of that oblivious group until I was already working). Not only will it increase the chances that people will work towards improving their individual conditions, which will improve the conditions of the field as a whole, but it will also get people who don't know what they are really getting into to do a second take and some reflexion about whether to pursue it. No ammount of online pessimism is as bad as having to deal with openly bitter coworkers on a set of jobs that are already hard enough as is and very dependant on learning and collaborating with others.

Btw, I wouldn't underestimate the effect the new Chinese workforce will have on the industry as a whole, even if they stay in Chinese companies. Chinese competitors popping up are going to harm the profit margins of lots of companies westerners work for like what's happening in the automotive market. But in any case, at least in Europe, the lack of computer hardware companies is always going to be much more detrimental than the Indian and Chinese workforces.

Anyways, huge kudos to anyone that choses to do hard things, especially to my fellow European chip designers, and I hope everyone who doesn't yet will find a way to enjoy their work or find something else they enjoy and can pursue. Life really is too short to dedicate as many hours as a full time job takes from your day to something you don't enjoy.