Render programmers are not all that well paid, but they are absurdly hard to hire for.
The highest paid IC's at my last few companies (gamedev) were people that had been there 20 years (He was AI programmer) or the infrastructure people running the gameservers and multiplayer backend.
That might seem weird. But it's hard to hire infra people as they can work basically anywhere and will have as much enjoyment.
Render programmers can work in CAD or Games, there's much less demand, and they tend to want to work in games.
The highest paid IC's at my last few companies (gamedev) were people that had been there 20 years (He was AI programmer) or the infrastructure people running the gameservers and multiplayer backend.
That might seem weird. But it's hard to hire infra people as they can work basically anywhere and will have as much enjoyment.
Render programmers can work in CAD or Games, there's much less demand, and they tend to want to work in games.