As a mechanical engineer, I am excited to see more of a focus on hard tech content here! Unfortunately, there isn't really a HackerNews for EE's or ME's (though if someone wants to build it, I'd be grateful). So it can be tough to find startups working on these sorts of hard problems that are looking for all flavors of engineer (except civil, they stink and nothing they make moves /s). Personally, I work in ocean robotics and defense, which is I think is very cool, but mostly handled by large defense contractors and military research departments.
As a CE/EE myself, I feel your pain. This area of engineering seems to have such a high barrier to entry. I imagine that is mostly because of the production cost and most necessary software tools still being heavily license based with their physical counterparts being prohibitively expensive as well.
It's just easier to play around with software until you find something novel.
