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Comment by aeleos | Hacker News Reader

I was wondering if you could give me some information about being a embedded software engineer and the skill set required for it. It is something that has always appealed to me as a job. I just finished freshman year of an ECE program (mainly the computer engineering aspect). I have been doing side projects in C for a few years and more recently have been doing a lot of rust. I plan on doing a minor in CS.

Do you think that continuing on this path will still leave open the opportunity for doing embedded software development? The idea of doing safety critical engineering in rust really appeals to me but I am also interested in things like computer architecture so I don't want to only do only a CS degree. Thanks for any information.

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ECE/CS minor is pretty much perfect for a super low level role. I was straight CS and I kinda wish I had more formal training in some of the electrical stuff. If you like it, try to get comfortable in VHDL or Verilog FPGA stuff. That opens a lot of doors as well. Being able to do everything from board design through drivers will make you popular with smaller companies and startups that need that capability.

As far as employment, there's a lot of stuff going on. Traditionally aerospace (where you'll see the super hard-real-time mission critical stuff) is a PITA because they know the work is desirable and can therefore pay peanuts for people to do it. That's changing though so keep your eyes open. Also, don't do anything that could jeopardize your ability to get and retain a security clearance if you're US based. You'll need one for a lot of those kinds of projects (though not all).

Finally, get used to process. If you do critical work, the more critical, the more process you have to follow. Lots of code reviews, heavy handed version control rules, design and deployment paperwork, etc. It's not bad but it seems to be a shock to everyone.

If you have specific questions, feel free to contact me at gmail.com. I have a couple other responses in this thread that might also be useful to you.

This year I took a logic design course that had a few labs in VHDL with FPGAs which was a lot of fun. Thanks for the info, its good to know that I am on the right track.

I have heard a little bit about the process from a friend of mine who works in aerospace software engineering, and according to him like 90% of his job is design documents and other paperwork.

I am kinda surprised to hear that the pay isn't very good, but its good to hear that its changing. Is this mostly due to the older workforce retiring or are there other factors that are causing it?

Keep in mind that "pay" is a very nebulous concept in software. Embedded work clusters around the same cities that high level work does but I've found there to be more variety in some aspects. Defence work in particular will take you outside the bay area so that helps immensely in terms of income vs expenses. Small companies I've found don't pay well though. Everyone is talking about supply and demand but the reality of the situation is there's a second factor at play. Devs cost money and make money for the company. In web land, you Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V every time you want more money. In the embedded world you're usually interfacing with hardware and hardware has a monetary cost to produce. That cost is actually insanely high by tech world standards so that kills the massive margins that would otherwise go towards fighting for talent. There's also typically more risk due to the fact that you can't just edit a production application to fix it. You have to re-run production every time a flaw is found in hardware and sometimes even in software. That also moves money away from talent.

Now, the advent of cheap chinese manufacturing and increases in R&D cash help with a lot of that. The consumer electronics world is cutthroat but research work is pretty easy to come by and IMO very rewarding. Space seems like a potentially profitable sector at the moment, though that currently hinges entirely on one guy and his rockets. If it continues to take off, expect a gold rush in a decade or so.

Long story short, you'll still make good money, just not the 200k starting salaries of the bay area for the most part. Do what interests you and makes you happy or you'll burn out.

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