some brief background
- I have a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from a generic state university in the US
- I have a little over 8 years of full time professional experience building bare metal firmware, 3.5 years at one company, 5 years and change at a second. both are small no-name companies.
- A small chunk of that 8ish years is actually in mobile app development, but I don’t think it’s enough to leverage into a mobile apps jobs, plus I don’t think I like it enough to commit to it
where I’m at now
- I quit my job a few months ago due to burnout
- I don’t want to go back into firmware for multiple reasons. I like low level programming, but I hate that doing it on an embedded system brings in a whole new troubleshooting domain (hardware). I also hate that the pay seems to be universally lower than other areas of tech, there’s very little opportunity for remote work, and all the companies hiring for firmware in my area are “defense” companies. Last time I was job hunting pre-covid it seemed only FANGs were willing to fly people out for interviews, and I imagine it’s even worse now, so I’d probably have to move to an area with a better market to even get interviews. also this is kind of embarrassing to admit but a lot of job descriptions ask for a broader skillset that what I actually know (things like RTOS or PCB design which I’ve never done, or linux which I have some “power user” experience with but none as an engineer targeting it as a platform), so if I’m going to have to do some self-studying to get back in the workforce, why not study something I’m more interested in:
- I’m interested in something more along the lines of being a network engineer or sysadmin, maybe even getting into cybersecurity in the long run. the way I plan on doing this is getting some IT certs, getting a help desk or some other entry level IT job, and working my way up. currently I’m studying for the comptia network+; at the rate I’m going I anticipate being ready to take the exam in about a month. I haven’t committed to the point where I’ve spent $ on the exam voucher, but that’s coming up soon.
why this might be a dumb idea (some of this is obvious to people who work in tech)
- there’s gonna be a big pay cut compared to my previous job. I’d probably be starting out earning half of what I was getting in my last job. It may take 3-5 to get back to the salary I was previously earning, if it even works out.
- the conditions for IT workers are likely less lax than what I was used to as an engineer
- the IT job market is pretty saturated (possibly more than the software market?)
- the people who look at resumes might look at my background and just assume I’m a desperate person looking for a job to hold me over before jumping back to firmware engineering ASAP, or a desperate person spam applying to anything vaguely tech-y without even looking at the description
anyway if you read all this shit thanks I guess
I think you are aiming too low, do NOT aim for entry IT jobs. They will kill your soul.
Understand that the common career progression from IT/Helpdesk now requires learning programming skills to manage and deploy resources as code, you’ve already done the hard part with your degree and experience.
Look into SRE, DevOps principles, Cloud computing.
There is a growing job market for writing infrastructure as code, it’s also AI-proof in that no one wants to put a LLM in charge of the AWS bill. By all means take the N+ and security+, throw in a couple of cloud certs and look for the meeting point of those skills and your existing experience.
Look into SRE, DevOps principles, Cloud computing.
do companies hire people with no web dev experience for these jobs? i’ve never thoroughly looked into devops but the way people describe it led me to believe it would be required
I don’t think you absolutely need web dev experience for it, but it will probably help you if you can get AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud certs.
I think it’s easier to learn and understand these skills from scratch in the context of a web dev pipeline, but they are applicable across the board.
If you want to go into more advanced sysadmin / networking stuff, stuff like managing large scale enterprises, cloud/virtualizied deployments, production workloads, automating disaster recovery (and not killing your brain staring at Active Directory or whatever acronyms MS has cooked up recently) they’re essential skills, it’s a level well above web devs knowing how to automate building a docker container and deploying it to a test environment.
i can’t tell you if it’s a sound plan, but i don’t think it’s dumb. i have a friend who does embedded programming for theatre effects and is horribly burnt out. same situation with the weirdly low comp and the only other places doing that kind of firmware work in the area are also “defense” companies. burnout is debilitating. it could very much be worth it to escape to a job that demands less of your life force.
sorry to hear about your friend, but it’s relieving and validating to know that I’m not the only person who’s experiencing that and feels alienated from the embedded systems world as a result
im currently in embedded type work and all around me are warmonger companies or data stealing companies. it sucks to look my coworkers up and see them being proud of places like anduril and spacex and palantir. i totally get wanting to dip asap, i know im already there.
as for whether your plan is a good or bad idea, i cant say. it seems solid as long as ur ok w the pay cuts. i think you might be interested in looking at networking firmware or semiconductor digital design type positions especially if you like the coding aspects of ur job, but that might just be me projecting my own interests in digital design and making some assumptions about what kinds of work is out there
i think you might be interested in looking at networking firmware
I do like this idea actually but in studying for the network+ I’m realizing my knowledge of networking is very surface level 😭 and this is supposed to be the easiest networking cert lol. One of my projects at my previous job involved bluetooth (though only the upper layers) and I did enjoy getting to learn the bluetooth spec and tweaking things to optimize throughput and using wireshark to verify that it all worked.
I don’t know much about digital design, would a job like that mainly be using something like verilog and FPGAs?
digital design isn’t just FPGAs, you could also do actual chip design with it. it’s the algorithmic implementation of designs using a not-technically-code language such as (system)verilog.
if you’re not familiar with any of it, it would be a huge facelift though and probably not worth the effort to get to it, but if you are familiar with some specialized aspect of design HDL isn’t too hard to learn and it’s mostly fighting toolchains while implementing an algorithm in sequential logic (flip-flopped logic). it has a lot to do with hardware, but is more about designing algorithms in a way where the toolchain will be able to turn your implementation into hardware and being able to verify that it was turned into hardware successfully rather than working directly with hardware. lots of software stuff there because building hardware in that space is really expensive.
fwiw, i recently got rejected from a FPGA job which involved working with video and audio pipelines which sucks but it seems like most jobs are looking for mature engineers right now.
Not much advice since I’m doing different software work but to one of your points: My impression is the environment for IT workers has gotten worse but is still pretty lax overall. It depends on the organization you’re working for of course, some places will squeeze everything they can out of you.
Cannot say much without more details (anonymized resume, target comp, what hub are you within 100 miles of), but it’s worth looking at hospital IT. The lower end is awful and even the higher pay bands can be pretty rough if you’ve been getting big money previously. The flip side is that these systems are wildly overbuilt (since the downtime budget is measured in “how many people will die”), so the stress level is shockingly low. In many places you’ll be a glorified Windows admin, so if you can rack hardware and use PowerShell you’ll be overqualified (the number of people I worked with who could not function without a GUI was wild).
A lot of hospital systems are more or less bribed into 90% deployment of one appliance vendor (Dell being a big one for compute and storage, though Cisco still dominates the network), so you’ll have lots of training available and probably some sales engineers very excited to sell you a solution to whatever you’re working on. If you like free lunches, there will be about 3 vendor-catered things a week.
Management can be weird since the C-suite is usually doctors who know shit all about IT, but your direct managers are likely to be technical. Some of these outfits are also unionized (often part of the nursing union), and usually they’re subject to some regulation or another that will motivate your manager to force you to take at least a month off a year.
Mobility is… weird. If you’re in a niche (say, you run the Linux stuff in a mostly Windows shop) you may be able to promote up fairly quickly, but the pay bands are usually based on time served. You can get a raise, but the bands are a matter of public record so they can’t really color outside the lines without promoting you. The good side of this is that you can look up what the IT pay bands are. Private hospitals are likely to be less transparent, but I also wouldn’t recommend working for one of those. If you can attach yourself to a teaching hospital, some of them have education benefits/discounts. They’re also highly likely to splash cash for certifications and training courses if you want resume padding.
With your skill set, I would highly recommend looking into SRE materials. Being able to code to a spec (or, for that matter, devise a spec at all) is something lots of IT people just do not do, so you can make a huge splash with such amazing ideas as “what if we automated some of these incredibly error prone processes with a computer instead of doing it with our hands every single time?”
Other than that, there are also a lot of credulous rubes hyped about AI, so if you can gin up some story about how you took off for a few months to get into “prompt engineering” or whatever you might be able to hook a recruiter (and the babybrained CTO behind them).
Cybersecurity is mostly a meme job unless you’re in a capital E Evil gig. All the cybersecurity dudes (they were all dudes) during my IT years were ex-military radio goons who were known more for shiny shoes and short haircuts than any kind of adequacy for the job, and all the “security analyst” types I knew ended up at one flavor or another of Palantir. It is a very cool skillset, but I have never actually been able to land a job I could stomach with it.
I cannot recommend entry-level IT unless you come in with a plan for advancement. Like, that needs to be your primary line of questioning during interviews. IT orgs are up to their eyeballs in lifers, and there are only so many senior slots to go around.
that sucks to hear about cybersecurity but oh well, I’m just starting out so there’s no point in trying to chain myself to one long term goal anyways. also lol at the ex-military guys, I know US government incompetence is a recurring theme on this site but after the snowden leaks I somehow assumed their tech people were somewhat skilled
I cannot recommend entry-level IT unless you come in with a plan for advancement. Like, that needs to be your primary line of questioning during interviews.
when you say this, do you mean to say I should prioritize places that do have opportunities for advancement because it’s not common, or is it just something interviewers like to hear about?
I mean if you’re in an interview, those should be the questions that you use to figure out if a place is worth your time. Talk to people on LinkedIn or at local meetups or whatever if you can to get the real story, too. If your future plan relies on the path entry-level -> something else existing, you need to figure out if it does before you sign on (or be prepared to jump out if it turns out you’ve got no room to move)
Some orgs are totally ossified; the senior end is people who have been there for a decade and won’t leave until they die, and all the junior stuff is interns and a rotation of new grads who don’t know better than to eat shit. Other orgs have extremely well-defined advancement, but it’s based on something awful like literal years since hire.
It is good to figure out if there are any levers you can engage with at all to get to the level you want to be without having to wait for the last generation with a hope of retirement to actually do it.
Whether or not you go into cyber security, it’s very worth it to try and find a more niche skill set to market yourself with. The market is very saturated with JavaScript frontend people and Python backend codemonkeys, not so much with SREs, infrastructure engineers, and machine learning engineers (your mileage will vary depending on which job market you’re in here, but it used to be wide open and most flavor-of-the-month AI engineers are obviously leaning towards LLMs instead of neural networks in my experience).
It does also seem like non-FAANGs are starting to steer away from leetcode problems for interviews which is an advancement for those of us who don’t want to memorize algorithms to get a job, but again your mileage will vary.
I worked with embedded systems in two of my jobs and quit for similar reasons and the pay in my country for that line of work is abysmal. I switched to data science, back end web dev, a bit of SAP besides some hospitality and the employers grilled me for that. I had to quit without a notice a few times and most of the times I quit because I got admitted to hospital or a mental ward and it started getting hard to find jobs with the employment gap that kept growing but I got some freelancing work from someone that got some more referrals and I started getting comfortable with the idea because they paid a lot more than any work, the work wasn’t consistent so I had to save up and hope something came up but recently they haven’t been giving me much of any and some of them moved to just using AI
I thought about network and cybersecurity jobs too but they require ao many certifications and the people I knew in that line of work advised me against it and said something about how it becomes really hard to get employed after your over 40 
I felt much better switching from embedded work and I got paid more with other work so it wasn’t much of an issue for me. I really wish I had picked up a different line of work altogether.I thought about network and cybersecurity jobs too but they require ao many certifications
I see mixed things about this, some say it’s all worthless because the real learning happens on the job, other’s say it’s essential because even if it doesn’t teach you everything, it proves a base level of knowledge. Here in the US I think they’re only strictly required if you’re working for the government or a government contractor. One common path I’ve seen is getting one or two entry level certs to get your foot in the door, then climbing the ranks from there (this is basically my plan).
the people I knew in that line of work advised me against it and said something about how it becomes really hard to get employed after your over 40
Here in the US I hear this as well, but not just with IT, SWE too. One of the few specializations that supposedly doesn’t do this is… embedded software
I really wish I had picked up a different line of work altogether.
are you talking about your initial choice to work with embedded systems, or tech in general?
are you talking about your initial choice to work with embedded systems, or tech in general?
Both actually but I just have bad memories with the places I worked with embedded systems and I feel pretty angry when I get freelance work for embedded systems but I have do it raging internally. I went into tech because I wasn’t doing very well when I had to go to university and took it because I had already done some learning and working with it since my early teenage years and so I supposed it would be less effort than taking any other courses. I think I wanted to do something with biology or medicine back then and thought I would end up dropping out with the way I was. I also think about trying solo game development but it is too much work and I need to grind other skills. I can’t see the freelance bit working out for much longer
and my health conditions worsening won’t allow me to work the other jobs I did before so I can’t think of many options.Here in the US I hear this as well, but not just with IT, SWE too. One of the few specializations that supposedly doesn’t do this is… embedded software
That holds true here but includes embedded systems as well but I have heard that US is far better on that. Cybersecurity and network engineering here though is far worse in this case and it gets really difficult to find work or at least that is what the people in that line of work tell me here. Quite a few of them in the last few years ended up trying to switch to SWE, IOT and few of them working with tech tried to move into the country side and trying their hand at farming. Sys admin jobs pay abysmal here but I would prefer that if they took me. Also when it comes to the environment being lax with SWE (data science even more), I found that to be true in the large corporations work with everything being lose, cold and indifferent. I also often got a lot of free time and never had to overwork. In one of the places I had 4 bosses and they had that painful smile when I asked for work so I spent a lot of time on my phone reading and it gets boring but they don’t want you working from home either. It was nice but when I looked for a new job and they ask me what I did at the last job, I sort of panic and I am bad at lying. I felt like I got worse at everything in companies like that and I was too tired to upskill when I got home.
One common path I’ve seen is getting one or two entry level certs to get your foot in the door, then climbing the ranks from there (this is basically my plan).
This I think is what some of them recommend and grinding other certs while you are working. Some companies pay you to get certs while at work too I think?
Embedded systems I think though feels a lot more safe especially with your experience in the US but I get why you would want to quit. I don’t know why but the workplace with embedded systems had a lot of
types and I hated every moment of it. They even made fun of me because soldering was so troublesome for me (I have MS). I was interested in working with RISCV and computer architecture too but it seems quite hard to get into with work and I all I could think of was messing around with fpgas.I don’t know why but the workplace with embedded systems had a lot of
types and I hated every moment of it. They even made fun of me because soldering was so troublesome for me (I have MS).oof
fuck those people. the culture in embedded is like that here too, tbh that’s part of why I suddenly quit without already having a new job.It was quite the opposite with the other jobs I did. Everyone suddenly seemed too polite and nice although a bit indifferent and the environment was more comfortable so that one thing alone made me realize that I never wanted to go back to embedded.
I quit my tech job 8 months ago due to burnout and I’ve only recently felt well enough to start looking for another job. The job market is rough out there so just apply to stuff you think you might like. I think it’s fine to take a pay cut, the high tech salaries are going to come down regardless due to more entrants in the software market because of AI tools.
I’ve been out of of the industry for about 15 years now, so take all this with a grain of salt. But if you’re not absolutely strapped for cash right now it might be more worth your while to get into bug hunting and approach cybersecurity from that angle; Learn the ropes, climb a leader board and network with folks who can help you get a better headstart than some entry level IT gig that probably isn’t going to go anywhere.
I dropped a bunch of resources here a while back that should still be pretty useful, if you’re interested.
Thanks for those. Since you’re out of the industry what do you do now?
I’m a self taught engineer, do really boring bullshit for a big company but grew up reading and loving 2600 and Phrack. Had a midlife crisis type moment Friday when I had the unshakable understanding that I can’t spend the rest of my life doing what I do. Maybe security research.
Well, out of the corporate side of things, at least. I still do freelance work from time to time with old clients. And then supplement all that with “side hustles.” But I haven’t held a 9-5 in many years.
Lol, phrack, 2600, cult of the dead cow. Yeah, first time I found a phrack issue on a bbs was like stumbling on to a treasure chest. Phrack 43 Taught me how to play blackjack, steal a pbx, and steal a camaro.
Had a midlife crisis type moment Friday when I had the unshakable understanding that I can’t spend the rest of my life doing what I do.
Did that in late 2000’s, combo ego death and saw the writing on the wall in america. Just wasn’t sustainable; The options were basically spend the rest of my life slaving away under some bible thumping small business owners or a corporate behemoth. And neither one were ever gonna pay me enough to be able to retire. So I sold all my shit, bought a pickup truck, a tent, and a laptop. Lived out in the woods for a while just bouncing around florida. Was pretty nice while it lasted. Hoping to get back to it soon.
