Any embedded software engineers here? I installed gentoo so I'm obviously ready.. but really...

embedded software engineer here. i work on pcie at a really big company ;). ama!

Awesome. Is there anything in particular that I could work on as a side project that could interest a potential employer? I realize embedded has a lot of overlap with EE. I did take an electrical engineering course and really enjoyed it and did quite well. That being said, it was only one course.

Another question I have that I dont see too often .. is what is your work environment like? A lot of SE jobs I see, i see things like "we have nerf gun fights and ping pong tables". These things turn me off a bit.. is there much remote/work from home in embedded or are you at the job site more since you're working with a physical product?

I wish I had better questions to ask you. If you have any other general advice for someone looking in that career path I'm all ears

I don't see how that's comparable. CE would probably be better but it's not like you can't do it without it

>Is there anything in particular that I could work on as a side project that could interest a potential employer?
definitely anything that involves low level coding. closer to the hardware you can get, the better chances you will be. I interned before I got the job offer so thats a pretty easy way in too. You skip the difficult interviews :)

>what is your work environment like?
started out in cubicles, but looks like Silicon Valley is moving towards the no cubicle open space mantra. Just two months ago they moved us into a gigantic building with open spaces, couches, massage chairs, colorful decorations etc. there are still workstations we can attach our laptops too that have 2 monitors each (pretty nice actually, only caveat is we have to bring our own keyboard and mouse, and we have to clean up our stations after every single workday)

hit me up on discord if you think of anything else!

shortThePonzi#6992

I was on my school's Formula SAE team and worked on the ECU and telemetry system, but other than that I mostly learned what I needed to know on the job. I picked up an Arduino to play with after I'd been there for a few years and it seemed like a pretty decent introduction to bare-metal embedded programming.

With embedded programming, regardless of what you decide to do, you'll end up needing to understand a lot about the underlying hardware and the physical problem you're trying to solve. You will sometimes be able to write an app for an RTOS like LynxOS or VxWorks, but other times you'll be without the benefit of an operating system, which can make debugging a real challenge. A lot of problems require a deterministic hard real-time approach, which means memory needs to be allocated only at startup, limiting the algorithms you can use.

What kind of image processing? Like computer vision / AI kind of stuff?

Attached: 7276993cf311ca7e89e81733b94882b6.jpg (1200x1504, 1.23M)

If you want to dip your feet in to FPGA related stuff, I'd recommend playing with a Smartfusion board, basically an Arduino with an FPGA attached. We used them for our embedded systems class at uni and are pretty great for learning.

computer vision kind of stuff. I'm using Python's PIL to manipulate image files right now but I don't know how to introduce hardware into the equation. I have an arduino and some components but nothing that can do imaging.

do some small home automation
it works on a resume and also not completely useless

>rockets
this. pls.

Attached: 1463706592741.png (448x357, 6K)

>arduino
It's a good intro but anyone who's actually used it knows that Arduino is not representative of how normal embedded development works. Compared to J-Link/OpenOCD, the tooling for arduino looks like a toy.
Arduino is a good stepping stone if you actually know jack shit about embedded. If you have enough of a clue to have gotten a degree, it's probably not worth your time. Go for an ARM Cortex-M demo board. The STMicro ones have a pretty strong community. I personally like Infineon's boards better, but community support for them is relatively weak.

This is mostly true.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but I've always had the luxury of turning down offers from companies who whiteboard me. I've made a point of only working for firms that don't do that, and it's gotten me far in a short amount of time.

wtf I want to program rockets now

I do some embedded work. To get into the field, be familiar with all the embedded software concepts and tools: C, u-boot, Squashfs, jffs2, buildroot, cross compiling, crosstools-ng, embedded Linux, etc. Also know your architectures decently: x86, MIPS, ARM. Finally, you should know some basic electrical engineering, and at the very least be familiar with all the jargon like EEPROM, NVRAM, UART, JTAG. You should be able to solder and desolder surface mount PCBs within reason.

Most important for interview stuff, if you don't have professional experience, is to have personal projects you've worked on that you can talk about. So you should definitely get a couple microcontrollers and build some interesting stuff.

Thanks for the advice everybody. It was very helpful. I screenshotted everything and will be taking all the advice into consideration and start learning.

what the fuck is going on in this thread?
i'm M.E. and i can do all the things you guys listed
is the field really THAT easy?

>i can do all the things you guys listed
That's just Dunning-Kruger talking

don't bother, the pay is shittier than web dev, getting in is harder, and the work isn't really that much more interesting/fulfilling once you've been doing it for a few years

>70260172
@>"you"

I'm a Computer Architecture student and I've mostly focused on Hardware Design with HDLs like VHDL and Verilog, as well as a bunvh of circuit EE crap. I'd like to explore Embedded Systems since FPGA development is sort of a niche field, how hard would it be to shift over to this field if I've already done stuff like designing MIPS processor architectures, basic C code and some Operating Systems design? Despite my degree, I've barely used C, I've used CPU12 Assembly way more.

Tarduino are really convenient for hobbyist projects though

>and the work isn't really that much more interesting/fulfilling once you've been doing it for a few years
This desu senpai

Google "0x11 questions for embedded systems interview", you will find a PDF, it covers 95% of interviews I ever encountered.
Getting a job here is a joke.
Also, the entire field is filled with turbo-autists. That's not a complaint, just an information.

as of webshit is interesting
to each their own I guess

the point is it becomes as tedious and soul draining as webdev eventually, despite Jow Forums's insistence that it's the peak of intellectual tech work or whatever

That kinda sucks, I've always been more into hardware than software. Software is pretty cool but eventually becomes really tedious. I work with hardware mainly because I can work on gas turbine engines, recips, and then also be soldering and installing some electrical systems and the variety is nice

I was kind of brainstorming going towards something like embedded because I enjoy low-level programming, electrical work, and soldering/hands-on. The thing is though fixing stuff seems a lot less stressful than creating stuff

I mean, I guess the same could be saod for the large majority of the jobs. I personally just find this specialization more interesting than webdeb right off the start, so that alone is a large plus