HN Explorer

Ask HN: 40 Year Old HW(EE) Trying to Pivot into Sw

11 points by ultrasounder ↗ HN
I posted this question on the BlindApp the other day and got some interesting responses. Essentially after doing HW( Background is EE with a Masters) work for a decade, getting burnout after working at a very toxic FAANG(one that has a particular reputation here in the valley though they are HQed in Seattle) i am currently working for much less than what I can make unable to score interviews at the likes of Apple or Google for similar roles. Spoke to a few friends who suggested that I look into pivoting into software. About a year ago i started with Python just for fun. At that time I couldn't code my way out of a brown bag. Fast forward After a year, I am doing a few deeplearning courses on coursera and fast.ai platform able to read and understand non-trivial popular open source python libraries . I even have a Google recruiter badgering me to interview for a SW engineer role. But the thing I keep coming back to is, Am I making the right decision by pivoting to SW. All the talk of ageism in the other thread is not boosting my confidence either. I need to decide right now as I am not getting any younger and if management is the path for the 40s I need to embrace that and move on. Any insights would be much appreciated.

22 comments

[ 63.9 ms ] story [ 781 ms ] thread
dman
I would advise looking at hardware in other FAANG companies. Think hardware is increasingly a differentiator both on the server side and on the client. Saying this as someone who builds data analysis tools and has started looking at what it would take to build accelerators. With Moores law coming to an end I think we will see a hardware renaissance in the coming years, think you are very well placed to capitalize on that.
ultrasounder
Thanks. "has started looking at what it would take to build accelerators" Do you mean HW accelerators?
Immortalin
FPGAs are extraordinarily hard for most software engineers to use effectively. They can offer huge speedups in orders of magnitude but PCIe bit twiddling + VHDL/Verilog might as well be black magic. An EE that can take any part of a generic app written in e.g. Python or Go and speed up the computationally expensive parts is worth their weight in gold. Look into doing some consulting in this area if you are decent at understanding the software aspects. Plenty of software/finance shops would love to ship their own custom ASICs for e.g. Machine Learning if they had the technical know-how. Bridging the gap is the most valuable thing you can offer.
ultrasounder
THIS is the kind of advice one hopes to get from friends and industry associates.Thanks for pointers.
jstewartmobile
I wouldn't chase past performance.

Moore's law is dead. HW acceleration is moving from "hot rodding" to "the only way forward." The future is already yours for the taking.

At the same time, it still doesn't hurt to learn new things...

matt_the_bass
What do YOU want to do? Any reason you are set on a FAANG?

Have you considered embedded firmware development?

ultrasounder
That's definitely crossed my mind. But my direct experience working on embedded projects have been related to writing low level I2C/SPI/Other serial parallel protocol driver for peripherals. Don't think I want to get stuck in that either.
sick_of_web_dev
damn I would love to do just that and get paid for it. You know what, let's just switch jobs because I hate the SW industry and wish I could go into HW :-)
ultrasounder
Embedded firmware though has gotten a lot easier (availability of cheap ARM boards with gone of flash and RAM), FOSS tool chains, there is still a mountain to climb wrt understanding the underlying hardware. Timing, keeping things synchronized while being within the power budget and stuff like that. Take a few actual EE courses or better yet if u can afford get a degree and specialize in EE. For starters can't recommend the EDX EE1,EE2 and then thr Embedded course from UTAustin also available on EDx enough. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions. My email is in my profile.
tinktank
Interesting, I'm a SWE trying to pivot into EE. I would love to talk to you in detail about some things that might make you more valuable but I'd like some info about what you actually do. Any chance you'd reach out to me at jan.sharp.1990 at gmail?
ultrasounder
Sure thing.I will email you directly and we can start a thread.
zerohp
I'm 41 years old and I just pivoted from software to hardware by going back to school for an MS EE. I now work at a FAANG in hardware but not in the valley. I think you should consider why you're not getting interviews and try to address that.
ultrasounder
That's so awesome and I am glad it worked out for you. I have decided just to do just that, see how I can distinguish myself from the crowd. Cheers
murukesh_s
I would advice you to embrace management path.
ultrasounder
Not dead against it though not my first choice. But how would one who has been technical with no people management skill make that change?
murukesh_s
I think you can do it. Your age and maturity helps a lot and especially if you are very sound at technical it helps in many ways: 1) juniors respect technical managaers more that non technical ones 2) you can estimate better you can dig things yourself from a high level 3) CTOs, VP tech etc are techical people isn't it? It's just the extra polish
godot
Similar to your situation, a good friend of mine was 5 years into his HW(EE) career and was interested in pivoting to SW. I referred him to my company at the time. This was almost 10 years ago. He's now one of the most knowledgeable software architects I know in the current trend of JS stack.

From what you describe of yourself it sounds like you may take a similar path. Perhaps you had a few more years in HW, but I wouldn't say that works against you.

AnimalMuppet
Consider embedded software.

In fact, as others have said, hardware accelerators plus the software to drive them could be the golden ticket.

ultrasounder
Yup!.Been busy googling about OpenCL+FPGA && VHDL + FPGA for "Hardware Acceleration". So many awesome comments. I am extremely thankful for all these people for their insightful comments.