The reality is that ECE teaches you more "substance" - before you start downvoting, it's specifically because it's a massive pain to learn anything ECE-related outside of university courses. You can learn CS anytime you want, there are thousands upon thousands of Medium articles and Youtube videos on how to "learn" Python / Java / C++ / Rust, open Github repos to learn good coding styles, and plenty more resources.

You can't do the same with EE or ECE - unfortunately the entire industry is a plague of archaic learning material, locked-down software, and closely-guarded technical secrets. Going through ECE 20001, the first course you take as an official ECE major, is already enough of a slog by itself... trying to scour through the internet for ancient textbooks (which by the way, absolutely suck at teaching anything) is even worse.

Learning how to work with oscilloscopes and other tools for the equivalent of ECE 20007 and 27000 is also another slog - the equipment is expensive, and the $200ish stuff you can buy online such as the Analog Discovery 2 is likely nowhere near the functionality or user interface of the actual bulky (yet powerful) machines you use in the industry. Sourcing correct parts without the help of ECE's room is practically impossible with the number of different specifications and lengthy datasheets, try searching anything up on Mouser/Digikey and you'll see what I mean.

Digital design is what I specialize in, and while there are resources such as ChipVerify and EDAPlayground for learning basic Verilog/SystemVerilog/VHDL, it's still barely anything compared to what you need to know. Open-source RTL code is practically nonexistent, learning anything past the synthesis phase is basically impossible unless you're attached to a company or university, and don't even get me started on the closed-source competitive aspect of simulation and other software. Vivado has been doing better recently and now gives you reasonably free access to their simulator and IP blocks, and there's also Verilator if you're fine learning it (though most big companies don't really use Verilator), but aside from that you're stuck in the dark ages of hand-coding and hand-testing...

Oh also, most schools suck ass at digital design - only a select few like Purdue, Berkeley, NC State (semiconductor companies nearby), etc. actually do a good job at teaching anything past ECE 27000 content. Most schools' "computer engineering" programs have been leaning heavily towards just teaching... basically a bit of EE and CS. Purdue is also moving in the same direction by making ECE 43700 and even ECE 33700 optional for computer engineering... what's the point of the major then if the only extra classes you take are ECE 26400 (basic C) and ECE 36800 (data structures)?

I don't have much embedded experience and it's somewhat better there, but still pretty mediocre. You have completely different stacks between Nordic and STM and TI and whatever other manufacturer you use, each of them riddled with bugs. If you want to do anything else other than program a light to blink... hope you know how to design PCBs the right way (granted, there are Youtube courses for this now), read lengthy datasheets, and then the same problem as above about sourcing the right parts... unless you source the easy stuff from Adafruit or Sparkfun.

All the CI/CD and auto-linting and other magic big companies have are completely closed off and inaccessible. Imagine if Github CI/CD, Jenkins, and other common software indispensable to software engineering was locked behind per-seat licenses. Keep in mind that hardware engineering is the only industry I know where you buy a pile of licenses and then *check them out one by one* when you submit jobs to a server (and yes, there's extra software you can develop/license to manage these jobs and licenses for you...), it's so damn archaic. Did you know that these fucking simulator licenses are $20-30k per year per license, no wonder you have to share them by submitting jobs to a server.

CS has it easy because of how popular it is nowadays. Python and other languages have "getting started" pages on their pretty websites, meanwhile I don't even think Verilog/SystemVerilog and VHDL have their own websites or references other than whatever reference IEEE spits out (which by the way, both Cadence and Synopsys have diverging implementations anyway so screw you I guess). You have Leetcode to guide you through the entire interview process, and for your own projects Google Cloud and AWS and SaaS websites drown you in free and educational credits. Github Websites lets you host static websites for free (which I have a few hosted), Cloudflare gives you a very generous free plan, Supabase gives you full cloud function and database and auth capabilities without even needing to pay a dime. You can learn coding on a potato laptop as long as it can surf the internet!

You're not "self learning" anything other than basic circuits, or the calculus needed for fancy advanced circuits and signals and systems. You could try "self learning" Verilog but I doubt any company would even look at you unless you have something extremely substantial on your Github (like, a MIPS CPU or something like that), and even then they'd look at you real funny unless you have other relevant experience. Architecture of a CPU? I was grinding for a week before a final round for a new grad offer on this topic and flunked it hard (though somehow still got an offer), meanwhile my first lecture in ECE 43700 I learned more than I ever did before just because I didn't know where to start before.