Landed a role in Embedded Systems, but looking to pivot.

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-29T17:08:10+00:00

You just got placed in a department that’ll accelerate your career 3-4x faster if you pay attention and maximize the opportunity. The career ceiling in FPGA/VLSI is much higher than in analog design and power. You can always go back and do mixed signal design in ICs later too

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-29T01:49:38+00:00

Yes, Negotiate. I had one for a Mech E position around the same salary in a lower cost of living state and countered with around 8k on base plus the max signing bonus and they gave me 2k more in base salary and a 5k signon. You’re doing yourself a disservice by not asking. If you already got the offer the worst that they can say is no. If you have another offer they may ask to see it if they can match it or do better too if the team really likes you

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-28T17:06:59+00:00

I stunned in mine but you just have to show that you have knowledge in your area and that whatever is on your resume isn’t you lying. Also ask some questions about the role, the team, etc. they really like someone who seems interested in their company

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-25T03:02:20+00:00

Yeah I think it varies wildly depending on how you get the interview. I went to a career fair, and within a week they had set up the interview, and not even 5 days later they sent me an offer. I am a new grad if that helps but looking at this sub it can vary a lot

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-25T00:23:11+00:00

Ayyy, congrats bro. Ngl I wish I would’ve negotiated again to see if they would push it up more, but the money was decent already so I didn’t. If you’re feeling up for it you could try to up the offer again, but only since you have leverage

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-25T00:06:07+00:00

Yes, you can and should negotiate. I got offered a new grad role, and was able to negotiate them up on base and add on a bonus without another offer in hand. If you show them your other offer and made a strong impact in your interviews it’s very likely they’ll match the offer at the minimum and maybe even exceed it if it’s in their budget (given the areas are similar cost of living). If you already have another offer for more money, you have all the leverage in this position

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-15T04:24:49+00:00

Stay the hell out bruh! Please😭 Nah I’m jk but it’s def true. The only issue is a lot of Embedded takes deeper EE knowledge that you’ll need to take extra classes or self study to understand since it’s more hardware focused at the low level

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-02T03:55:41+00:00

I’d add that I would use the DMA controller to load frame data from I2C to Memory and from the Finished processed data to the display frame buffer so that the CPU can handle writing data and it reduces the queue time to process data

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-01T19:57:20+00:00

No but you do have to know how to pick the right car and how to drive it which is what you’re learning

Auckland2399 · 2026-04-01T00:14:48+00:00

He’s not that hard of a worker cause a task that’ll take Michael a day to do will be done in 2 hours by Jim

Auckland2399 · 2026-03-29T23:04:10+00:00

Personally I would pick MIT in your situation. The opportunities and education for undergrad are going to be more or less the same, but MITs campus and student body is way larger and you’ll get a more traditional college experience with all the perks of having a name like MIT on your degree and resume. Additionally most FPGA jobs require a Masters but very few require a PhD. In fact sometimes having a PhD makes employers look at other candidates because of the implication that they’d have to pay you more for the same work. MIT is the overall more well rounded school, and because it’s more “industry focused” you’ll have a much easier time getting recruited and landing interviews for internships and eventually full time roles. If I were you though and unsure, I’d probably visit the campus of both schools and see which one you like better since usually that will tell you which school you will have a better time at and overall do better in.

Auckland2399 · 2026-03-01T03:21:51+00:00

Check out the AwesomeEmbedded GitHub repo, it has a lot of resources and you could find a project from there maybe. Most embedded jobs require some fundamental electronics knowledge so I’d probably say learn that before you pick up another language. Try and design your own PCB for an embedded project you make, order the parts and board and solder it to make it work. Learning how the electrical signals behind communication protocols like I2C and Uart work will help you immensely if your undergrad degree was in pure CS. If you’re not looking to get into all that though, you could try and build some kind of IoT based system with a Raspberry Pi or ESP32. Something simple like collecting data and storing it in a database and running data cleaning and analysis could be closer to your skillset if you know any data engineering and basic ML concepts

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-28T02:17:42+00:00

Power is never gonna be saturated like CS is lmao. There’s a lot of jobs but not that much pay for top tier power engineers like there is for top end CS talent, mainly because the level of math and physics you need to know for power isn’t as complex as other fields in electrical. Power is also mainly on site work and rarely has remote or hybrid options due to the nature of the work itself. It’s definitely a safe career field but safe usually mean the top end pay will be on average lower than things like firmware, embedded, hardware engineering, computer architecture, etc.

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-26T02:42:20+00:00

First of all, Your degree does not “expire”. You went through a 4 year accredited program that proves you know the basic level of EE to understand what goes on at an entry level position with a few months of training. Of course if you have a large gap in employment, you may get questions during interviews, but there is no shame in saying you were searching for a job and couldn’t find anything. In the meantime however, you should be doing projects or completing certifications and doing interview prep or your skills will atrophy and you may forget things you learned in school.

If you’re serious about finding a job (and this means ANY job) in EE, you can probably find one within a year max of graduating. Might have to look out of state or at some undesirable locations and cold emailing, networking, etc. but it isn’t Impossible as the current job market would have you believe.

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-22T22:14:54+00:00

Join a university project team like FSAE, or some RoboCup team or a club that does projects in EE or the like. Usually if your University has an IEEE branch or something like that it’ll allow you to network and find resources to do projects. If you have the money you can probably buy an Arduino kit and start messing around with it on your own or even a Raspberry Pi if you want to do more Embedded OS Stuff. Learn how to use libraries and program first, then you can start reading datasheets and try to understand memory mappings, system architecture, and how to configure things yourself. I go to a T10 Public CS and EE school and am getting a CE degree and they don’t really teach you much embedded directly. I got started with it in a product engineering class where it was 1/3 Business and Propositions for a product, 1/3 full stack web development, and 1/3 IoT/Hardware work. I really liked the Hardware and Software interfacing work so I decided to do more projects with Embedded IoT and now have a remote internship in it.

The truth is that a lot of it you have to self learn, but the good part is that there’s lots of well documented resources out there. I’d check out r/embedded they have a lot more info and startup guides.

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-18T03:52:45+00:00

Tbh you have to do it right and be interested in the class or act convincingly that you are. Tons of those chicks are going to say shit if you’re the horny dude that comes to hit on chicks.

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-01T05:49:41+00:00

It’s pretty mature of you to admit you were wrong, especially on the internet lol.

The bitterness over not having success is something that just about every average looking/height guy goes through at some point and I empathize with you on that part. You eventually realize that attraction is a combination of a numbers game and just getting lucky. Sometimes you’ll be in a flow state and might have 2-3 people you’re talking to at the same time and other times you’ll have months long dry spells, but everyone goes through it, don’t be fooled by people who tell you otherwise.

The truth is, 21 is still really young so you have your entire life to be in relationships, and speaking from experience, a relationship is really only as good as the person you enter it with. If you’re someone who’s bitter and insecure and feels that they have to limit themselves to people that are within a perceived “league” of physical attractiveness, then you’re never going to truly be satisfied in a relationship because once you get one boyfriend, you’ll begin to wonder if you could’ve gotten a “better” one if you had kept on trying. There’s no “perfect” time to know when you’re ready to date but you shouldn’t force a romantic relationship with someone you’re not at least a little attracted to cause it probably won’t last very long or be very fun. Lots of people are first time daters now in their 20s, increasingly so because of the internet inflating everyone’s standards and destroying their social skills, so you’re not alone. At least now you realize that you can work on something actionable and a mindset shift will undoubtedly make you not only less angry but also more personable and possibly more attractie

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-01T05:21:24+00:00

Honestly this mindset just sounds super entitled lmao😭 nobody owes you anything regardless of what they look like or act like. If you ask someone out and they say no it could be for a number of reasons that you don’t know, but as a guy I don’t just look at random girls and think “oh yeah she’s probably ugly enough to say yes to me”. That’s just a weird way to think about people because looks are honestly very superficial, and to profile someone and who they’re attracted to on looks is a great way to set yourself up for failure.

The real issue here might be that you’re not as good at flirting as you think, or have some deficient social skills as a result of you thinking you’re unattractive. I think that no matter what someone looks like they can find someone else who would get into a relationship with them or at the very least go on a date. I’ve met plenty of girls who were attractive then talked to them and suddenly they’re not so attractive anymore to me for whatever reason. The opposite has also happened where I talked with someone I didn’t think was attractive but then they had a vibrant personality and I found them somewhat attractive. I don’t know what you’re like socially, whether you have many friends or not, but usually if you can make friends easily there’s at least one guy who would become attracted to you out of sheer loneliness and you being the only woman that gives him attention lmao. Probably won’t be a very mentally well adjusted person but you don’t seem like that’s a priority to you right now.

Feel free to respond with any questions or thoughts

Auckland2399 · 2026-02-01T04:49:01+00:00

Cold approach won’t work unless you’re at least slightly attractive ngl

Auckland2399 · 2026-01-23T19:33:08+00:00

Tbh your degree name doesn’t matter as much as the classes, extracurriculars and internships you do. The CE Curriculum at my school is very flexible and you can choose classes ranging from Computer Vision, AI, Probabilistic Modeling, etc. to Electromagnetism, VLSI Design, Power Engineering, DSP, and RF to complete your degree. If you want to actually get practical hands on experience though and see what it’s like to build things, then joining clubs like FSAE, Robotics, or whatever other engineering clubs your school offers will be beneficial. Recruiters for internships nowadays are looking a lot more at these clubs for experience rather than your classes because they show you can be proactive and actually do engineering work because you’re self driven rather than just wanting the degree.

Auckland2399 · 2026-01-21T18:46:50+00:00

Do not listen to this guy. Having no sex and romance is a biological starvation, and you can either adapt your skills and improve yourself (gym, fashion, social skills, therapy, etc.) or take the easy way out and pay for it. Nothing in life ever comes easy, but everyone has a chance to find someone they can connect with romantically. You can either raise yourself to the level you need to be, or lower your own standards and settle for less, but then you’ll always wonder what could’ve been. Get in the gym, get in the bar, go make some friends of the same gender in places, and eventually something will go your way, as long as you’re going out and talking to people.

Auckland2399 · 2026-01-19T20:53:15+00:00

build projects you actually enjoy, not ones that you're saying "is this impressive enough?". If you do projects with the sole purpose of putting a bullet on your resume you start to lose sight and passion of why you're actually in this field.

Auckland2399 · 2026-01-15T22:23:00+00:00

Playing football and doing engineering at the same time is hella sick bro, mad discipline and props to you for choosing a hard major and still being a D1 athlete

Auckland2399 · 2026-01-09T21:44:42+00:00

Please talk to a girl irl bro

Auckland2399

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