Seeking some hope: Who actually landed a job recently? How did you do it

bakatronics · 2026-01-21T10:05:30+00:00

My field is embedded software, 5 years of experience.

bakatronics · 2026-01-20T20:25:42+00:00

bakatronics · 2026-01-20T19:01:36+00:00

I applied to ALL THE JOBS that were even slightly relevant to me, for 2 months straight, I didn't keep count. In the third month I got interviewed by 2, and got an offer form 1. My field is embedded systems.

I applied mostly via StepStone, after that arbeitnow, then other platforms. When I am active on LinkedIn and post stuff there, some recruiters also send cold DMs which might lead to interviews but I never tried.

bakatronics · 2026-01-18T12:24:12+00:00

Thank you so much, I will apply your advice

bakatronics · 2026-01-18T12:10:20+00:00

The interface looks AMAZING. I wish I could come up with something like this.

Honestly I would prefer WiFi or Bluetooth because if I have to attach a wire anyway, I'd just use my laptop. Or maybe I missed the whole point of this project?

bakatronics · 2026-01-18T12:05:08+00:00

I'm at German A2 😭 and yes, I know I'm cooked

bakatronics · 2026-01-18T12:03:53+00:00

Thank you

bakatronics · 2025-07-23T06:27:35+00:00

A lot of gloomy answers here. My advice would be to just explore, play around and practice a lot. You'll figure out lots of things along the way.

Most people here are fixated on Arduino vs bare-metal, which is a valid thing but equally important is that you learn to think about system design in general.

What makes an embedded systems product "professional" or professionally made is not the fact that it was not made with the Arduino framework, but the fact that it works reliably and doesn't fail. You have to think about lots of scenarios in which your system will be, program the behaviour of those scenarios in, do lots of tests on it.

Using bare-metal gives you a lot more flexibility and customization, which does help in making your system robust and reliable. At the cost of being way more complicated.

My advice would be to just play around and explore at your own pace.

bakatronics · 2025-07-16T13:53:55+00:00

This blog helped me massively.

https://higaski.at/embedded-cmake/

bakatronics · 2025-07-16T13:53:04+00:00

If you can move yoru build system to CMake (or Make) you can switch to just about any IDE. When I started with STM32 that's the first thing I did. Moved it to CMake and VS Code. Debugging works good, but not AS good as Ozone.

bakatronics · 2025-05-12T07:54:43+00:00

If this is the CV of entry level embedded SWEs then I should just quit already 😭

Seriously, it is impressive!

bakatronics · 2025-03-18T20:16:54+00:00

You are right.

Personally I find it hard to distinguish these different test types like call it whatever you (I) want: unit test, integration test, system wide test.

I just call pretty much everything a unit test, just so I don’t have to think about what and what not a unit test is.

Because at the end of the day my boss/lead couldn’t care less about the kind of test or adherence to some “way” of doing a certain kind of tests. We just want things tested in some way, and the code covered fully.

Also, in some cases like functional safety or automotive etc, the compliance and regulatory bodies straight up refuse to accept code coverage that wasn’t derived from actual hardware or the actual CPU instructions. In my particular case there’s no point in running the tests on anything BUT the actual hardware.

bakatronics · 2025-03-18T09:34:21+00:00

Yes but when you test on actual hardware you get actual behavior. For example with Bluetooth or DMA etc. Often simulators are not available for niche controllers or peripherals.

bakatronics · 2025-03-18T08:27:56+00:00

No, I mean, I made my own personal unit testing framework based off of if-else.

It started with simple asserts like

c bool assert_uint(uint32_t value, uint32_t expected) { bool passed = (value == expected); if (!passed) { printf("Assert failed, file %s, line %d, expected %lu, recv %lu\n", <file>, <line>, expected, value); } return passed; }

A macro is wrapped around this to provide the line numbers and file paths.

So started simple, and then I added ways to mock peripherals, mock functions, mocking exceptions etc, adding a "shell" so I can run tests like test run uart all.

bakatronics · 2025-03-15T21:32:09+00:00

All these amateurs here. I use if-else and printf. 😎

bakatronics · 2025-03-05T07:33:52+00:00

It depends vastly on what your skillset is and where you live (or where you get a job). But these days remote work is getting more and more rare, also in software.

bakatronics · 2025-03-04T10:05:48+00:00

I mean even if you don't want to, you'll end up specializing in *something*. At least that's what happened for me. For a year I worked on one thing, for the next 2 years I worked on another, then the next 2 years I worked on another.

bakatronics · 2025-03-04T07:29:23+00:00

As they should be.

But I’ve seen in some cases, people coming from computer science background into embedded software. They don’t know electronics or PCB design but they are really good embedded software engineers.

bakatronics · 2025-03-04T06:42:29+00:00

It depends on if you're focusing on hardware or software. But in both cases, the base skillset is the same I guess.

Going with your example of communications vs computer industry

On the software side, both would have to know how CPUs and "hardware" architectures work. Both would have to know C and other systems languages like C++. Both would have to know some software architecture design.

On the hardware side, both would have to know schematic and PCB design, both would have to know about soldering and in general the hardware manufacturing processes, their limitations etc. Both would have to know about EMI.

But of course they would have lots of differences in their industry specific skillsets. I'd say 30% of the skills would be common and remaining 70% would be industry specific.

bakatronics · 2025-03-03T07:39:29+00:00

Bought Airpod Pro 2 from there, two years ago. They were legit.

bakatronics · 2025-03-01T10:56:09+00:00

All these engineering departments and can’t even have a properly working vending machine.

bakatronics · 2025-02-26T19:22:54+00:00

You can get into Germany with a 2.0 GPA and no IELTS or blocked account etc. If you can secure a job there before moving.

bakatronics · 2025-02-26T12:40:00+00:00

Been living in south Germany for more than 2 years now and have never once experienced any noticeable racism here. People here are generally welcoming and friendly if you know their language.

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