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Sounds believable, but how many people successfully transition into those?

• bumby 5y ago
  It depends on what you mean by "transition". It's probably hard to transition from a software engineer to a licensed structural engineer or the like. But it's much easier to transfer into a software or software-adjacent role related to the field. Those fields have lots of opportunity for controls engineers, or data acquisition system developers, or data scientists, or even developing home-grown applications. The flip side is a lot of bad software practices are tolerated because those running the show just don't know better or don't care because it's not in their wheelhouse.
  • t_mann 5y ago
    Sounds a bit like they might put you in the IT rather than the engineering department if you come in as a SE. Control is far outside the ballpark of a typical SE, unless you happen to have studied EE (which is arguably just another one of the 'hard' engineering fields). Sounds like short of having a relevant degree you won't be an engineer in those areas, and very few people get those mid-career. An area that people do transition into and that almost puts a premium on plain age is therapy/counselling, but that's a far shot from technical fields.
    • bumby 5y ago
      Like I said, it's anecdotal, but I've known people who've transitioned to those fields. There is sometimes an issue of conflating IT to CS, but the converse seems to happen much more in my (again, anecdotal) experience. In that case a mediocre engineer with some software experience is crammed into an IT role because the engineering team doesn't really want them. If a SE adds a lot of value to an engineering team they are usually very reluctant to give them up.