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I've come to the conclusion that most industries are filled with bullshit, "bullshit" being defined as going through the motions in directions orthogonal to the

I've come to the conclusion that most industries are filled with bullshit, "bullshit" being defined as going through the motions in directions orthogonal to the mission in order to satisfy someone's/the institution's character flaws. That activity is naturally unfulfilling, but unless you're going to bootstrap a company or go for high-level leadership there's no way to combat it. So that means finding work where the amount of bullshit is minimized and/or the remaining non-bullshit work makes it worth it. I have a wife and kid and another kid on the way, and I'm a sole provider, so I don't have the luxury of leaving for a lower paying position. Hell just looking at embedded development (bare metal C, micro-controllers, RTOS work and such), the tech work I find most fulfilling, I'd still have to take a decent haircut vs web-backend software engineering. My solution is I'm trying to spin up lifestyle business side projects that can compensate for any loss in salary when I find a job I actually want, and ideally train me for the jobs I actually want. I think that's the best balance I can strike while remaining an engineer.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Hey dude, bare metal C, microcontrollers, RTOS work, etc is still very much being done and well-compensated at a few giant companies. Apple, Google, even Microsoft are definitely doing it. Any other tech megacorp that wants to vertically integrate with some custom hardware is going to be doing it at some level too. You can shit out a low quality Android phone/IOT device using Chinese subcontractors, but you need an actual competent team of experts to compete at the top end. (I think there's some interesting stuff happening in the private defense industry too, but I wouldn't personally feel comfortable working on that) My whole career since I started in 2006 has been bare metal C, and I'm doing pretty well overall.

Firmwarrior 4y ago

Hey dude, bare metal C, microcontrollers, RTOS work, etc is still very much being done and well-compensated at a few giant companies. Apple, Google, even Microsoft are definitely doing it. Any other tech megacorp that wants to vertically integrate with some custom hardware is going to be doing it at some level too. You can shit out a low quality Android phone/IOT device using Chinese subcontractors, but you need an actual competent team of experts to compete at the top end. (I think there's some interesting stuff happening in the private defense industry too, but I wouldn't personally feel comfortable working on that) My whole career since I started in 2006 has been bare metal C, and I'm doing pretty well overall.