Change of career from software to electronics

J

johnnycash

Registered User
Messages
27
Hi,
I have been working as a software engineer (in the telecomms area) for the past 14 years, and I would like a career change. I have enough of the s/w and programming business and ideally would like to do something more practical. However I am afraid that at 38, I have left it too late......but still cannot see myself working in software until retirement.
Anyway, one idea I would like to explore, is the possibilty of getting involved in a career related to the electronics industry, (e.g. maybe initially some technician type work) since I have a kind of background here.

I studied electronic engineering in my early college years and have a national cert and a diploma , (which I completed before going on to an IT degree). I really enjoyed the practical side of this at the time, but thought progressing to a software based degree was a better path to take . This was 14 years ago so I would need to 'go back to school' to a certain extent before relaunching myself.

I would really appreciate some advise, mainly...
What kind of careers or work are todays electronic eng (cert/diploma level) students getting involved in ? (What are the types of career in this area that I could look at ?)
What type of course should I be looking at to re-educate myself on the electronics industry ?
Is it unrealistic to think that I could switch careers like this, and has anyone else done anything similar ???

Thanks for any feedback at all .....
JC
 
I did the complete opposite ! I started in electronics and switched across to software, mainly to get out of manufacturing, which seemed to have less job security and less flexible working conditions than the software industry.
 
What about splitting the difference and looking at embedded software development?
 
Yeah at one point I considered that, but I would think that the embdded software, while closer to the underlying hardware, is essentially much the same in that you are programming, probably in C or some kind of assembler language. Still it is something that I could look into more.
Thanks.
 
It depends on the role/job but in many embedded software/firmware roles you will also be involved in probing the hardware (e.g. using oscilloscope and/or soft/hard logic analysis tools), maybe making small hardware/board modifications, for FPGA and/or ASIC based projects possibly even coding up small bits of HDL/RTL logic and using the simulation/synthesis etc. tools to put them on hardware. Basically it's a very different world to doing higher level application development. C, assembler and (more rarely still) C++ would normally be the languages of choice. The mindset required is usually different to higher level application development especially when every CPU cycle and bit of storage counts.
 
That sounds like something to follow up on. I did'nt realise that that was the case. If this was something that I find I would like to pursue then I would need to do a course to bridge the gap from where I am now (which I was going to have to do anyway). But you definitely have given me something to think about.
Thanks again.
 
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