Ive got an EE education, so i was exposed to hw and embedded a long time ago, but where I used to live there weren’t many EE or embedded jobs going, so I got a job as general swdev. It was great, allowed me to work for companies in different countries and had a nice minimalist aesthetic to only needing a laptop to do my work.<p>But I got disenfranchised with working for VC funded web companies and burnout hard and decided to get back into hardware and embedded engineering. I had to relearn lots from my years at university, especially for analog electronics. It’s definitely more technical work, has a higher “intellect” barrier (often larger companies want Masters) and there are less jobs, but the work itself is infinitely more satisfying for me.<p>I love being able to design a product from the ground up, it really feels like a magical experience to create something tangiably real.<p>As far as tools go, YouTube is your friend for anything hardware related. So many amazing YouTube channels dedicated to PCB design that are an invaluable resource (Phils Lab etc).<p>For software - Rust. Its a game changer to use a modern language in an embedded context. While I still use C for some IoT freelancing and it does the job, especially with so many RTOS available, rust is def worth the investment.<p>Pain-points; Complex driver development and testing. Testing is a different beast with embedded, especially integration tests.
Then there is hw testing, and thats a whole different ball game.