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some brief background
- I have a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from a generic state university in the US
- I have a little over 8 years of full time professional experience building bare metal firmware, 3.5 years at one company, 5 years and change at a second. both are small no-name companies.
- A small chunk of that 8ish years is actually in mobile app development, but I don't think it's enough to leverage into a mobile apps jobs, plus I don't think I like it enough to commit to it
where I'm at now
- I quit my job a few months ago due to burnout
- I don't want to go back into firmware for multiple reasons. I like low level programming, but I hate that doing it on an embedded system brings in a whole new troubleshooting domain (hardware). I also hate that the pay seems to be universally lower than other areas of tech, there's very little opportunity for remote work, and all the companies hiring for firmware in my area are "defense" companies. Last time I was job hunting pre-covid it seemed only FANGs were willing to fly people out for interviews, and I imagine it's even worse now, so I'd probably have to move to an area with a better market to even get interviews. also this is kind of embarrassing to admit but a lot of job descriptions ask for a broader skillset that what I actually know (things like RTOS or PCB design which I've never done, or linux which I have some "power user" experience with but none as an engineer targeting it as a platform), so if I'm going to have to do some self-studying to get back in the workforce, why not study something I'm more interested in:
- I'm interested in something more along the lines of being a network engineer or sysadmin, maybe even getting into cybersecurity in the long run. the way I plan on doing this is getting some IT certs, getting a help desk or some other entry level IT job, and working my way up. currently I'm studying for the comptia network+; at the rate I'm going I anticipate being ready to take the exam in about a month. I haven't committed to the point where I've spent $ on the exam voucher, but that's coming up soon.
why this might be a dumb idea (some of this is obvious to people who work in tech)
- there's gonna be a big pay cut compared to my previous job. I'd probably be starting out earning half of what I was getting in my last job. It may take 3-5 to get back to the salary I was previously earning, if it even works out.
- the conditions for IT workers are likely less lax than what I was used to as an engineer
- the IT job market is pretty saturated (possibly more than the software market?)
- the people who look at resumes might look at my background and just assume I'm a desperate person looking for a job to hold me over before jumping back to firmware engineering ASAP, or a desperate person spam applying to anything vaguely tech-y without even looking at the description
anyway if you read all this shit thanks I guess
Cannot say much without more details (anonymized resume, target comp, what hub are you within 100 miles of), but it's worth looking at hospital IT. The lower end is awful and even the higher pay bands can be pretty rough if you've been getting big money previously. The flip side is that these systems are wildly overbuilt (since the downtime budget is measured in "how many people will die"), so the stress level is shockingly low. In many places you'll be a glorified Windows admin, so if you can rack hardware and use PowerShell you'll be overqualified (the number of people I worked with who could not function without a GUI was wild).
A lot of hospital systems are more or less bribed into 90% deployment of one appliance vendor (Dell being a big one for compute and storage, though Cisco still dominates the network), so you'll have lots of training available and probably some sales engineers very excited to sell you a solution to whatever you're working on. If you like free lunches, there will be about 3 vendor-catered things a week.
Management can be weird since the C-suite is usually doctors who know shit all about IT, but your direct managers are likely to be technical. Some of these outfits are also unionized (often part of the nursing union), and usually they're subject to some regulation or another that will motivate your manager to force you to take at least a month off a year.
Mobility is... weird. If you're in a niche (say, you run the Linux stuff in a mostly Windows shop) you may be able to promote up fairly quickly, but the pay bands are usually based on time served. You can get a raise, but the bands are a matter of public record so they can't really color outside the lines without promoting you. The good side of this is that you can look up what the IT pay bands are. Private hospitals are likely to be less transparent, but I also wouldn't recommend working for one of those. If you can attach yourself to a teaching hospital, some of them have education benefits/discounts. They're also highly likely to splash cash for certifications and training courses if you want resume padding.
With your skill set, I would highly recommend looking into SRE materials. Being able to code to a spec (or, for that matter, devise a spec at all) is something lots of IT people just do not do, so you can make a huge splash with such amazing ideas as "what if we automated some of these incredibly error prone processes with a computer instead of doing it with our hands every single time?"
Other than that, there are also a lot of credulous rubes hyped about AI, so if you can gin up some story about how you took off for a few months to get into "prompt engineering" or whatever you might be able to hook a recruiter (and the babybrained CTO behind them).
Cybersecurity is mostly a meme job unless you're in a capital E Evil gig. All the cybersecurity dudes (they were all dudes) during my IT years were ex-military radio goons who were known more for shiny shoes and short haircuts than any kind of adequacy for the job, and all the "security analyst" types I knew ended up at one flavor or another of Palantir. It is a very cool skillset, but I have never actually been able to land a job I could stomach with it.
I cannot recommend entry-level IT unless you come in with a plan for advancement. Like, that needs to be your primary line of questioning during interviews. IT orgs are up to their eyeballs in lifers, and there are only so many senior slots to go around.
that sucks to hear about cybersecurity but oh well, I'm just starting out so there's no point in trying to chain myself to one long term goal anyways. also lol at the ex-military guys, I know US government incompetence is a recurring theme on this site but after the snowden leaks I somehow assumed their tech people were somewhat skilled
when you say this, do you mean to say I should prioritize places that do have opportunities for advancement because it's not common, or is it just something interviewers like to hear about?
I mean if you're in an interview, those should be the questions that you use to figure out if a place is worth your time. Talk to people on LinkedIn or at local meetups or whatever if you can to get the real story, too. If your future plan relies on the path entry-level -> something else existing, you need to figure out if it does before you sign on (or be prepared to jump out if it turns out you've got no room to move)
Some orgs are totally ossified; the senior end is people who have been there for a decade and won't leave until they die, and all the junior stuff is interns and a rotation of new grads who don't know better than to eat shit. Other orgs have extremely well-defined advancement, but it's based on something awful like literal years since hire.
It is good to figure out if there are any levers you can engage with at all to get to the level you want to be without having to wait for the last generation with a hope of retirement to actually do it.