Career Change - Move from Hardware Product Test Engineer to Firmware Engineer
Hi, I recently got an opportunity to work as a firmware development engineer. Need advice on how good a move to firmware engineer is after being a product test engineer for 7 years. My Masters was in EE and CS knowledge / coding is not that great it's a same company transfer hence no change in pay #career #change #firmware #test
Definitely! A great move. You would see better merits with Dev. Ofcourse, retain your test skills while you develop, so you could leverage your skills to better advantage.
Good move. I know a few guys going from DV to FW and they do well. FW has more to do with debugging and testing than people think, and is always in need of people.
Thanks..
Recently I was told by many people that I should stick with test as it will take me a large number of years to grow in firmware development can you guys please advise
Firmware developers are generally people who are really passionate about what they do unlike your typical SDE working on UI or back-end. You're going to start from scratch. It will be an uphill task but not impossible. There are lesser opportunities and lesser people who work on Fw dev. With testing, you could easily jump and become any sort of test/automation engineer but I personally feel it gets boring after a period and stagnates growth unless you move into management.
and 7 years after starting my career (mid 30s) is not too late to make such a shift?
The move is good. Work for an year and move elsewhere if you want greater hike in pay. Firmware dev would be in C. Are you good with systems and board bring up? It could take some time to learn this
Thanks a lot for the advice. gives me confidence to take the plunge I am confident in C and have some ideas about system bring up but wouldn't call myself good