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Hello googlers, I’m expecting an offer soon from google. I’m currently a hardware/analog design engineer. I’ll be pivoting my career from a senior HW to mid level SW(L4) engineer role. I believe this is a great career move for me as I love coding and also like learning new things. I’m would like to get feedback from any former HW to SW pivoters and how their overall experience has been? I understand that my ramp up is going to be steep, but I’m confident I’ll succeed in long term. Any pointers on making this transition smoother? New TC: 280k (4 year average) HCOL Current TC: 220k LCOL
I made the switch just before COVID started. I since found a middle ground with IOT. From a job availability standpoint, you won’t be disappointed. For transition, I think you’ll be surprised how much HW and SW overlap, albeit in very different timelines. The business side should look and feel very similar. The engineering side is where I had the most gaps. Sit in on as many meetings as possible when you start so you can understand the language and topics that are brought up. If something doesn’t make sense, ask questions. Or at least write everything down and do research in your down time. Something else that helped was doing basic free certifications for the main tech used by the company. It’s not to make you an expert, but allows you to hold an intelligent conversation. FreeCodeCamp was my site of choice.
Thanks a lot for the insights! I’ll look into google coursera certification to see if something might help. I particularly like the “sitting in meetings and be attentive” part. Lot to learn. Excited, but also weirdly nervous at the same time as I question myself if this is the right career move? I guess I’d never know until I try it ..
Do you know what type of swe you wanna do? For example, embedded/iot, or general backend/infra, or mobile, or fullstack web
I was interested in general backend. I got matched with a team that’s at the cusp of HW and SW in networking space. so basically firmware.. Any insights on this?
Yeah I transitioned from normal web backend to firmware. What I find in firmware is that your understanding of the firmware field is more important than your full understanding of computer science fundamentals. For example, focus on systems fundamentals like RTOS, general OS concepts, general networking concepts esp at the lower levels (for example, what stack do you have?) What hardware bus are you using (SPI, I2C etc), what lower level network protocol are you using on that hardware bus, what are the other layers on top of that, are you using standard internet protocols like TCP/IP, UDP, BGP etc etc. All of these are gonna be more useful than learning object-oriented programming for example (even tho you should definitely learn OOP later esp if you want to learn C++ and not just C) Also concepts like endianness, different types and manufacturers of MCUs, data sheets for whatever hardware you have, networking hardware like routers, the list goes on depending on what your team specifically does in networking. I'm mostly just talking out of my ass here but hope you find something helpful
Im currently looking to make a similar transition. Curious what you used for system design prep?
Google L4 doesn’t have system design. Fortunately, google is the only company I ever interviewed at for a SW role. But I did read grokking/DDIA briefly to get general idea.