How to think about career growth / opportunities in two time-frames for my skills?

Google / Eng
tamaasha

Go to company page Google Eng

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 tamaasha
Feb 2, 2018 5 Comments

tl;dr - person with embedded systems, mechatronics and kernel experience (4 yrs industry, 6 counting interns/coops) seeks advice from more experienced folks in consumer electronics.
How should I think about my career in the next 1 year? How about next 5 years? Given the following:
- strong companies / brands on school, interns and work-ex
- good team that I like, good growth prospects for senior IC as well as managerial roles
- new to mgmt and have hated whatever little I see so far (was a tech lead for a tiny amount of time, have managed a new grad for 6 months)
- completely unsure what to do next, but I like the space in general, know a lot about shipping good consumer electronics, SW Dev + bug triaging/release mgmt / prioritizing issues.
- so far, good track record of looking at big picture anticipating issues, gathering data, asking the right people for help.
- have a CS degree and every few weeks I FOMO about how being in hw will thwart my career or mean less money than my peers/friends doing ML or fancy SW Dev.

Particularly interested in hearing from
- people who have PM-ed or been engg lead for non-trivial consumer electronics products. How did you rise to that role, what prep did you do? What parts did you like or dislike? Would you do it again?
- people who made any kind of lateral move from embedded swe to something else.
- what tribal advice do you take for granted now that wasn't obvious to you earlier in your career? (E.g. heard from some senior folks that working on extremely company specific proprietary protocols and equipment is bad, will get you promo but the skills are not transferrable )

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  • Hey OP, in similar situation except I have 1.5 years of experience. Background in kernels, embedded systems, EE, some small time robotics. Thankfully, both yours and my skill sets transfer over well to consumer electronics. Projects like Magic Leap, Hololens, Oculus are dying for people with your background. Are those the types of projects your interested in? They are a mix of hardware + software.

    As for me, I'm trying to add computer vision and SLAM to my skill sets because they are vital in the field of robotics. If you are interested PM me.
    Feb 3, 2018 2
    • Google / Eng
      tamaasha

      Go to company page Google Eng

      PRE
      LinkedIn, Facebook
       tamaasha
      OP
      No disrespect but that's the difference between 1.5 years experience and 4 years. Those are basically either hobby projects for the big companies or a small insurance premium to make sure they don't miss on the next big platform. I prefer projects that are already bread and butter for the company, like Android. And when I say career advice, I am looking for something way more granular nuanced than that. With a lot of labor, I can reach L6/E6 at Google/fb. What comes after that? How to think about beyond being an IC and making 300k a year?
      Feb 7, 2018
    • No disrespect but you are conflating personal preference with experience. Plenty of experienced developers prefer to work on green green field projects. You might not -- which is fine -- but don't assume everyone else values the same things as you. Hell, there are almost no SDE 1s working on the Hololens, when I look at the org chart the average is senior to principal.
      Feb 7, 2018
  • Google
    gre

    Go to company page Google

    gre
    Switch to the SWE ladder via an embedded role. Sounds like you are a Waterloo grad?
    Feb 7, 2018 1