
Ask HN: How can I pivot from firmware to software/web development? - ChuckNorris89
Greetings fellow hackers!<p>I&#x27;ve always loved working on firmware since the uni days but after 2 years in the automotive industry, 2 years in the semiconductor industry and almost 3 years in the consumer electronics industry, most of them $BIG_CORPS, I&#x27;ve had enough of the nightmare that firmware work is becoming and would like to try my luck in the software&#x2F;web develpment world.<p>Software wise, I have experience writing Python, C++ and C# apps. Nothing fancy though, most of these apps were tools intended for internal use or in manufacturing facilities instead of being stand-alone products. I also study some JavaScript in my free time.<p>I&#x27;m 29 years old, European, have a BSc in Computer Engineering and a MSc in Embedded Systems, however, every job I apply for I cannot get passed HR. And I don&#x27;t mean Senior Dev positions in FAANG like companies, I mean local small to medium shops apologise saying they&#x27;re only looking for candidates with previous on the job experience. I am willing to take a huge pay cut to get in but I never get to any interviews in the first place.<p>Do any of you go through this? How did you do it? Was it worth it?
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semireg
For the last 5 years I’ve done mostly mobile app dev on native iOS and
Android. I’ve had a few side projects involving EE, MSP430 and MicroPython,
USB controllers... but a long way from being competitive against the
experience you have.

For the last 6 months I’ve combined a lot of my skill sets, and extended into
web dev by building an electron app that interacts with USB hardware. For me,
this is the best of many worlds and allows me to be a “full stack” developer
but closer to hardware (vs cloud). Read more at
[https://www.label.live/blog/introducing-label-
live](https://www.label.live/blog/introducing-label-live)

Good luck!

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jstewartmobile
I have a similar background, but I started my own shop. More people asking for
web and mobile applications than embedded ones, so for the "how" part, I
stumbled into it. As for enjoyment, it's all good except that javascript and
its ecosystem are a trash fire.

Not such a great language to begin with, then add all of the variants and
tooling (node/browser, ES3/5/6, babel, npm, yarn, typescript, webpack, grunt,
etc, etc), and the fact that it seems to change every day, just... ugh.

I'd take some poorly-documented embedded C API like Nordic's any day of the
week over the JS ecosystem.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
I'm also happy with the vendor provided APIs but I wasn't lucky enough to use
them anywhere appart from automotive and hobby projects. Most of the time, to
make competitive products we had to build our own APIs form the metal up
optimized for our use cases wich means you have zero suppor from the IC
manufacturer and a clusterfuck of problemes waiting for you.

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kejaed
As an Engineering Manager my answer would be: Show Me.

Develop a portfolio of 2 or 3 sites that showcase the type of work you would
like to do.

The internal tool usecase is a great one, and having the embedded experience
to create a web front end or dashboard will definitely help. If you have some
embedded projects at home with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, write a front end
for that that uses key web technologies. Then write some blog posts about it,
point to your github with the source and then you have something to put at the
top of your Resume/Cover Letter/Email to the hiring manager.

