I went from EE to SE and now i fear for my job

[connorman01]

I went from EE to SE and now I fear for my job

Hi Everyone,

skip to 5th paragraph for the crux of the post.

I graduated as an Electrical Engineer in 2021. In the early years of my education, I was in a transfer program at a community college. The program was called Computer/Electrical Engineering transfer option. The idea was to take some computer and software classes as well as electrical classes for 2 years and then transfer to a university to finish off the last 2 years. When transferring, you had to choose either computer or electrical engineering to get your BS in.

I really enjoyed both the electrical classes and programming classes. I was torn on which to choose, but I ended up going with EE. I started working for my current employer as a Jr. EE on an RnD team. But I soon realized I did not like being an EE in practice. It is 95% testing other people's designs and 5% actual design. But I have been learning python on the side for a few months and I really enjoy it. So after about 1.5 years, I asked my head of the RnD team if I could switch to the SW team since I did take 1 C++ class, 2 Java classes, and have been learning python on my own for a few months. Keep in mind I am still very beginner level at all of this, which I thought they were aware of but apparently not? Anyway, they said yes and took me on to the SW team.

Now, I was never given a formal interview and honestly was never given clear expectations. I was only given vague ones such as "do bugfixes after 3 months". I am working under a mentor on the team. I was thrown on to arguably the largest and most complex SW project our company has. As someone who is still a beginner in coding, it has been very tough. I have been doing my best to learn everything involved in this project (Python, SQLite, Bash, Network stuff, etc.), but I am unable to do a bugfix without significant aid from my mentor, bordering on him doing it himself. I am however continuing to take python courses online on the side. My mentor is understanding and thinks the vague goals and expectations (or lack-there-of) given by our manager are "bull****".

Now, what prompted this post is that after a few months since i joined SW team, my manager called me to say that he is very disappointed in my performance and that I should be doing 2 bug fixes a day, not a week. He also said that if I had a formal interview when joining the team, I would not have passed. He also said any other company will be just as hard. He tried to seem sympathetic at the same time, but gave off some red flags asking about if I am looking at other opportunities and when I am taking my parental leave. Now I feel like complete crap and worry for my job. My wife is currently pregnant and not working and won't be until she recovers after birth in a couple months. If I lose my job, well, we lose our home.

Any advice would be appreciated. Are other SW positions really all that cut-throat?

 

[Lafong]

Not sure I can offer any plausible advice, but............

Are you still determined to remain in programming rather than maybe segue back toward EE or even other areas within the broader computing world? If your manager had not expressed his disappointment, would you still be thinking everything was OK and happy with your job?

Are you under say 25 with no appreciable job skills that you have not mentioned?

At the age of 35 or maybe even 30, few employers will care about your formal background....they'll want to know what you can or cannot do. Getting them to take a chance on you is another question.

I took a few programming classes and was not amused. Experienced programmers have told me that it can take longer than anticipated for "the light to go on". Several years, which would include major frustration. The light never went on for me, but I never intended to make it a career choice.

I'd guess that, short term and considering your situation, you need to do whatever might have greater job security. Of course, I have no idea if you are in fact on the brink of being let go.

 

[USAFRet]

I took a few programming classes and was not amused. Experienced programmers have told me that it can take longer than anticipated for "the light to go on". Several years, which would include major frustration. The light never went on for me, but I never intended to make it a career choice.

I am the senior programmer for a large organization.

A few years ago, one of our 'team leaders' stated that she could turn anyone into a "programmer".
A couple of years later, she saw the error of her ways and recanted.

Its like turning 'anyone' into a singer, or a painter.
You have vocal cords, and hands, right?
Doesn't work like that.

 

[connorman01]

Not sure I can offer any plausible advice, but............

Are you still determined to remain in programming rather than maybe segue back toward EE or even other areas within the broader computing world? If your manager had not expressed his disappointment, would you still be thinking everything was OK and happy with your job?

Are you under say 25 with no appreciable job skills that you have not mentioned?

At the age of 35 or maybe even 30, few employers will care about your formal background....they'll want to know what you can or cannot do. Getting them to take a chance on you is another question.

I took a few programming classes and was not amused. Experienced programmers have told me that it can take longer than anticipated for "the light to go on". Several years, which would include major frustration. The light never went on for me, but I never intended to make it a career choice.

I'd guess that, short term and considering your situation, you need to do whatever might have greater job security. Of course, I have no idea if you are in fact on the brink of being let go.

Honestly, I would be fine working in any field if I can do coding. I really do enjoy the feeling of writing some lines and seeing some functionality come to life.

I want to say I really don't want to go back to EE since it is typically less pay, much more specialized, and from what I can gather, requires one to be in the office/lab all the time (i truly loathe the office environment). But I have only worked with RF hardware on an RnD team so I really don't know what the field is like as a whole.

By the way I am 29 and my only marketable skills are what I've learned while working at this company. If my manager did not have a meeting with me about this, yes I would have thought all is well. I thought he knew what level I am at. I feel more validated since my mentor shares my sentiments

My short term goal is to at least stay at this job until January, where my wife can go back to work and I will take my 12 weeks of parental leave and find a new job on my leave.

 

[bill001g]

In many case you need a master degree in ee for a lot of jobs. There are a lot of specialized forms of EE degrees from chip fabrication to say working systems used for electrical power distribution. Many people would kill to get RF engineering experience. There is massive demand for people in this field from say cell phone equipment companies. You have to really enjoy stuff like antenna design etc to do that job.

Software coders are actually somewhat easier to get. It depends on what you code. There are massive numbers of people that code web pages for example so the pay is far less.

Your best option is to would be to look for jobs that require the knowledge you have from your EE degree to be able to even understand the program they want written. For example the computers that run in say a car or a airplane. There are also lots of jobs is stuff like factory automation. Most this type of programming requires a strong knowledge of the electronics itself and tends to be very unique to the platform so they have to train people in their programming language. These type of companies recruit entry level people from college with ee degrees and the ability to program in at least 1 language. I know when a relative of mine graduated he had 2 firm job offers and a number of other companies that wanted him to come in for interviews. Then again he graduated with a straight A average.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It is 95% testing other people's designs and 5% actual design.

I would argue in any engineering field, you're going to be doing this for at least a few years. You might get to "own" some part of a product, but it's going to be something that is low-risk and easily correctable. And while you might be tempted to think this is just the higher-ups shoving menial tasks to the junior engineers, you need that experience. Testing something allows you to learn practical stuff about what you're doing far more than just designing something.

You can design things all you want, but if you don't know how to properly test it and gain experience from the things you're testing, your design may as well be bunk the before it leaves your desk.

Software development is no different in my experience. All of the companies I worked for started me off with doing what would be menial tasks. And I appreciate it, because doing simple bug fixes and such allows me to wade into how the product works in a more relaxed environment. That's better than than coming up with a design that'll fail right off the bat because it won't work with the product.

Keep in mind I am still very beginner level at all of this, which I thought they were aware of but apparently not? Anyway, they said yes and took me on to the SW team.

Now, I was never given a formal interview and honestly was never given clear expectations. I was only given vague ones such as "do bugfixes after 3 months". I am working under a mentor on the team. I was thrown on to arguably the largest and most complex SW project our company has. As someone who is still a beginner in coding, it has been very tough. I have been doing my best to learn everything involved in this project (Python, SQLite, Bash, Network stuff, etc.), but I am unable to do a bugfix without significant aid from my mentor, bordering on him doing it himself. I am however continuing to take python courses online on the side. My mentor is understanding and thinks the vague goals and expectations (or lack-there-of) given by our manager are "bull****".

This sounds more like an issue with management not understanding what they were working with and assuming someone making a lateral move would know things already. Especially for someone with at least a year in the company.

Now, what prompted this post is that after a few months since i joined SW team, my manager called me to say that he is very disappointed in my performance and that I should be doing 2 bug fixes a day, not a week.

That requirement isn't very realistic unless you're really familiar with the software you're working with. Unless I'm really familiar with what domain I'm working in, it'll take me at least a week to fix a simple bug because I have to figure out everything around the software first, and I want to make sure I'm doing it at least mostly correct.

So this manager is a total blowhard.

Any advice would be appreciated. Are other SW positions really all that cut-throat?

It depends on the company and how the software team is ran. In your case, the fact they didn't hold a formal interview is a mark that management didn't care. That alone should've been enough to assess your capabilities.

In my experience, I've worked at seven positions in total for various amounts of time. The ones I've stayed at or enjoyed weren't cut-throat in any way. The ones I left were because they simply weren't a good fit for me with how they ran things. Not to say the work wasn't ruthless, but it just wasn't want I wanted to do or put up with.

But if there's one major piece of advice I can give if you want to continue down the engineering track, strive to understand more than the "what." Understand the "how" (it works) and the "why" (was this done the way it was?). This has an implicit advice of drop any per-conceived notion of what you think you know. There was a lot of stuff I worked on that made me think "this code looks dumb" but chances are, what was there was there for a reason. And as long as it works and meets all the defined requirements, there's no reason to change it.

 

[connorman01]

I would argue in any engineering field, you're going to be doing this for at least a few years. You might get to "own" some part of a product, but it's going to be something that is low-risk and easily correctable. And while you might be tempted to think this is just the higher-ups shoving menial tasks to the junior engineers, you need that experience. Testing something allows you to learn practical stuff about what you're doing far more than just designing something.

You can design things all you want, but if you don't know how to properly test it and gain experience from the things you're testing, your design may as well be bunk the before it leaves your desk.

Software development is no different in my experience. All of the companies I worked for started me off with doing what would be menial tasks. And I appreciate it, because doing simple bug fixes and such allows me to wade into how the product works in a more relaxed environment. That's better than than coming up with a design that'll fail right off the bat because it won't work with the product.


This sounds more like an issue with management not understanding what they were working with and assuming someone making a lateral move would know things already. Especially for someone with at least a year in the company.


That requirement isn't very realistic unless you're really familiar with the software you're working with. Unless I'm really familiar with what domain I'm working in, it'll take me at least a week to fix a simple bug because I have to figure out everything around the software first, and I want to make sure I'm doing it at least mostly correct.

So this manager is a total blowhard.


It depends on the company and how the software team is ran. In your case, the fact they didn't hold a formal interview is a mark that management didn't care. That alone should've been enough to assess your capabilities.

In my experience, I've worked at seven positions in total for various amounts of time. The ones I've stayed at or enjoyed weren't cut-throat in any way. The ones I left were because they simply weren't a good fit for me with how they ran things. Not to say the work wasn't ruthless, but it just wasn't want I wanted to do or put up with.

But if there's one major piece of advice I can give if you want to continue down the engineering track, strive to understand more than the "what." Understand the "how" (it works) and the "why" (was this done the way it was?). This has an implicit advice of drop any per-conceived notion of what you think you know. There was a lot of stuff I worked on that made me think "this code looks dumb" but chances are, what was there was there for a reason. And as long as it works and meets all the defined requirements, there's no reason to change it.

Thank you for taking the time to give such a detailed reply. Honestly I like testing in software and doing bugfixes far more than doing testing in electrical. I'm really hoping I can stay on the sw path