I am actually going the other way! Getting tired of my job being tied to a geography(can’t debug bad heater Circuits from Home), always getting 20% less for similar effort and my fate is not in my control( at the mercy of suppliers,external contractors) and so forth. And after 15 years of being a EE(pcb designer) I am leetcoding in my free time and learning software engineering principles( clean code, design patterns…
I'm about 4 years in to a HW design career in the Midwest. While I generally like the work, I can't help but feel like I'm making a mistake by not moving in to software (which I also enjoy). I like where I work as well, but the pay is just OK comparatively.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone gone from software to physical engineering?
#101In the past the thing that prevented me to make that move was;
https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/
But I am way beyond that point. I have a goal post for when I would retire and a software role at FAANG is that shortest path. Man within FAANG there is a disparity in what a SW engineer makes Vs what a ME/EE makes. As @naval says frequently “code is leverage”.