I'm one of the young(er) few who stuck with hardware out of passion rather than follow the comfortable allure of software that all my peers did.
You make less money, often half. You need to commute to work. Work prospects are narrower and heavily military biased. You get exposed to harmful materials/chemicals. Hardware development is slow, tedious, and punishing compared to software. Having a home lab requires far far more than a laptop. Information is much more sparse so being around knowledgeable others is often critical.
The industry is packed with grey beards, I'm often the youngest guy by 20 years in customer meetings.
Maybe things will change now that we're in a period of uncertainty, but I see hardware as being a thing for the second world and unlikely to stage a big comeback.
There's always the Juiceros of the world. More seriously, every software company of note has some hardware aspirations and hires some number of EEs, machinists, material scientists, etc. Not as many as SWEs, but if you can get your foot in the door, it's probably nice.
I started my career in embedded at an RF company. Back then, I was 20 years junior to the next oldest guy and he was 20 years junior to the rest of the engineers. It was an incredible place to start, learning from some crusty old veterans who were pushing into retirement age. I ultimately left because the pay wasn't there. I've often thought I'd love to go back, even if it meant a decrease in pay, because the environment was so rich with learning and experimenting.
> The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.
I always had an inkling this was the case, but man it's been depressing to see it laid so bare. So many proudly screaming "I hated programming!". Well, I don't, I love it, and have my entire life, and imagine I'll continue to as long as they will let me...
More relevantly to the article and comment we're replying to: I miss doing firmware engineering. Gosh that is so much fun.
Curious if it's the same in China. We forgot how to make things, and maybe we're now forgetting how to do RF engineering. Those grey beards will retire at some point.
I kinda want to join such a company as a software guy, but I really can’t take a 50% pay cut. This is really sad! Have always wanted to work at places that can grow very solid engineering cultures.
These all sound like factors that make hardware a better long-term prospect to build a career around. Basically every single thing you just mentioned makes the field more resistant to automation.
I think the real deciding factor is government policy. So far they have favored software and services companies, letting them eat the lunch of the hardware producers.
Except for "You make less money, often half.", which is a hell of a pill to swallow. As someone ~10 years into my software career, I'm pretty confident that even if I got laid off tomorrow and never found work as an engineer again, I'd still be better off now than if I had stuck with ME or EE as I originally planned.
There are far too many Asian electronic engineers for NA or EU based craftsmen to gain easy living.
You have to make a viral product and find a way to satiate the demand, to find similar success to software & AI bros.
> I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it was a quiet, non evolving field.
Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space - particularly with 3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x. Maybe this is just an artifact of working on building weapons (i.e. defense) and being in the US?
Isn't the issue that this kind of RF is a lot like designing CPUs? There aren't many economically viable products that don't just use a COTS highly integrated circuit, so there aren't that many full on design jobs to go along with all the usage.
The product work is higher level system packaging, such as antennas and application-level manipulation of the whole RF block. But since so much is digital now, that is more software/computer architecture work rather than RF. The COTS RF circuit itself may have standardized serial or even packet interfaces to the rest of the product.
It’s a big market but theres only a handful of use cases and R&D requirements, compared to military where the use cases and niche requirements are still continually evolving.
Mil systems have severely constrained supply chain limitations too, while consumer vehicle systems can comfortably be produced in their millions from China.
Was it? My memory is that there were GPS watches (e.g. Garmin) before GPS became common in phones. Wasn't the miniaturization already there by the time phones started integrating GPS?
I always wanted to get into RF design, but couldn't find it within the mega company I work for (we integrate more than we design at the component level). RF design has always been a bit of black magic, even as an EE. Other than some really great books from ARRL in the amateur radio arena, I haven't found too many good "as it really works in the working world" references. Can anyone point at any good books and/or sites that go into detail about this fascinating field?
I don't know that I agree with the article's point about stagnation ("quiet, non-evolving field") as there have been plenty of new developments in the 2010s and 2020s, but speaking as someone who hires RF engineers of various sorts, the hiring market is definitely heating up. As the article points out, space seems to be the main driver by a huge margin, with Amazon especially as well as SpaceX hiring a ridiculous number of folks directly and then the second-order LEO military applications pushing a boom on that side as well. Apple has affected the hiring on the handset baseband side some too, but nowhere near as much as space.
This article also needs a huge (in the US) disclaimer on it as Europe, especially, has had a boom in automotive components and vehicle telemetry in recent years and obviously a lot of consumer devices and handset stuff comes out of China now.
Unfortunately for us software types, somebody with an EE degree can go into software and then pivot back into RF engineering. I doubt that somebody with a CS degree could (as in, I think they'd be intellectually capable of it, but they'd never get hired).
Going into the RF field myself, I've been troubled with the license costs of tools like HFSS and CST. After a brief test of the open source tool OpenEMS I've landed firmly on the newer open source tool EMerge (https://github.com/FennisRobert/EMerge). It's a little rough around the edges still as it was released in the fall. But I've already gotten good results from it designing my own RF hardware.
Apart from that I wonder how much of the resurgence can be traced back to more active conflicts around the world? There is a booming Drone and EW development within the military sector which could be what drives it?
Definitely solid enough to be useful. I'm about to print my second set of RF PCB's based on the simulations with it. There are still some quirks where you have to read the manual a couple of times until the right order of commands "clicks". But there are good examples that can be followed and they seem to be expanded all the time.
I agree broadly with the author but I think they miss the fact that American EE supply is not going to grow at e.g., 7% year over year. The infra for training new EEs, that is, the technical university, is losing the societial investment and public policy that made it possible.
Do you really think that the university is going to be the bottleneck? I have to imagine that sometime in the next decade, there's going to be some big reorganization to reflect the fact that you can now learn just as well OUTSIDE of a university context. Credentials are going to become less important, standardized testing and examination far more.
> Do you really think that the university is going to be the bottleneck?
Yes. I think American society will struggle to produce enough competent electrical engineers outside of the university system.
> there's going to be some big reorganization to reflect the fact that you can now learn just as well OUTSIDE of a university context
In my experience, very few people like learning the math needed to be competent at RF. It’s hard and exhausting and without a human connection most people are going to bounce. This isn’t like software where if you get it 80% right something still occurs.
I’ve worked with homeschoolers too, and unless they’re the small fraction of people for whom math comes naturally, they’re not going to study it on their own. But that’s exactly the audience one has to reach to grow the EE supply.
I never understand why posts like this do not start with explaining what they are talking about. I am not familiar with the abbreviation RF and I'm not going on a research quest to guess which one the author could mean.
I'm one of the young(er) few who stuck with hardware out of passion rather than follow the comfortable allure of software that all my peers did.
You make less money, often half. You need to commute to work. Work prospects are narrower and heavily military biased. You get exposed to harmful materials/chemicals. Hardware development is slow, tedious, and punishing compared to software. Having a home lab requires far far more than a laptop. Information is much more sparse so being around knowledgeable others is often critical.
The industry is packed with grey beards, I'm often the youngest guy by 20 years in customer meetings.
Maybe things will change now that we're in a period of uncertainty, but I see hardware as being a thing for the second world and unlikely to stage a big comeback.
There's always the Juiceros of the world. More seriously, every software company of note has some hardware aspirations and hires some number of EEs, machinists, material scientists, etc. Not as many as SWEs, but if you can get your foot in the door, it's probably nice.
I started my career in embedded at an RF company. Back then, I was 20 years junior to the next oldest guy and he was 20 years junior to the rest of the engineers. It was an incredible place to start, learning from some crusty old veterans who were pushing into retirement age. I ultimately left because the pay wasn't there. I've often thought I'd love to go back, even if it meant a decrease in pay, because the environment was so rich with learning and experimenting.
> "...stuck with hardware out of passion..."
At least you don't hate your job, I hope? The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.
> The recent maturation of AI revealed how many people in software seemingly loathe their own profession.
I always had an inkling this was the case, but man it's been depressing to see it laid so bare. So many proudly screaming "I hated programming!". Well, I don't, I love it, and have my entire life, and imagine I'll continue to as long as they will let me...
More relevantly to the article and comment we're replying to: I miss doing firmware engineering. Gosh that is so much fun.
Curious if it's the same in China. We forgot how to make things, and maybe we're now forgetting how to do RF engineering. Those grey beards will retire at some point.
I kinda want to join such a company as a software guy, but I really can’t take a 50% pay cut. This is really sad! Have always wanted to work at places that can grow very solid engineering cultures.
These all sound like factors that make hardware a better long-term prospect to build a career around. Basically every single thing you just mentioned makes the field more resistant to automation.
I think the real deciding factor is government policy. So far they have favored software and services companies, letting them eat the lunch of the hardware producers.
Except for "You make less money, often half.", which is a hell of a pill to swallow. As someone ~10 years into my software career, I'm pretty confident that even if I got laid off tomorrow and never found work as an engineer again, I'd still be better off now than if I had stuck with ME or EE as I originally planned.
There are far too many Asian electronic engineers for NA or EU based craftsmen to gain easy living. You have to make a viral product and find a way to satiate the demand, to find similar success to software & AI bros.
> I've worked in the aerospace industry for the past 8 years, and for most of that time I felt like I could confidently say that RF engineering felt like it was a quiet, non evolving field.
Not an EE myself but honestly baffled how the author got that impression with the huge expansion of RF engineering in the consumer space - particularly with 3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x. Maybe this is just an artifact of working on building weapons (i.e. defense) and being in the US?
Isn't the issue that this kind of RF is a lot like designing CPUs? There aren't many economically viable products that don't just use a COTS highly integrated circuit, so there aren't that many full on design jobs to go along with all the usage.
The product work is higher level system packaging, such as antennas and application-level manipulation of the whole RF block. But since so much is digital now, that is more software/computer architecture work rather than RF. The COTS RF circuit itself may have standardized serial or even packet interfaces to the rest of the product.
Also ignoring the massive new market that has been automotive radars which, as a market, have totally eclipsed weapons
It’s a big market but theres only a handful of use cases and R&D requirements, compared to military where the use cases and niche requirements are still continually evolving.
Mil systems have severely constrained supply chain limitations too, while consumer vehicle systems can comfortably be produced in their millions from China.
Bit older than 8 years but even cramming a working GPS reciever into a phone was a huge, nontrivial achievement.
Was it? My memory is that there were GPS watches (e.g. Garmin) before GPS became common in phones. Wasn't the miniaturization already there by the time phones started integrating GPS?
Even in defense, the advancements being made in fields like radar are incredible.
I always wanted to get into RF design, but couldn't find it within the mega company I work for (we integrate more than we design at the component level). RF design has always been a bit of black magic, even as an EE. Other than some really great books from ARRL in the amateur radio arena, I haven't found too many good "as it really works in the working world" references. Can anyone point at any good books and/or sites that go into detail about this fascinating field?
I don't know that I agree with the article's point about stagnation ("quiet, non-evolving field") as there have been plenty of new developments in the 2010s and 2020s, but speaking as someone who hires RF engineers of various sorts, the hiring market is definitely heating up. As the article points out, space seems to be the main driver by a huge margin, with Amazon especially as well as SpaceX hiring a ridiculous number of folks directly and then the second-order LEO military applications pushing a boom on that side as well. Apple has affected the hiring on the handset baseband side some too, but nowhere near as much as space.
This article also needs a huge (in the US) disclaimer on it as Europe, especially, has had a boom in automotive components and vehicle telemetry in recent years and obviously a lot of consumer devices and handset stuff comes out of China now.
Unfortunately for us software types, somebody with an EE degree can go into software and then pivot back into RF engineering. I doubt that somebody with a CS degree could (as in, I think they'd be intellectually capable of it, but they'd never get hired).
Going into the RF field myself, I've been troubled with the license costs of tools like HFSS and CST. After a brief test of the open source tool OpenEMS I've landed firmly on the newer open source tool EMerge (https://github.com/FennisRobert/EMerge). It's a little rough around the edges still as it was released in the fall. But I've already gotten good results from it designing my own RF hardware.
Apart from that I wonder how much of the resurgence can be traced back to more active conflicts around the world? There is a booming Drone and EW development within the military sector which could be what drives it?
Oh interesting, I've heard of EMerge but haven't given it a try yet. Sounds like it's solid enough to be useful?
Definitely solid enough to be useful. I'm about to print my second set of RF PCB's based on the simulations with it. There are still some quirks where you have to read the manual a couple of times until the right order of commands "clicks". But there are good examples that can be followed and they seem to be expanded all the time.
Wow. Thank you.
Indeed, the dark arts of RF engineered components persist long after other technologies change.
Mostly, expensive tools became more accessible like TinySA, LiteVNA64 and NanoVNA.
For the amateur Ham hobby, it has been a bit of a golden age with <$50 usb SDR kits. =3
There is an author comment that is invisible if you don't have showdead on in the thread below.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47926755
> RF was nowhere on my radar.
cue rimshot
The demand for electronic warfare specialists is growing.
I agree broadly with the author but I think they miss the fact that American EE supply is not going to grow at e.g., 7% year over year. The infra for training new EEs, that is, the technical university, is losing the societial investment and public policy that made it possible.
Do you really think that the university is going to be the bottleneck? I have to imagine that sometime in the next decade, there's going to be some big reorganization to reflect the fact that you can now learn just as well OUTSIDE of a university context. Credentials are going to become less important, standardized testing and examination far more.
In what way? RF test equipment is costly and so is building a home electronics lab.
> Do you really think that the university is going to be the bottleneck?
Yes. I think American society will struggle to produce enough competent electrical engineers outside of the university system.
> there's going to be some big reorganization to reflect the fact that you can now learn just as well OUTSIDE of a university context
In my experience, very few people like learning the math needed to be competent at RF. It’s hard and exhausting and without a human connection most people are going to bounce. This isn’t like software where if you get it 80% right something still occurs.
I’ve worked with homeschoolers too, and unless they’re the small fraction of people for whom math comes naturally, they’re not going to study it on their own. But that’s exactly the audience one has to reach to grow the EE supply.
I never understand why posts like this do not start with explaining what they are talking about. I am not familiar with the abbreviation RF and I'm not going on a research quest to guess which one the author could mean.