When I had a job, I was a cognitive scientist. Now that I'm retired, I try to do hardware/software and embedded toward embodied AI... no LLMs for me, thank you very much.
I've gone the full cycle. Started with degree in Mechanical Engineering with focus/thesis in robotics (+ some assembler code). Early career was systems engineering with a focus on reliability growth & performance improvement. This surprisingly involved a good amount of software development and statistical modelling. Then jumped ship with a business degree and changed tact with a good stint in various management roles (mainly commercial stuff), consulting and own business. When IoT gained traction I found more enjoyment developing proof of concept solutions and prototypes, and that became the main focus since. In latest role it is very much all of the above.
That would be a good conversation thread. I remember once when I was working at an Apple repair shop that a university professor brought me a computer with a floppy drive with two disks inserted at the same time. The guy argued that the computer during the installation asked him to insert disk 2, it did not occur to him that he should remove disk 1 first. I agreed with him and learned that user interfaces must be more careful with the messages to the 'OSI Layer 8', the one between the chair and the keyboard.
I've chosen the option "Embedded Engineer" despite my background in Electrical Engineering, where I handle diverse tasks related to IoT solutions such as revising hardware, defining architectures, selecting components. However, a significant portion of my time is devoted to coding, whether it's brushing up on bits in C++ or working on tasks in Python. I've been doing this for the past 20 years, so I believe I'm doing things that at least work!
I consider myself "Master of the Revels", responsible for orchestrating the entertainment of the festivities. Hardware, software, machining, welding, whatever it takes to get-r-done.
I'm a software guy, primarily a JAVA back-end developer. However, I'm frequently called upon to assist with Android (JAVA/Kotlin) or embedded Linux (C/C++) for payment terminals when our terminal development teams hit a roadblock, usually related to communication protocols, interfacing with card readers, NFC cards, printers, barcode readers, and security concerns. With 30 years in the industry, I'm the go-to person for problem-solving.
My job title is STAFF, which means I should be very flexible to fit into all unpredictable jobs from my day-to-day work. After many years practice in the electrical engineering path, I am pretty enjoy the role as a STAFF engineer. So I picked embedded design engineer. I do more hardware projects than software projects.
