Engineer VS Programmer. Or where engineers go

For the last week at Habré, at least three posts about how people of different ages, gender, and the received specialty became programmers. Successful programmers. These stories answered the question "how", but almost missed the question "why."

Now I still work as an engineer, moreover in my university specialty “Radio Physics and Electronics”, and in the profile of the Department of Antennas and Radio Transmitters. But I am already actively moving towards retraining.

Why did I, an engineer with 14 years of experience, decide to go to programmers?

Demand

In Russia, now a microwave engineer is not needed. New developments are very few. There are almost no interesting projects. There is the MIC, where they are still developing something, but grandfathers are sitting there, who will not let them twitch much. Secret access and documentation for the transmitters starts from “top secret”, which will deprive you of the joy of traveling outside Russia and hang the sword of the State Secret service over your head. Development only of the elements available in the list of import substitution. New technologies? Heard, but we can not. Oh, yes, you will not hear and read them, the Internet at work is prohibited. *
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* This information is the personal experience of the author of the post.

The private sector is still worse and sadder. If we assume that the microwave in its current understanding starts from 10 GHz and does not include cellular communication, then there are almost no places where you can find work for a developer, and even in the specialty, and for money.

Salary

From the reason above you can see how the laws of the market work. Demand for work exceeds supply, so salaries go down. It was before the engineer received less work.

Now it seems that everything remains as well. The average salary of a development engineer in Petersburg is 40,000 rubles. This figure corresponds to reality. And the scatter is small - from 23 to 60. I don’t like it - go to work in another place, there is a line to your place. Although recently the situation began to change even in the fact that fresh graduates of higher educational institutions are coming to 30,000 rubles.

Therefore, I can say for sure - the level of education of technical universities rapidly dives down. Because those who understand at the training stage that there will be no high salaries immediately go to programmers.

One Wednesday

Again a logical transition. The differences between an engineer and a programmer are small. Systems approach, analytical thinking, ability to solve tasks. Even the habit of doing code with crutches has grown out of the magical properties of blue tape. Moreover, the development engineer at the present time is in any case a programmer, because there is no way out of microcontrollers, signal processing and other algorithms. From engineer to programmers - just a couple of steps.

Perspectives

Again the programmer wins. Engineers need less and less. More and more focused. In programming, everything is different, it's like a bunch of technologies, where trends change every year. "We need more programmers." This refrain can be heard even from the kettle, via WiFi. I am afraid that it will become when there are too few engineers, but I am glad that I will not live to that. So far, there are still too many engineers and too few programmers.

The conclusion is one. Go to programmers. Why haven't I done this before? One single reason - I create devices. Ready, tech and useful within the whole world. For a small salary, with overwork and thoughts at night on how to do better. I can hold them in my hands, I can remember how they looked, what their hard way was from ideas to embodiment. But, for sure they will continue to be created without me ...

Hello world code. "Hello, world!"