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Getting into embedded: the questions r/embedded keeps getting, answered

The r/embedded career FAQ is a list of links from 2019, and almost nobody answers the questions posted under it. I read those questions, the threads the FAQ points to, and recent career threads, and put the answers together.

Anyone who asks a career question on r/embedded is pointed to the same place: a pinned post from December 2021 called “New to embedded? Career and education question? Please start from this FAQ”. I wanted to know what that FAQ actually says, whether it still holds up, and what the people sent there want to know.

What the FAQ is, and what happened to it

The post links to the subreddit’s wiki. Its jobs section asks four questions (how to start, how to switch from another field, how to get a job, what interviews ask) and answers them with 17 links to older threads, most from 2019 and the oldest from 2014, plus a list of resources. There are no written answers; the answers are whatever those threads happened to say.

The comments under the post tell a second story. Since 2021 they have collected 126 real questions, not counting spam, technical support requests and thank-yous. 105 of those were posted in 2025 and 2026. Only 5 of the 105 got a real reply, against 11 of the 21 asked in 2021 and 2022. At the same time, commenters report that career questions posted on their own get removed and redirected to the FAQ. The questions go in, and almost nothing comes back.

The data can’t say why. Part of it may simply be that comments under an older pinned post are easy to miss. But since late 2022, AI chats such as ChatGPT have also become an easy place to ask “how do I get into embedded?” Could that be part of the reason, with experienced members leaving such questions to a chatbot, or answering less overall? I don’t know. If you used to answer career questions on r/embedded and stopped, I’d like to hear why.

So I collected the answers from where they actually are: the 17 threads the FAQ links to, and 22 career and education threads from 2023 to 2026 with 873 comments between them.

What people ask

I sorted the 126 questions by what they mainly ask:

Question Share
How do I start, and what should I learn? 28%
How do I find a job or internship, or pass interviews? 17%
Can I switch into embedded from another field? 16%
Which degree, master’s or course should I choose? 13%
Which board, tool, book or course? 11%
How do I grow as a working embedded engineer? 8%
Other: safe career, the work itself, electronics needed 7%

Two things changed between the early and the recent questions. Career switchers went from 3 of 21 questions in 2021 and 2022 to 17 of 105 since 2025, about half of them software developers. And 11 of the 105 recent questions mention AI; 5 of them give it as a reason to move toward embedded, hoping the field is safer from AI than web or general software work.

Where do I start?

The most common answer has barely changed since 2019. The top reply in one of the FAQ’s threads was simply: “Pick up a cheap development kit and make something.”

The details around it are consistent too:

  • Use a real 32-bit microcontroller, and get below the libraries. The usual suggestion is an STM32 Nucleo board, and commenters advise starting with the simpler parts of the family rather than the most complex ones. The step that matters is writing your own drivers for UART, SPI and I²C from the reference manual, instead of only calling the vendor’s library or the Arduino one. A 2023 thread on what new graduates lack included exactly that complaint, that they cannot use SPI or I²C without the Arduino library, though the most upvoted replies pushed back that this is simply what inexperience looks like.
  • Arduino is a starting point, not a destination. Opinions range from “fine to begin with” to “get rid of it”, but nobody recommends staying there. Several answers point out that the AVR chip on an Arduino Uno can be programmed directly, which is a gentle first step down.
  • Learn C on the device. A 2025 beginner asked whether to stop and master C first, since they could not write a linked list or solve LeetCode problems. The top answers agreed: pointers, registers and how the hardware works matter more, and LeetCode can wait until you apply for jobs.
  • Add an RTOS after the basics. FreeRTOS is the usual choice.
  • Pick one or two areas. A 2024 plan that combined building a development board, designing circuit boards and writing an operating system got a blunt reply: drivers, operating systems, bare-metal code and hardware design are separate skills that even experienced engineers rarely all have.

The resources named most often are FastBit’s Udemy courses on driver development, Miro Samek’s free Modern Embedded Systems Programming course on YouTube, Jonathan Valvano’s free Shape the World course and e-book, and the Embedded Engineering Roadmap on GitHub, which is also in the FAQ and keeps being shared under it in 2026. For books, see what r/embedded reads.

Do I need an EE, CE or CS degree?

This is the most argued question in the threads, and the answers have not converged.

The FAQ’s threads from 2018 and 2019 lean toward “any of the three works”. People with computer science degrees described long embedded careers, and several pointed out that firmware is increasingly a software discipline that benefits from version control, testing and design skills. Electrical engineers pushed back hard. A hiring engineer put the middle position well: for an entry-level role they look for a balance of hardware and software courses, and the ideal candidate can talk about both class inheritance and how to drive a transistor’s gate.

The recent threads add a practical point the old ones underplay. An unrelated degree is possible but costly: one commenter with an irrelevant degree and four years of experience said many employers simply did not respond, because a relevant degree was listed as required. A 2026 commenter, back at university for an EE degree for exactly that reason, complained that the subreddit cannot pick a side between EE and CE.

Taken together: computer engineering gives you the balance by default, computer science works if you add digital electronics and microcontroller courses, and electrical engineering works if you write a lot of code. The degree mostly decides how easily you get past the first filter.

Is a master’s worth it?

Opinions split here too, and the split is about money. In a 2019 thread, one commenter credited his master’s with opening doors: his employer hired only people with a master’s or higher, and he reported starting about 20% higher than with a bachelor’s. Others replied that this costs one or two years of salary and experience, and in another thread, about a $70,000 program, that the student was already qualified for an embedded job without it.

The pattern across the answers: a master’s helps most when you are changing fields and need the courses anyway, when you want research and development work, or when your target employers require it. It is not a requirement for an embedded job.

Can I switch from software or another field?

Yes, and the threads are full of people who did: several mechanical engineers, an industrial engineer, a former firefighter now writing bare-metal firmware. The most upvoted post in my sample, from 2025 with more than 800 upvotes, describes a mechanical engineer who taught himself programming from 2020, landed a software job in 2021 without a computer science degree, and moved into firmware at the same company about two years later. For that first job, he credits projects with visible results, shared as short videos on LinkedIn and YouTube; for the move into embedded, daily study and register-level work on STM32.

The recent answers are also honest about the cost. Without a relevant degree it is described as possible but much harder, mostly because applications are screened by degree before anyone sees the projects. A veteran asking in 2026 was told that defense contractors and veteran hiring programs can be a way in. Software developers bring skills embedded teams value, such as testing, CI and code structure, but should expect to start by learning the electronics side.

On AI as a reason to switch, the replies are mixed. Several experienced engineers find AI useful as a research and learning tool, while warning that relying on it stops you learning. A recently hired firmware engineer did not expect AI to replace the job any time soon, while another commenter sees companies hiring fewer juniors and giving AI tools to seniors instead.

How much electronics do I need?

When a 2024 thread asked whether you need to understand electrical engineering, the top answer was a one-word yes, and the second complained about how often the question comes up. Further down, though, several people with computer science backgrounds described writing drivers and board support with only basic electronics, working alongside dedicated hardware engineers.

The consensus answer is in the middle and has not changed since 2019: you should be able to read a schematic, use a logic analyzer and an oscilloscope, understand basic digital and analog behavior, and hold a meaningful conversation in a hardware design review. You do not need to design circuit boards for a software role.

How do I get the first job?

The FAQ’s best link is still the Entry level embedded software career guide from 2019, written by a self-taught firmware engineer. Its first rule holds up: look at real job postings in your area, list the skills they ask for, and build those. Its list then was C, C++, testing, RTOS, board bring-up, drivers, I²C and other buses, Arm, Linux, Python, wireless and debugging. Recent threads would add embedded Linux and the Yocto Project; a 2026 commenter called it what is hot right now.

The other advice that keeps recurring:

  • Fewer, finished projects beat many small ones. Document them, test them, and be ready to explain every decision.
  • Contribute to open source that people use. Zephyr drivers, the Linux kernel and U-Boot come up by name.
  • Keep the resume to one page if you have no work experience, and list chips and architectures rather than development boards. The FAQ links r/EngineeringResumes for reviews.
  • Prefer a large company for a first job if you can, because it is more likely to have time to mentor you.

The tone around the job market has changed, though. In 2019, the advice to a student without replies was not to give up, because the real search had not started yet. The recent threads include a 2026 applicant with about 250 applications to entry-level roles and no offer, a 2024 commenter who called the junior market in Germany basically dead (disputed by another who saw recruiters everywhere at a career fair), and questions from Australia, India and Brazil about few junior openings. These are anecdotes, not statistics, but they explain why so many recent questions are about getting hired at all.

What do interviews ask?

One of the FAQ’s threads, from 2019, is still the best list. The questions that come up across it and the recent threads:

  • what volatile means and when you need it
  • how interrupts work, and what you should never do in an interrupt handler
  • endianness, and how to move data between systems that differ
  • how UART, SPI and I²C work
  • bit manipulation: masks, shifts, XOR
  • small exercises such as a circular buffer, memcpy, or checking for a power of two
  • the difference between a mutex and a semaphore

An intern in 2026 reported being asked about an RTOS, UART, I²C and the ADC. The warning from 2019 also still applies: some companies use general data-structure and algorithm questions instead. The poster of that thread, with eight years of experience, reported failing exactly that way, and a mid-level engineer in 2024 described the same surprise with a LeetCode-style test. Experienced candidates are often asked to present a past project and defend it in detail; one commenter suggests bringing the actual hardware.

C, C++ or assembly?

Mostly C. A 2022 answer from aviation put C at about 95% of the embedded work, and an automotive engineer estimated assembly at well under 0.1% of a modern car’s code, limited to startup code and bootloaders. C++ is used in parts of the industry, and Rust gets occasional mentions. The advice on assembly is consistent: you rarely write it, but you should be able to read it.

Is the work what I expect?

Two recent threads are worth reading before you choose. In 2024, a firmware engineer two years into a first job described spending most of the time porting undocumented code, and a mid-level engineer described a job of copying projects and changing pin assignments. The replies did not pretend this is rare: bringing up hardware and porting code is a large part of firmware work. They advised moving on when a job stops teaching you anything, and treating interviewing as a skill to practise.

What this can’t tell you

These answers come from people active on Reddit, who skew toward students, early-career engineers and engineers willing to answer the same question again. Upvotes measure agreement within that group, not truth. The threads I read are a sample: the 17 the FAQ links, plus 22 recent ones chosen because they asked career and education questions directly. And the job market reports are individual experiences from different countries and years.

The advice itself is remarkably stable, though. The 2019 answers to “how do I start” would still be the top answers today.

Sources

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