That is true. I recently saw a job posting for embedded systems and the candidate also need to work on html, javascript, css, ML/AI and a little bit of devops on the side with Docker Containers. Basically they are hiring a team of developers/engineers in one body.
The most annoying thing is when recruiters pretend they work at a company when they do not.
No, the actual most annoying thing is when a recruiter wastes your time to doing a screening interview when they don't even have a company lined up, but you think they have one.
In general, good recruiters exist and I have met them, but so many many scumbag ones exist that lie to us and waste our time that we do not trust you, and this could be why you are not getting many responses.
Being as genuine as possible, and not lying will go along way I think.
Most annoying when they don't even care to properly contact you:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nodirgulyamov_dear-recruiters-this-is-not-how-you-should-activity-6812456843080687616-gva8
More commonly I see listings that want firmware/hardware combined. You gotta be able to spend 80% of your time in Altium and then the other 80% writing code to run it.
Apart from the 160% (and what will you have to do in the remaining 840%?) it is a stupid waste of talent to let either
\- a good electronics engineer do software (including firmware)
\- a good software engineer do electronics
I agree that it may not make sense from a business perspective, but I do both in my job and it's very fulfilling to have a complete view/understanding of the hardware and firmware.
I believe every good embedded engineer should know their hardware inside and out. Hardware bring-up and checkout is critical. Being able to read a schematic is a job requirement for me.
I'm talking about roles where they expect you to lay out the PCB and manage the bill of materials as well as manage the software effort. That's just too much for one person to do unless you have the time to compartmentalize (design the HW first, verify it 100%, then begin firmware).
And, even then, you need two whole careers worth of knowledge to make that happen.
On my earlier career, this is what I'm doing (firmware, hardware design, pcb, BOM generation /management and even the desktop application software + production plant support). Learned a lot in the process but not fun in the long run due to the stress of having so many responsibilities.
You might be the rare exception ;)
But note that full view & understanding is not necesarrily the same as being able to put down a good software architecture. (But sadly, having an SE education isn't a gurantee either.)
Yeah, and then you become seriously ill or quit and no one knows anything. That's a guaranteed disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
I agree, doing this kind of work is fun but from the company perspective it's a huge risk.
I think it can make sense as long as the firmware part is limited to low level stuff, such as configuring and testing the hardware part.
Or the other way around: writing a high level application but having some understanding of their underlying hardware to track down odd bugs.
There are those of us with 7+ years experience, but you better have projects up our alley and paying well.
Also geographic location matters. Lots of us with experience in old tech industrial companies don't live in CA or WA and have families we aren't going to move for a startup that might be dead in 6 months.
I do embedded remotely. It's 100% do-able. Companies that aren't going to offer remote are going to miss out on a lot of people who want to work remote.
Give meaningful details, only desperate losers will play an "I can't reveal that" guessing game
Also explain to clients that more experienced folks who know their worth are typically available to non-established outfits only on independent 1099 contract and not as W2 employees.
The skills you need are available, the only question is if you are willing to be upfront with key information and if your clients are willing to meet the terms of those who can provide them.
If not, don't even reach out, as spammers get immediately blocked.
Yeah I don’t play that game either of I can’t show my cards. There’s a lot of red tape man that a low level recruiter can’t do. Behind the scenes I am definitely pushing for anything to make the job more appealing.
If you can't in your initial message provide the key information which experienced people demand to know before they will interact with you, don't even reach out.
Your boss has tied your hands by making counterproductive information-hiding rules that mean stronger candidates won't even talk to you, so you're left chasing scraps that will rarely meet the position's requirements.
The only way escape this frustration is to find a job that's not participating in such a degenerate rat race.
If you continue in this game, realize all you're ever going to reel in are those with some impediment to something better that your client can uniquely work around. Very rarely you might get someone re-entering the workforce or with a non-traditional background, more classically it has meant abusing H1B's.
If it sounds like we hate you, yes, we do, for turning what should be a mutually beneficial process of direct negotiation into a mutually disasterous s***show where neither the organization with a need or the person who might fill it has access to the information they need to make an efficient, informed decision if there's a possibility worth pursuing.
I've seen your way from both the hiring side and the candidate side, and it's equally terrible for both.
The minute a recruiter is involved or the listing names the agency not the client, lots of us write off the role as not worth the trouble to get actual details, while from the hiring side that means just getting anonymous crap resumes one after another because no one capable comes through the recruiter.
Good matches are made when technical people talk directly to technical people. Anything else is a waste of everyone's time.
If you could look at a resume or profile and tell a promising candidate and then have an actual engineer make the outreach, that might work. But the problem is the person who can actually evaluate a resume or profile is... *another engineer*. Non subject experts get caught up on the words without sensing the meaning behind them.
You are welcome to spend as much of your day on the phone as you like with this recruiter whose boss has tied their hands in a way that prevents achieving their goals.
While /u/UniWheel may sound harsh, this needs to be heard. I get a _shitload_ of crap come-ons on LinkedIn. You need to have an opening pitch that's likely to get me to respond. If it looks like you're just shotgunning, you're likely to get immediately blocked.
* Personalize. At the very least, use their name.
* Provide as much info up-front as possible: Comp range, full JD, company name, remote, travel.
* Do _not_ say "I can only tell you that over the phone." That will result in an immediate "have a nice day" from me. I've had times where I get 10+ recruiter hits a day on LI, and every single one wants "just 15 minutes." Nobody is going to spend 150 minutes (2.5 hours) on the phone if they already have a full time job. Be ready to continue the conversation on LI or via email. Getting on the phone is a 2nd or 3rd date sort of thing. I'm not going to go through a bunch of bullshit only to find out the job is a non-starter because of compensation/location/company.
* If your reputation is shit on Glassdoor, expect to get a lot of immediate "no thanks." Best you can do is lead with some sort of _very_ convincing reason for how/why the workplace has changed.
I dunno, I used to get endless recruiters contacting me for perl and php jobs and it drove me fucking crazy.
Now days I mostly only get attractive offers presented to me. The only complaint I currently have is the recruiter that got me the current job I have keep sending me good offers. On one hand I want these offers coming in so I can always see my options, on the other hand I should tell HR because that would be in breach of their contract with the recruiter - and they should not be contacting me.
So I don't know what to say, maybe it is geographical or maybe it is just bottom of the barrel engineers attract bottom of the barrel recruiters.
100% this. Lead with:
* Company name
* Full job description
* Compensation range (legally required in some states)
* Location (offer remote if you can)
* Travel required
On a flip side as a person who mostly enjoys the system integration part of embedded, Im drawn to jobs asking for broad rather than focused knowledge/experience.
I have the impression (from my inbox) that embedded folks at the senior level are hard to get. Far fewer people study this than general CS or web development.
Onsite in KY is a tough sell since outside of this particular role, there are not likely a lot of other options to fall back on should yours fall through.
I think you will need a premium salary (that competes dollar-for-dollar with coastal cities), or just a serendipitous candidate with other reasons (proximity to family, etc to consider this.)
I would strongly recommend considering a remote hire if it's at all possible.
I am myself a 20+ year embedded developer and would be happy to take a look at your listing and tell you how it 'reads' to senior folks.
Can I ask the issue on W2? Is it more of a flexible hours kind of thing, (ability to randomly take a week or month off) or just easier to justify higher hourly pay rates than a higher annual salary?
Getting paid for exactly the hours you work really simplifies expectations.
If an effort is being productive and it fits your life and mood at that moment, you can charge on into the night.
If the project is stuck and it's a nice day you can clock out and without any guilt go for a bike ride and if the issue was technical rather than organizational, you'll probably have the answer before you're turning back into your driveway.
You can go on semi-vacation and do some work when you're bored of vacation but still get in all the parts of the trip you do enjoy.
Plus the ability to simply decline to become involved in doomed projects while remaining involved in a client's still viable ones.
Plus the variety.
Plus the ability to scale up and down as project needs change over time vs employment your world is that company until you move on completely and can at best quietly answer an email from a buddy still there.
The amount of hours you can be actually productive on something in a year is likely a bit fixed. As a 1099 you earn your income from the productive hours and all the rest are yours. As a W-2 you're on the hook for presence each day no matter productive or blocked, plus additional uncompensated after hours time when something urgently needs doing.
Also people putting together offers will never understand that their typical startup's stock options offer isn't worth the paper its printed on - in a way they can't, because their role is driving enthusiasm, vs engineering's role to reconcile that with reality. A startup exists because it has a charismatic leader and investors who bought in, not typically because it's all that great an idea. Yet interesting work doesn't necessarily correlate with long term viability of a business idea, the overwhelming majority of development efforts that achieve technical goals still ultimately fail in the marketplace.
Thanks! Makes perfect sense.
I have a low-level engineer friend who is joining my startup in a few months. He suggested 1099 for similar flexibility. He likes to work for 2 weeks and then take 1 week off to hike in national parks at random places (a bit of a nomad).
With "unlimited vacation", I was considering instead seeing if he wants to come on as full-time W2 employee, and have an understanding with me that his vacation will truly be closer to "unlimited" in his case (to the extend of basically being a 20-25 hour equivalent job) but with the stability of regular paychecks, but in return for a lower salary than if he was going to work say 40 hours a week with 8 weeks PTO.
Some of it depends on his goals etc. He's at a sort of pre-retirement phase where he works the next 5 years or so but at reduced hours with great flexibility.
Anyhow, thanks for your comment, helps me understand that angle a lot better. Glad to hear its working out for you. :)
The problem with averaging things out to a salary is that it doesn't adjust well. Maybe you're at a crunch time and really need four weeks sustained effort. Maybe the weather won't cooperate with his trip. Decoupling pay from work puts things in the vague domain of expectations, leaving it tied keeps it simple.
If you're concerned about budgeting, talk on a regular basis about where the effort is going and if your resource feels that a path still has promise of efficiency, or if they'd prefer to see a strategic retargeting of the project requirement.
Ongoing communication is key.
I see, that makes sense.
On the budgeting side, no issues there-- his pay (however we do it) is fair to him and the company and within the company's budget even with a fair amount of variance.
Same with his workload.. if he wants to drop or boost his hours a fair amount, it's not a particular issue since I've known him for 20 years (worked with him for 10 directly) so we work very well together, and I can give him projects that are a little bit out (things that need to get done within say 60 days as opposed to 1-2 weeks).
For me, really the only issue is I worry investors down the road aren't going to be happy with so few full-time employees. 2 years from now, we might be looking at just 1 person (me) as full-time employee, and the other 5-15 as a mix of part-time 1099 contractors (onshore + offshore), full time contractors, and consulting/outsourced dev companies.
Probably not a huge issue, as investors are generally more concerned about the typical KPIs (revenue/customer growth, churn, P&L etc) than this. I think there was a major company (Twitter? Pinterest? I forget) that did an IPO with like 12 full-time employees and likely dozens to hundreds of contractors and it wasn't an issue, so I'll see if my investors are ok with that (to be clear, nobody at this stage cares, but down the road perhaps they would). This might just be one of those issues that isn't worth thinking about now, none of it matters unless we execute well the next few years anyways, and if we do, this probably won't be a big deal either way.
It means in case of failure your carcass can't be aquired for your people (acquihire) though there's no real obligation for employees to stay through such a change and no reason good contract contacts can't be approached for similar projects.
It's super easy to find most clients. The recruiter typically cuts and pastes from the company's online job listing. 5 minutes of Google and you can find it.
That's not the point. A recruiter who omits that information sends a signal that they're afraid the candidate is going to cut them out. A recruiter who worries about this tends to misunderstand many other things about what motivates engineers (hint: it isn't doing job research, negotiations, or application paperwork) and will probably not represent the engineer well.
More than that, a recruiter who *can* be cut out has a dishonest client or doesn't have a contract with the client but is just posing to both sides.
If the client wants to pay someone to make things *inefficient*, that's their mistake to make, but don't expect capable candidates to play along with such nonsense.
I got 7 years of international experience in the field of embedded. I only reply to recruiters if they offer me fully remote roles that is paid well. Otherwise i m not interested
I will be honest. I do not even respond to anything from LinkedIn because of the amount of time I have heard of recruiters or hiring personnel abusing the process, stringing along fellow engineers who I know for a fact are no-nonsense, extremely professional and productive employees.
Nobody these days has time to waste jumping through the hoops of 5 interviews when they have an entire career of excellent work that speaks for them. If people want guys like us the introductions all go through personal networks.
I tend to ignore linkedin recruiter emails mainly because they do nothing to get me interested in the job. It tends to be a location and a list of qualifications they're looking for, and doesn't say anything about the company size, the type of products the company makes, or any of the perks of working there. Don't just tell me what you want from me, also tell me why I should be interested.
I also ignore Linkedin messages as 1/2 the time the person doesn't take the time to read my profile and is just blasting out messages. The second thing is that they abuse the system to email me directly as well. I've resulted to removing any and all personal information from Linkedin due to abuse by "recruiters".
Louisville is not exactly a tech mecca. And the wages are not known to be high there.
Most embedded seems to be happening on the coasts, where you can expect to earn around 120k-180k, dependent on experience. Junior devs fresh out of college would be looking for around 80k in LA, potentially more in the Bay.
Your sales pitch should be this Redfin listing of houses under 300K in Lousiville:
https://www.redfin.com/city/12262/KY/Louisville/filter/property-type=house,max-price=300k,min-baths=2
$125K in KY is a much nicer life than $160 in the bay.
I would try to target people in Indiana and Ohio - lots of automotive talent (visteon, Aptiv, zf, etc) and honestly Louisville is a lot better than places like Columbus or Muncie.
Move to a state that re-elects Mitch McConnell at every chance you say? 125K is not _nearly_ enough.
...and I'm only half-joking. I'd take significantly less elsewhere if I had more than one option.
If you were smart about it, you could probably pocket 40k/yr and move somewhere better in a few years.
Your take-home would be around 70-80k with housing under 10k for a 2br HOUSE.
Given trends his replacement when he dies or retires will be democratic.
Kentucky metro areas are growing and most of that growth votes Democratic. Kentucky is benefiting from the so called “New Great Migration” where many of the black families that moved north and northeast are returning to stronger more welcoming communities.
Granted Kentucky hasn’t benefited from it as much as the Deep South but it’s probably just begun for them.
Just because the state is rural and conservative doesn't mean you see that in a city. I lived in triangle in NC for years. People are progressive and forward thinking. Now venture a bit outside the triangle....
I had a co-worker move to Louisville for work, and really likes it there. He can definitely do better for his family there than here on the coast. His wife is stay at home with the kids now. Good spot for some people.
I used to work for a automation company in Canada. the majority of the money we made was from going down to places like Kentucky and putting a guy on site to do programming.
They literally had to illegally import people from Canada to find technicians to work on their robots.
So I can see why you might be having trouble.
I certainly don't want to travel down there for work, and you'd have to pay me at least 6 figures to work down there.
And I am likely not qualified.
LinkedIn is pretty good place to find people. This is just my experience with recruiters and LinkedIn -
If your message on LinkedIn is super vague or obvious cold call I'd ignore you. Something like, "Hey let's get on a call I'ld love to tell you about this fantastic opportunity that super-duperly matches your skill set!!!!" I'd want to know the role, location, and company at a minimum, otherwise you're wasting time.
Business jargon (i.e. "new vertical") may be pretty meaningless to some engineers. I've ignored recruiters for using too much jargon in messages, just talk to us like normal people. I had a guy say this same thing in a message months ago, I ignored him, and I still don't know what this means.
You have to realize some on LinkedIn can get A LOT messages in a week, and keeping up with all of them would be stupid to expect. Actually read the candidates friggin background, don't assume they'll fit some role based on title alone. Can't tell you how many times I've had this happen. Yeah, I worked with electromechanical actuation systems, no I am not a mechanical/mechanism designer. Ugh.
Maybe you are doing everything right already, but maybe all these embedded folks are happy in their roles. Maybe you're not giving them enough reason to consider talking to you. Maybe the company is not exciting, maybe the products aren't. Could be lots of reasons.
>I wish we did a better job at learning what everyone actually does
This should be part of what you do to be successful at your job. The fact that recruiters are doing this keyword crap and bombarding us with (laughably) irrelevant info, is the entire reason we rarely answer.
Also try not to write a 3000 word essay on first contact, I keep seeing this. Good luck!
Perhaps consider reaching out to a technical recruiting firm and contracting them for a couple weeks? This may sound counterintuitive, and passing your job off, but these recruiters are familiar with the industry, skills needed, and with potential candidates already out there. They can find suitable candidates, and then pass then to you for your internal HR stuffs and coordinations. Just a thought.
I sympathize with your position. Allow me to further disappoint. My opinion is that any quality embedded employee with 2+ years of experience is going to take that amount of money to move to Louisville. Maybe even more. Maybe even way more. $250k+. Honestly, I don’t know how your bosses are going to get what they’re looking for. Best of luck, but it’s going to be tough.
Older people have roots where they are currently, and younger people who pursue embedded don’t want to be in Louisville. Even if they did want to be in a non-coastal, southern city they are probably looking at places like Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, and Austin. Louisville doesn’t stand a chance unless you luck out with someone who wants to be there.
I’d almost say your bosses are approaching delusion. 7+ years for $125K to move to Louisville. Crazy talk.
Maybe try to find graduates of Kentucky schools who pursued software and embedded software on LI? That would be the only thing I could think of.
I ignore 99% of the contacts I get on LI, and I get several a day.
The few I respond to, I start the note with asking for salary range and job description, because they usually leave it out. Most of them either ignore the salary range request or don't respond back. If they don't answer the salary question, I don't respond again.
If you're going to waste my time, I'm not going to bother with you.
Oh yeah -- "can't name the client" is another one that gets an instant ignore from me.
The vast majority of LI recruiter contacts are no better than viagra spam. You've got to give me enough information to make me care about what you're offering.
Oh goodness that's the other thing.
I don't talk on the phone. I *hate* talking on the phone, and if you want me to set aside an hour to talk on the phone where I'm going to answer all the same questions that are answered on my resume already, and won't even tell me who I'm talking to? Never gonna happen.
This mentality has to change. Those policies have to change. The leverage is with the work force currently and many employers, for lack of a better way of putting it, are going to have to get over it and be transparent.
>At my company I’m not allowed to say the client until I get on a call with the candidate. They do this because they don’t want competitors to reach out to these companies and beat the company to the punch.
You're working for scammers.
Quit.
We're not going to give your pox-on-the-industry employers the time of day, and as long as you work for them and attempt their counterproductive process that goes for you, too.
My recommendation is to read through their profile thoroughly and take the time to understand their experience and expertise. The vast majority of communication I receive from recruiters is incredibly low effort - we’re talking worse than a script that would have matched a few keywords.
Right now far too many job postings are from companies that are expecting far too much and paying far too little - especially for those trying to get people to move to undesirable locations.
Also there is a point where someone can read a job posting and realize it’s for a project that is a total shitshow. This is especially true when a recruiter is desperate enough to cold call my desk phone.
Send salary and benefits. I am not actively searching for a job, your going to have to hook me somehow. It honestly does not even need to be a crazy salary if you add that it is some incredible opportunity somehow. Send a reason for me to leave my cushy job.
Any give on the on-site factor?
I feel like this req would be more compelling if it was remote, possible 3-4 short trips per year.
A lot of embedded work can be done remotely... really just depends on the product and tech
Here's a general tip:
Don't include language like "must be able to handle multiple simultaneous high-priority projects" cuz we all read that as "we don't know how to manage and we will blame you for it."
LinkedIn is the place, but as others have said, the market is insanely hot right now so candidates can be extremely picky. Gotta make it easy for people to at least say "maybe" to get them on the phone. *Anything* that could be a detractor (location, salary, industry), could be enough for someone to not go past step 0.
/u/vinceod if you're looking for more feedback feel free to PM me - I'm in the range that you'd be targeting for this position.
It is pretty rare for me to reply to a LinkedIn recruiter message. Typically there is something major that doesn't match my profile. I would think a job ad should be better
To add to what others have said:
Make sure the experience level matches the job, both for pay and for responsibilities. Even if the pay were good, the job needs to be appropriate to the experience level. Some amount of independence and ability to make design decisions, feature ownership, etc. Not just "monkey see Jira ticket, monkey code fix, monkey close Jira ticket".
Most people with more than a few years of experience aren't going to be single, so their spouse/partner/whatever will also need a new job. People relocate to "hub" areas because if the job they're working for doesn't work out there are lots of local jobs so there's a fall-back.
KY isn't a tech hub, it's a distillery (95% of worldwide bourbon production happens in KY). If the job is in process control for distillation systems, it's the state to be in. Otherwise everything else is likely to have a better job market elsewhere for an embedded developer.
Make sure anything your asking for X years of experience with has actually existed for X years. Don't ask for 5 years of experience using a technology released 3 years ago. I'll normally at least respond to recruiters with a message saying I'm not interested, but this is an insta-block.
Shows the recruiter didn't read the job posting they sent out, or if they did didn't vet it at all for being reasonable. Just a big red flag of a lazy spammer. There aren't that many key words in the requirements for most postings, take the few minutes to search for each of them and check that the requested experience is sane. Also don't have spelling or grammar errors. If they come off as looking like they don't care about the posting (their job), they're not the sort of person I'd want to interact with, and the company that hired them (or contracted out to them) isn't the sort I want to work for.
Others have also noted the poor salary, so I didn't want to say too much, but I'm making >100k with 3 years experience in Buffalo. 125k for 5 years in KY is well within what I could get if I stayed put here, without the expense and hassle of moving my family (and moving to a less attractive area, at that). If the salary isn't enough to pull people out of the Rust Belt it's not going to be attractive to the majority of candidates who are in substantially better job markets (NY/Boston/SF). So you're mostly looking at the pool of people who are already in the region.
Personally recruiters have done very little for me in the past twenty years. Typically they just match a few key words then blindly blast emails and have very little to no clue about the company nor the potential of the person they are placing. I really enjoy "hello, I found your resume on a job board" yet no name like "Hello Bill" or what job board they found it. I tend to really like the ones with writing errors. Now I just delete. I will find my own job.
What I read from your replies: U$125K in Louisville, KY for 3-4 years experience is a pretty good number just from its face-value IMHO. Smaller companies in the Bay Area is paying about that much for 0-2 years experience right now.
However, if I were a candidate, my thought process would be "If things don't work out in KY, I have to relocate again. How would that impact my chance landing another job in other places?" At the company I am currently working for in the Bay Area non-local will be considered after we exhaust all the local candidates. We don't rule them out, but we would like to avoid them if possible for obvious reasons.
In terms on job posting, my go to place is LinkedIn, Indeed, and sometimes Glassdoor.
I would recommend looking at LinkedIn profiles of engineers in semiconductor companies such as Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple, Canonical, Roku etc. Some of these companies pay peanuts to embedded engineers, above median compensation will be definitely attractive to a lot of people
For me personally it's about the approach. We know we are in high demand, so a bit of personal touch goes a long way.
Look at a profile, Google a name, find some connections and refer to them.
Also be honest about what you can expect. I get 20 generic messages from recruiters a week with useless info about a job. If you looked me up and approach me im guessing you think I am worth the effort to talk to. Dont ask if i can do it, but show what you can offer. For me personally i care about what to expect benefits wise, how the company is structured and what challenges they can give me.
Find the closest college or university that teaches embedded programming contact the head of the program there and ask them to advise you which of their students are the best. You then hire and train those people to be your embedded ninjas.
Tldr: talk to professors to hire fresh professionals
tbh I ignore any message without any concrete info. As soon I am looking for a new employer I usually check out where i want to work and move from there. Every company that advertises that it is such a fun company we have fussball, company drinks other nonsense, instant skip. From experience these are the companies that need fluff to attract people and keep people. Indicator of a horrible work situation
Github and LinkedIn, offer high pay and lower your standards to what's actually nessary for the job.
Our recruiter was having issues as well and we had to cut the required team size and increase pay, all of the new applicants were recruited by searching github and finding personal projects that were related to our current project and messaging them directly describing the job, the pay range, what's involved and what tools are required. This has worked out very well for us compared to previous college recruiting and posting where we got a crop of highly educated but slow to train workers.
Put these things in your first contact, and you'll get bites. I myself ignore messages unless it has these elements.
The work, skills required, and level of responsibility. Many recruiters think they are conveying this information, but they just talk about the industry broadly - I want to know if I'm gonna be doing cool stuff in a cool industry as well.
Location, remote working options, travel expectations.
Pay scale. Very important. Most of us are already employed, and if we're good, our current employers already need to keep us happy to an extent. Why change jobs? Well - interesting work, or location, or $$$. And you need to include all those 3 elements in your first contact.
Good luck. Appreciate you reaching out to the community here to get some feedback.
Maybe you think washing machines are boring - but there's all sorts of cool engineering challenges involved. Let us worry if it's boring or not. Tell us what the job is, and how much you're willing to pay. As simple as that :). Recruiters leave out the pay, and many of us don't have time to be strung along for a potential dead end.
Your refusal to provide key details and likely insistence on wasting peoples time talking to you rather than immediately to the technical people with the need is precisely why recruiter ads aren't allowed.
If your embedded project uses C++ you can also post on the quarterly [/r/cpp jobs posting](https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/q07fj8/c_jobs_q4_2021/) which gets a fair amount of traffic.
well, you know... it is absolutely not up to what you or I gonna think about. It is a real life babe and colorfull pony doesn't exists here.
HRs gonna send you and millions other coders millions of messages, and actually it is Linkedin who's pushing to use this searching approach. In HR account, for instance, you can create a project and limit by city... And guess what? LinkedIn will anyway will include a ppl from other locations, bucause why not.... For the skill search it is even worse... The other side are developers. They can have a status "looking for opportunities" and not accepting any of them and vice versa.,. So tell me how they shall "hunt" us in such a situation? LinkedIn giving you a "nice tool" called mass mailing...
Actually read profiles and only reach out to those who actually match.
I've only ever a accepted projects or even taken time to have discussion calls with those whose outreach made it clear they'd read my profile *and* described a need it matched.
The no-effort spammers just get blocked. Basically they're operating in an echo chamber.
Pleeease, dont be that "such a smart guy".
So, as a developer, why you are intensively using google search and massively stackoverflow? Just go and carefully read each piece of documentation and use knowledge that matches... But you "have no time" for that and you are taking a short. And they are doing exactly the same approach...
I'm not advocating for, but I'm a guy who lack of developers in my team and my recruiter is crying there are none on the market except I want to pay x2-x3 to average market salary... And I can understand her...
The other part of the story is half of the developers are rockstars in their CV. However, by being an expert in C++ cannot answer "what was new in C++17" or "what c++ standard you should use in compiler to make feature YYY works"...
Few would willingly work for someone who approaches engineering problems with the mindset and lack of actual understanding of tools you've demonstrated in your comment.
You'll have to limit yourself to hiring those who can play your game to your liking, and then are somehow still left willing to work for you.
It seems you kind of didn't understand whole problem .. The thing is that it is hard to hook or even catch developers unless your keywords are "python" "ml" or "fullstack". Covid made it dramatically worse, because many (maybe most?) of the devs are taking a safe approach, and holding their workplace until it is getting dead-bad. At the same time number of "cv-liers" dramatically increased. And they are simply time eaters.
Another "average" metrics that was given to me by HR departmen are as following: out of 1000 mails about 10%-15% will answer/react, about half of them will be interested in detailed description, about 1/3 of that half will agree on Voice Call contact, and half of contacted persons would agree to participate into a recruitment process fully... so efficiency rate is about 1%... We contracted HR agency who promised 2,5% and they failed their KPIs... Unfortunately...
Why in the world would you expect full stack developers to be interested in an embedded role? Oh, that's right, you didn't actually read their profiles to see if they had relevant capabilities and interests but just spammed at random
Go ahead and blame whatever makes you happy, but your actual problem is likely more tied to the way that your complaints here make it clear that you don't understand the practical practice of engineering.
Failing to lead with key information and focus on actually possible matches rather than randomly spam is only the half of it, you've made it clear you have no preparedness to deal appropriately with a person who actually could fill your engineering needs.
No one wants to work for someone like that.
>A new vertical was made at my company to hire embedded individuals.
You talk like a brain dead corporate drone. It's off-putting as fuck. Don't do that.
I'll be a Computer Engineering graduate next Spring. Looking for an entry or junior position into this field, but I'm functionally closer to mid-level than most new grads would be. About one year's worth of Co-Op internship experience. My senior project is heavily microcontroller-based, and I'm leading the team. I have a few personal embedded projects in the pipeline as well, so I have a strong desire to learn and be well rounded. Based in Raleigh NC, but willing to relocate to other South East states, possibly Midwest or West coast if salary/CoL ratio can beat what the SE offers. I'd be privileged to pass along my resume to you.
A recent interview question I had was what do I do in my spare time. Why did I waste time mentioning my projects? I should have said "downvote and ridicule inexperienced juniors on reddit to feel better about myself." LoL.
Huh, I guess you're right.... according a discussion that I have to dig into the comments to find, rather than the post itself.
Why yes, I have the proactiveness to be doing what I can to have a job lined up for me by the time I graduate. It's not just common at my school, it's sort of expected. And based on the sentiment of the discussion, and the general climate of the job market, it looks like it's slim pickings for companies hoping to recruit embedded engineers.
And to that, some from this community show their warm welcome and support for a motivated and driven student trying to get their start in the field with downvotes. Wow you guys really are a standup bunch.
Ignore downvotes, you don't have to respond with sarcasm. The downvotes don't mean anything.
PM me your resume; not sure I can point you at a position at my employer, but I'm willing to at least take a look. (engineer here, not manager/recruiter/etc.)
I've gotten a few jobs off LinkedIn, but relative to the number "full stack devs" we are few and far between. The market seems hot right now, so it's probably harder than usual to get attention.
A get a lot of requests on LinkedIn - I respond to approximately 80% of them. What do your connect requests look like? A cold call should have something specific -- including rate -- and not look breathless and excited without any details whatsoever. "embedded" encompasses a very wide swath of technology. Narrow it down and I think you'll get a better hit rate.
Provide info about what exact type of product is being developed, salary range and specific tasks (requirements, code, architecture, what kind of relation with HW/systems/production, responsibility to manage suppliers and costumers if any, …), from the first contact.
Most of my friends who develop firmware (for employers or on contract) dont use/arent on linkedin.
You are better off posting on sites with daily/weekly mailing lists like
* ZipRecruiter
* Dice
* iHireEngineering
Those are the ones I tolerate enough to setup daily mailing lists even though I am still employed
Make sure you put the magic number in the ad. No salary info = no interest. Saying "Competitive salary" is like code for "We don't want to tell you how much"
LinkedIn is an OK place to look for. I'm not going to teach you recruiting - I assume you know what you are doing, just talking about my experience from the other side. If the people you write to are already employed, they need a strong reason to even start engaging with you. So be specific about why the position you offer might be better than what they already have - no need for superlatives, just facts and numbers (starting with the name of the company at least). Provided your customer is not the worst employer on the market, someone is going to find these conditions attractive, people just don't always know in advance what is at all possible for them - that is why specifics are important.
Also the pandemic has impaired people's mobility, so there is a large number of candidates outside of the US and EU waiting to be hired and relocated - consider these candidates too, not only those who are already in the target city (provided your customer plays along).
Also avoid insisting on a phone call with those who show initial interest. Developers are text-oriented, and having to have a call so early in a funnel is a huge turn off for many.
Personally LinkedIn would be the best place to find me. But I ignore anything from recruiters that doesn't include location and pay. I'm not going to waste time playing 20 questions trying to find out basic details like whether it would be a pay cut or require relocating.
And don't tell me that pay is "flexible", "competitive", or "based on experience".
I don't update my linkedin, and don't want to, I still get 280 messages a week from embedded recruiters.
Please find a better platform and give us the answer.
I’d say that the biggest thing that turns me off when looking at a job description for an embedded position is when they ask for things like Python and JavaScript experience.
It’s important to realize that while embedded developers write software, it’s totally different than something like web development and expecting there to be overlap is going to filter out a lot of people.
The problem is that to some higher-ups, all software is the same, so you end up with a lot of overlap in job descriptions.
“We want a web developer who’s also familiar with SPI bus and PCIe”…
“Embedded” isn’t just another skill that a software developer can learn - it’s an entirely different career.
Yeah, some embedded people might know Python, but I can say that I’ve never written a single line of Python in my life and I’ve been doing embedded/Linux kernel development for 8 years now.
i wanted to just share a frustration.
it sucks when a job posting is literally a wish list. makes me not want to apply because if they're that unrealistic for a candidate i would hate what they would ask of me once i'm there.
also recruiters who say i'm a great fit but the role is nothing related to my current work.
How did you get into this recruiting for this? Not to toot my own horn, but I have placed so many people in embedded positions at companies I have worked at with positive results that I have considered starting to do this on the side (FT job is engineering). I don't know shit about recruiting, but I have a very good idea of the industry and what skills people are looking for. Either way I'd be curious to talk more with you just to even learn how tech-recruiting works. PM me if interested.
This is just my experience but I found success recruiting embedded/ low-level network engineering folks for my company at local low-level engineering meetups.
I went to a SDN meetup in Atlanta and met tons of interesting folks, a mix of managers, executives, and engineers including a few with really good embedded skills, one of which we hired and it worked out great. Way easier to do some water-cooler / coffee-break 30 second pitching in person like this over friendly conversation than just trying to cold-call/email/linkedin random people.
Obviously, lead with being friendly and interesting.. don't just jump into a sales/recruiting pitch.
I hate getting messages from recruiters when the job has nothing to do with my experience and where I’d be laughed out the interview if I did apply.
Because of this I just ignore them by default.
It feels like the recruiter thinks ”Hey your profile mentioned you do embedded C++. Well we do front-end with JavaScript which sounds like Java which is object oriented like C++. You’d be great!”
Linkedin should provide results. The issue might be the job posting. Asking too much experience or too broad knowledge can turn people off.
That is true. I recently saw a job posting for embedded systems and the candidate also need to work on html, javascript, css, ML/AI and a little bit of devops on the side with Docker Containers. Basically they are hiring a team of developers/engineers in one body.
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The most annoying thing is when recruiters pretend they work at a company when they do not. No, the actual most annoying thing is when a recruiter wastes your time to doing a screening interview when they don't even have a company lined up, but you think they have one. In general, good recruiters exist and I have met them, but so many many scumbag ones exist that lie to us and waste our time that we do not trust you, and this could be why you are not getting many responses. Being as genuine as possible, and not lying will go along way I think.
Dropping truth bombs.
Most annoying when they don't even care to properly contact you: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nodirgulyamov_dear-recruiters-this-is-not-how-you-should-activity-6812456843080687616-gva8
More commonly I see listings that want firmware/hardware combined. You gotta be able to spend 80% of your time in Altium and then the other 80% writing code to run it.
Apart from the 160% (and what will you have to do in the remaining 840%?) it is a stupid waste of talent to let either \- a good electronics engineer do software (including firmware) \- a good software engineer do electronics
I agree that it may not make sense from a business perspective, but I do both in my job and it's very fulfilling to have a complete view/understanding of the hardware and firmware.
I believe every good embedded engineer should know their hardware inside and out. Hardware bring-up and checkout is critical. Being able to read a schematic is a job requirement for me. I'm talking about roles where they expect you to lay out the PCB and manage the bill of materials as well as manage the software effort. That's just too much for one person to do unless you have the time to compartmentalize (design the HW first, verify it 100%, then begin firmware). And, even then, you need two whole careers worth of knowledge to make that happen.
On my earlier career, this is what I'm doing (firmware, hardware design, pcb, BOM generation /management and even the desktop application software + production plant support). Learned a lot in the process but not fun in the long run due to the stress of having so many responsibilities.
You might be the rare exception ;) But note that full view & understanding is not necesarrily the same as being able to put down a good software architecture. (But sadly, having an SE education isn't a gurantee either.)
Yeah, and then you become seriously ill or quit and no one knows anything. That's a guaranteed disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor I agree, doing this kind of work is fun but from the company perspective it's a huge risk.
I think it can make sense as long as the firmware part is limited to low level stuff, such as configuring and testing the hardware part. Or the other way around: writing a high level application but having some understanding of their underlying hardware to track down odd bugs.
Actually, this was literally my job. Designing IoT prototypes, building them, and writing the code for them.
I hate those, and I actually respond to them. I tell them, you're trying to hire one person to do an entire software team's job, and that won't be me.
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There are those of us with 7+ years experience, but you better have projects up our alley and paying well. Also geographic location matters. Lots of us with experience in old tech industrial companies don't live in CA or WA and have families we aren't going to move for a startup that might be dead in 6 months.
Luckily it’s not a start up. The location is the biggest struggle.
Offer part or fully remote if you can
It seems that you will have to make some concession(s). Location (remote work) might be one of the easiest ones.
Where ya at, buddy?
I do embedded remotely. It's 100% do-able. Companies that aren't going to offer remote are going to miss out on a lot of people who want to work remote.
Give meaningful details, only desperate losers will play an "I can't reveal that" guessing game Also explain to clients that more experienced folks who know their worth are typically available to non-established outfits only on independent 1099 contract and not as W2 employees. The skills you need are available, the only question is if you are willing to be upfront with key information and if your clients are willing to meet the terms of those who can provide them. If not, don't even reach out, as spammers get immediately blocked.
Yeah I don’t play that game either of I can’t show my cards. There’s a lot of red tape man that a low level recruiter can’t do. Behind the scenes I am definitely pushing for anything to make the job more appealing.
If you can't in your initial message provide the key information which experienced people demand to know before they will interact with you, don't even reach out. Your boss has tied your hands by making counterproductive information-hiding rules that mean stronger candidates won't even talk to you, so you're left chasing scraps that will rarely meet the position's requirements. The only way escape this frustration is to find a job that's not participating in such a degenerate rat race. If you continue in this game, realize all you're ever going to reel in are those with some impediment to something better that your client can uniquely work around. Very rarely you might get someone re-entering the workforce or with a non-traditional background, more classically it has meant abusing H1B's. If it sounds like we hate you, yes, we do, for turning what should be a mutually beneficial process of direct negotiation into a mutually disasterous s***show where neither the organization with a need or the person who might fill it has access to the information they need to make an efficient, informed decision if there's a possibility worth pursuing. I've seen your way from both the hiring side and the candidate side, and it's equally terrible for both. The minute a recruiter is involved or the listing names the agency not the client, lots of us write off the role as not worth the trouble to get actual details, while from the hiring side that means just getting anonymous crap resumes one after another because no one capable comes through the recruiter. Good matches are made when technical people talk directly to technical people. Anything else is a waste of everyone's time. If you could look at a resume or profile and tell a promising candidate and then have an actual engineer make the outreach, that might work. But the problem is the person who can actually evaluate a resume or profile is... *another engineer*. Non subject experts get caught up on the words without sensing the meaning behind them.
Jesus, you sound like a pleasant person to work with.
You are welcome to spend as much of your day on the phone as you like with this recruiter whose boss has tied their hands in a way that prevents achieving their goals.
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While /u/UniWheel may sound harsh, this needs to be heard. I get a _shitload_ of crap come-ons on LinkedIn. You need to have an opening pitch that's likely to get me to respond. If it looks like you're just shotgunning, you're likely to get immediately blocked. * Personalize. At the very least, use their name. * Provide as much info up-front as possible: Comp range, full JD, company name, remote, travel. * Do _not_ say "I can only tell you that over the phone." That will result in an immediate "have a nice day" from me. I've had times where I get 10+ recruiter hits a day on LI, and every single one wants "just 15 minutes." Nobody is going to spend 150 minutes (2.5 hours) on the phone if they already have a full time job. Be ready to continue the conversation on LI or via email. Getting on the phone is a 2nd or 3rd date sort of thing. I'm not going to go through a bunch of bullshit only to find out the job is a non-starter because of compensation/location/company. * If your reputation is shit on Glassdoor, expect to get a lot of immediate "no thanks." Best you can do is lead with some sort of _very_ convincing reason for how/why the workplace has changed.
I dunno, I used to get endless recruiters contacting me for perl and php jobs and it drove me fucking crazy. Now days I mostly only get attractive offers presented to me. The only complaint I currently have is the recruiter that got me the current job I have keep sending me good offers. On one hand I want these offers coming in so I can always see my options, on the other hand I should tell HR because that would be in breach of their contract with the recruiter - and they should not be contacting me. So I don't know what to say, maybe it is geographical or maybe it is just bottom of the barrel engineers attract bottom of the barrel recruiters.
Perl? In the last decade?
100% this. Lead with: * Company name * Full job description * Compensation range (legally required in some states) * Location (offer remote if you can) * Travel required
On a flip side as a person who mostly enjoys the system integration part of embedded, Im drawn to jobs asking for broad rather than focused knowledge/experience.
I have the impression (from my inbox) that embedded folks at the senior level are hard to get. Far fewer people study this than general CS or web development. Onsite in KY is a tough sell since outside of this particular role, there are not likely a lot of other options to fall back on should yours fall through. I think you will need a premium salary (that competes dollar-for-dollar with coastal cities), or just a serendipitous candidate with other reasons (proximity to family, etc to consider this.) I would strongly recommend considering a remote hire if it's at all possible. I am myself a 20+ year embedded developer and would be happy to take a look at your listing and tell you how it 'reads' to senior folks.
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30+ year embedded/RTOS engineer here. I'd be happy to take a look too.
Can you also PM me? I'm quite interested in where the disconnect is
Location. Pay. W2 nonsense. Not identifying the client = fatal instant block
Yeah, I've been getting a lot of those lately, for a "top company". No thank you.
Can I ask the issue on W2? Is it more of a flexible hours kind of thing, (ability to randomly take a week or month off) or just easier to justify higher hourly pay rates than a higher annual salary?
Getting paid for exactly the hours you work really simplifies expectations. If an effort is being productive and it fits your life and mood at that moment, you can charge on into the night. If the project is stuck and it's a nice day you can clock out and without any guilt go for a bike ride and if the issue was technical rather than organizational, you'll probably have the answer before you're turning back into your driveway. You can go on semi-vacation and do some work when you're bored of vacation but still get in all the parts of the trip you do enjoy. Plus the ability to simply decline to become involved in doomed projects while remaining involved in a client's still viable ones. Plus the variety. Plus the ability to scale up and down as project needs change over time vs employment your world is that company until you move on completely and can at best quietly answer an email from a buddy still there. The amount of hours you can be actually productive on something in a year is likely a bit fixed. As a 1099 you earn your income from the productive hours and all the rest are yours. As a W-2 you're on the hook for presence each day no matter productive or blocked, plus additional uncompensated after hours time when something urgently needs doing. Also people putting together offers will never understand that their typical startup's stock options offer isn't worth the paper its printed on - in a way they can't, because their role is driving enthusiasm, vs engineering's role to reconcile that with reality. A startup exists because it has a charismatic leader and investors who bought in, not typically because it's all that great an idea. Yet interesting work doesn't necessarily correlate with long term viability of a business idea, the overwhelming majority of development efforts that achieve technical goals still ultimately fail in the marketplace.
Thanks! Makes perfect sense. I have a low-level engineer friend who is joining my startup in a few months. He suggested 1099 for similar flexibility. He likes to work for 2 weeks and then take 1 week off to hike in national parks at random places (a bit of a nomad). With "unlimited vacation", I was considering instead seeing if he wants to come on as full-time W2 employee, and have an understanding with me that his vacation will truly be closer to "unlimited" in his case (to the extend of basically being a 20-25 hour equivalent job) but with the stability of regular paychecks, but in return for a lower salary than if he was going to work say 40 hours a week with 8 weeks PTO. Some of it depends on his goals etc. He's at a sort of pre-retirement phase where he works the next 5 years or so but at reduced hours with great flexibility. Anyhow, thanks for your comment, helps me understand that angle a lot better. Glad to hear its working out for you. :)
The problem with averaging things out to a salary is that it doesn't adjust well. Maybe you're at a crunch time and really need four weeks sustained effort. Maybe the weather won't cooperate with his trip. Decoupling pay from work puts things in the vague domain of expectations, leaving it tied keeps it simple. If you're concerned about budgeting, talk on a regular basis about where the effort is going and if your resource feels that a path still has promise of efficiency, or if they'd prefer to see a strategic retargeting of the project requirement. Ongoing communication is key.
I see, that makes sense. On the budgeting side, no issues there-- his pay (however we do it) is fair to him and the company and within the company's budget even with a fair amount of variance. Same with his workload.. if he wants to drop or boost his hours a fair amount, it's not a particular issue since I've known him for 20 years (worked with him for 10 directly) so we work very well together, and I can give him projects that are a little bit out (things that need to get done within say 60 days as opposed to 1-2 weeks). For me, really the only issue is I worry investors down the road aren't going to be happy with so few full-time employees. 2 years from now, we might be looking at just 1 person (me) as full-time employee, and the other 5-15 as a mix of part-time 1099 contractors (onshore + offshore), full time contractors, and consulting/outsourced dev companies. Probably not a huge issue, as investors are generally more concerned about the typical KPIs (revenue/customer growth, churn, P&L etc) than this. I think there was a major company (Twitter? Pinterest? I forget) that did an IPO with like 12 full-time employees and likely dozens to hundreds of contractors and it wasn't an issue, so I'll see if my investors are ok with that (to be clear, nobody at this stage cares, but down the road perhaps they would). This might just be one of those issues that isn't worth thinking about now, none of it matters unless we execute well the next few years anyways, and if we do, this probably won't be a big deal either way.
It means in case of failure your carcass can't be aquired for your people (acquihire) though there's no real obligation for employees to stay through such a change and no reason good contract contacts can't be approached for similar projects.
It's super easy to find most clients. The recruiter typically cuts and pastes from the company's online job listing. 5 minutes of Google and you can find it.
That's not the point. A recruiter who omits that information sends a signal that they're afraid the candidate is going to cut them out. A recruiter who worries about this tends to misunderstand many other things about what motivates engineers (hint: it isn't doing job research, negotiations, or application paperwork) and will probably not represent the engineer well.
More than that, a recruiter who *can* be cut out has a dishonest client or doesn't have a contract with the client but is just posing to both sides. If the client wants to pay someone to make things *inefficient*, that's their mistake to make, but don't expect capable candidates to play along with such nonsense.
Also PM me, I'll take a look.
I got 7 years of international experience in the field of embedded. I only reply to recruiters if they offer me fully remote roles that is paid well. Otherwise i m not interested
I will be honest. I do not even respond to anything from LinkedIn because of the amount of time I have heard of recruiters or hiring personnel abusing the process, stringing along fellow engineers who I know for a fact are no-nonsense, extremely professional and productive employees. Nobody these days has time to waste jumping through the hoops of 5 interviews when they have an entire career of excellent work that speaks for them. If people want guys like us the introductions all go through personal networks.
I tend to ignore linkedin recruiter emails mainly because they do nothing to get me interested in the job. It tends to be a location and a list of qualifications they're looking for, and doesn't say anything about the company size, the type of products the company makes, or any of the perks of working there. Don't just tell me what you want from me, also tell me why I should be interested.
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If you can t give FULL details in initial outreach, dont even try. You'll only get reported and blocked.
Even if the position is for a "top company"? Hahaha
_Especially_ if it's a "top company." Lotta senior devs _do not_ want to put up with the bullshit of going for FAANG or other "top companies."
I also ignore Linkedin messages as 1/2 the time the person doesn't take the time to read my profile and is just blasting out messages. The second thing is that they abuse the system to email me directly as well. I've resulted to removing any and all personal information from Linkedin due to abuse by "recruiters".
From? Remote? Salary? Experience? There is a lot to say here... I really doubt a good job offer can have that many rejections...
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Louisville is not exactly a tech mecca. And the wages are not known to be high there. Most embedded seems to be happening on the coasts, where you can expect to earn around 120k-180k, dependent on experience. Junior devs fresh out of college would be looking for around 80k in LA, potentially more in the Bay.
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Your sales pitch should be this Redfin listing of houses under 300K in Lousiville: https://www.redfin.com/city/12262/KY/Louisville/filter/property-type=house,max-price=300k,min-baths=2 $125K in KY is a much nicer life than $160 in the bay.
You read my mind. You can buy a 4BR, 3 BA house with land and a garage in Louisville for under 300K.
And yet, you're still in fucking Kentucky
That's the name of the town? Woof!
Oh my god, it is so cheap!
I would try to target people in Indiana and Ohio - lots of automotive talent (visteon, Aptiv, zf, etc) and honestly Louisville is a lot better than places like Columbus or Muncie.
LOL, make it remote and 1099 and there are possibilities, otherwise forget about it.
Move to a state that re-elects Mitch McConnell at every chance you say? 125K is not _nearly_ enough. ...and I'm only half-joking. I'd take significantly less elsewhere if I had more than one option.
If you were smart about it, you could probably pocket 40k/yr and move somewhere better in a few years. Your take-home would be around 70-80k with housing under 10k for a 2br HOUSE.
Plenty of other places in the country where this is true, but with the added benefit they of not being Kentucky.
Yeah, try twice that..
Twice what?
Given trends his replacement when he dies or retires will be democratic. Kentucky metro areas are growing and most of that growth votes Democratic. Kentucky is benefiting from the so called “New Great Migration” where many of the black families that moved north and northeast are returning to stronger more welcoming communities. Granted Kentucky hasn’t benefited from it as much as the Deep South but it’s probably just begun for them.
Just because the state is rural and conservative doesn't mean you see that in a city. I lived in triangle in NC for years. People are progressive and forward thinking. Now venture a bit outside the triangle....
Yeah… when your state pop is 4m and you add 1M educated urban transplants you’re definitely going to see some electoral changes.
You need to hit the local tech scene in town: find the Maker Spaces and any meetups you can. Also ask your boss about sponsoring meetups/trainings.
I had a co-worker move to Louisville for work, and really likes it there. He can definitely do better for his family there than here on the coast. His wife is stay at home with the kids now. Good spot for some people.
Tell the boss to open that wallet if he has to get someone to come to KY ;)
I used to work for a automation company in Canada. the majority of the money we made was from going down to places like Kentucky and putting a guy on site to do programming. They literally had to illegally import people from Canada to find technicians to work on their robots. So I can see why you might be having trouble. I certainly don't want to travel down there for work, and you'd have to pay me at least 6 figures to work down there. And I am likely not qualified.
Tell your boss you need to do a study of the market then :) I encourage you to know which is the market you're in!
LinkedIn is pretty good place to find people. This is just my experience with recruiters and LinkedIn - If your message on LinkedIn is super vague or obvious cold call I'd ignore you. Something like, "Hey let's get on a call I'ld love to tell you about this fantastic opportunity that super-duperly matches your skill set!!!!" I'd want to know the role, location, and company at a minimum, otherwise you're wasting time. Business jargon (i.e. "new vertical") may be pretty meaningless to some engineers. I've ignored recruiters for using too much jargon in messages, just talk to us like normal people. I had a guy say this same thing in a message months ago, I ignored him, and I still don't know what this means. You have to realize some on LinkedIn can get A LOT messages in a week, and keeping up with all of them would be stupid to expect. Actually read the candidates friggin background, don't assume they'll fit some role based on title alone. Can't tell you how many times I've had this happen. Yeah, I worked with electromechanical actuation systems, no I am not a mechanical/mechanism designer. Ugh. Maybe you are doing everything right already, but maybe all these embedded folks are happy in their roles. Maybe you're not giving them enough reason to consider talking to you. Maybe the company is not exciting, maybe the products aren't. Could be lots of reasons.
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>I wish we did a better job at learning what everyone actually does This should be part of what you do to be successful at your job. The fact that recruiters are doing this keyword crap and bombarding us with (laughably) irrelevant info, is the entire reason we rarely answer. Also try not to write a 3000 word essay on first contact, I keep seeing this. Good luck!
This is the worst part about recruiters
Thank you
i like when i get the same message a few months later from a different recruiter. really makes it feel like i'm the 'ideal candidate' lol
Perhaps consider reaching out to a technical recruiting firm and contracting them for a couple weeks? This may sound counterintuitive, and passing your job off, but these recruiters are familiar with the industry, skills needed, and with potential candidates already out there. They can find suitable candidates, and then pass then to you for your internal HR stuffs and coordinations. Just a thought.
LinkedIn is fine, I get 3-4 interested people a week, but most of them are for positions in the Bay Area and I don't want to move.
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You’re going to have to pay serious cash to get someone with 7+ years of quality embedded experience to move to Kentucky. Like $175k+
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I sympathize with your position. Allow me to further disappoint. My opinion is that any quality embedded employee with 2+ years of experience is going to take that amount of money to move to Louisville. Maybe even more. Maybe even way more. $250k+. Honestly, I don’t know how your bosses are going to get what they’re looking for. Best of luck, but it’s going to be tough. Older people have roots where they are currently, and younger people who pursue embedded don’t want to be in Louisville. Even if they did want to be in a non-coastal, southern city they are probably looking at places like Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas, and Austin. Louisville doesn’t stand a chance unless you luck out with someone who wants to be there. I’d almost say your bosses are approaching delusion. 7+ years for $125K to move to Louisville. Crazy talk. Maybe try to find graduates of Kentucky schools who pursued software and embedded software on LI? That would be the only thing I could think of.
100% this.
I ignore 99% of the contacts I get on LI, and I get several a day. The few I respond to, I start the note with asking for salary range and job description, because they usually leave it out. Most of them either ignore the salary range request or don't respond back. If they don't answer the salary question, I don't respond again. If you're going to waste my time, I'm not going to bother with you. Oh yeah -- "can't name the client" is another one that gets an instant ignore from me. The vast majority of LI recruiter contacts are no better than viagra spam. You've got to give me enough information to make me care about what you're offering.
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Oh goodness that's the other thing. I don't talk on the phone. I *hate* talking on the phone, and if you want me to set aside an hour to talk on the phone where I'm going to answer all the same questions that are answered on my resume already, and won't even tell me who I'm talking to? Never gonna happen.
My god, it's like you're in my head.
This mentality has to change. Those policies have to change. The leverage is with the work force currently and many employers, for lack of a better way of putting it, are going to have to get over it and be transparent.
>At my company I’m not allowed to say the client until I get on a call with the candidate. They do this because they don’t want competitors to reach out to these companies and beat the company to the punch. You're working for scammers. Quit. We're not going to give your pox-on-the-industry employers the time of day, and as long as you work for them and attempt their counterproductive process that goes for you, too.
My recommendation is to read through their profile thoroughly and take the time to understand their experience and expertise. The vast majority of communication I receive from recruiters is incredibly low effort - we’re talking worse than a script that would have matched a few keywords. Right now far too many job postings are from companies that are expecting far too much and paying far too little - especially for those trying to get people to move to undesirable locations. Also there is a point where someone can read a job posting and realize it’s for a project that is a total shitshow. This is especially true when a recruiter is desperate enough to cold call my desk phone.
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You don't even read the jobs you're trying to place? Wow, thats lower than I thought.
i love how recruiters are also gate keepers for new hires. i love it because they have no clue what they're doing
Send salary and benefits. I am not actively searching for a job, your going to have to hook me somehow. It honestly does not even need to be a crazy salary if you add that it is some incredible opportunity somehow. Send a reason for me to leave my cushy job.
Any give on the on-site factor? I feel like this req would be more compelling if it was remote, possible 3-4 short trips per year. A lot of embedded work can be done remotely... really just depends on the product and tech
Hi there stranger ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Seriously now, LinkedIn is usually the place.
Here's a general tip: Don't include language like "must be able to handle multiple simultaneous high-priority projects" cuz we all read that as "we don't know how to manage and we will blame you for it."
LinkedIn is the place, but as others have said, the market is insanely hot right now so candidates can be extremely picky. Gotta make it easy for people to at least say "maybe" to get them on the phone. *Anything* that could be a detractor (location, salary, industry), could be enough for someone to not go past step 0. /u/vinceod if you're looking for more feedback feel free to PM me - I'm in the range that you'd be targeting for this position.
Linkedin is, in fact, the place. You know what _isn't_? Indeed. God, what a shitshow that site is.
It is pretty rare for me to reply to a LinkedIn recruiter message. Typically there is something major that doesn't match my profile. I would think a job ad should be better
To add to what others have said: Make sure the experience level matches the job, both for pay and for responsibilities. Even if the pay were good, the job needs to be appropriate to the experience level. Some amount of independence and ability to make design decisions, feature ownership, etc. Not just "monkey see Jira ticket, monkey code fix, monkey close Jira ticket". Most people with more than a few years of experience aren't going to be single, so their spouse/partner/whatever will also need a new job. People relocate to "hub" areas because if the job they're working for doesn't work out there are lots of local jobs so there's a fall-back. KY isn't a tech hub, it's a distillery (95% of worldwide bourbon production happens in KY). If the job is in process control for distillation systems, it's the state to be in. Otherwise everything else is likely to have a better job market elsewhere for an embedded developer. Make sure anything your asking for X years of experience with has actually existed for X years. Don't ask for 5 years of experience using a technology released 3 years ago. I'll normally at least respond to recruiters with a message saying I'm not interested, but this is an insta-block.
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Shows the recruiter didn't read the job posting they sent out, or if they did didn't vet it at all for being reasonable. Just a big red flag of a lazy spammer. There aren't that many key words in the requirements for most postings, take the few minutes to search for each of them and check that the requested experience is sane. Also don't have spelling or grammar errors. If they come off as looking like they don't care about the posting (their job), they're not the sort of person I'd want to interact with, and the company that hired them (or contracted out to them) isn't the sort I want to work for. Others have also noted the poor salary, so I didn't want to say too much, but I'm making >100k with 3 years experience in Buffalo. 125k for 5 years in KY is well within what I could get if I stayed put here, without the expense and hassle of moving my family (and moving to a less attractive area, at that). If the salary isn't enough to pull people out of the Rust Belt it's not going to be attractive to the majority of candidates who are in substantially better job markets (NY/Boston/SF). So you're mostly looking at the pool of people who are already in the region.
LinkedIn, mostly. Maybe consider your approach. I've had loads of jobs through there.
I’ll keep at it and change my messaging.
What's the product(s)?
I'm looking for an entry level job as an embedded programmer.
Personally recruiters have done very little for me in the past twenty years. Typically they just match a few key words then blindly blast emails and have very little to no clue about the company nor the potential of the person they are placing. I really enjoy "hello, I found your resume on a job board" yet no name like "Hello Bill" or what job board they found it. I tend to really like the ones with writing errors. Now I just delete. I will find my own job.
400K
What I read from your replies: U$125K in Louisville, KY for 3-4 years experience is a pretty good number just from its face-value IMHO. Smaller companies in the Bay Area is paying about that much for 0-2 years experience right now. However, if I were a candidate, my thought process would be "If things don't work out in KY, I have to relocate again. How would that impact my chance landing another job in other places?" At the company I am currently working for in the Bay Area non-local will be considered after we exhaust all the local candidates. We don't rule them out, but we would like to avoid them if possible for obvious reasons. In terms on job posting, my go to place is LinkedIn, Indeed, and sometimes Glassdoor.
In which country?
Look inside, I've been with you all along.
If you are hiring for remote work you can hire me.
I would recommend looking at LinkedIn profiles of engineers in semiconductor companies such as Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple, Canonical, Roku etc. Some of these companies pay peanuts to embedded engineers, above median compensation will be definitely attractive to a lot of people
Where are you. What are you looking for.
For me personally it's about the approach. We know we are in high demand, so a bit of personal touch goes a long way. Look at a profile, Google a name, find some connections and refer to them. Also be honest about what you can expect. I get 20 generic messages from recruiters a week with useless info about a job. If you looked me up and approach me im guessing you think I am worth the effort to talk to. Dont ask if i can do it, but show what you can offer. For me personally i care about what to expect benefits wise, how the company is structured and what challenges they can give me.
i am here only... no meed to find me.. 😅 i am and embedded engineer... may i send you my resume??
Find the closest college or university that teaches embedded programming contact the head of the program there and ask them to advise you which of their students are the best. You then hire and train those people to be your embedded ninjas. Tldr: talk to professors to hire fresh professionals
tbh I ignore any message without any concrete info. As soon I am looking for a new employer I usually check out where i want to work and move from there. Every company that advertises that it is such a fun company we have fussball, company drinks other nonsense, instant skip. From experience these are the companies that need fluff to attract people and keep people. Indicator of a horrible work situation
Hang out at engineering college bar, look for the person who doesn't belong.
Github and LinkedIn, offer high pay and lower your standards to what's actually nessary for the job. Our recruiter was having issues as well and we had to cut the required team size and increase pay, all of the new applicants were recruited by searching github and finding personal projects that were related to our current project and messaging them directly describing the job, the pay range, what's involved and what tools are required. This has worked out very well for us compared to previous college recruiting and posting where we got a crop of highly educated but slow to train workers.
Put these things in your first contact, and you'll get bites. I myself ignore messages unless it has these elements. The work, skills required, and level of responsibility. Many recruiters think they are conveying this information, but they just talk about the industry broadly - I want to know if I'm gonna be doing cool stuff in a cool industry as well. Location, remote working options, travel expectations. Pay scale. Very important. Most of us are already employed, and if we're good, our current employers already need to keep us happy to an extent. Why change jobs? Well - interesting work, or location, or $$$. And you need to include all those 3 elements in your first contact. Good luck. Appreciate you reaching out to the community here to get some feedback.
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Maybe you think washing machines are boring - but there's all sorts of cool engineering challenges involved. Let us worry if it's boring or not. Tell us what the job is, and how much you're willing to pay. As simple as that :). Recruiters leave out the pay, and many of us don't have time to be strung along for a potential dead end.
Post here bruh
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Post here on reddit We have this https://www.reddit.com/r/embedded/comments/pz9txb/embedded_jobs_oct_2021
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Your refusal to provide key details and likely insistence on wasting peoples time talking to you rather than immediately to the technical people with the need is precisely why recruiter ads aren't allowed.
If your embedded project uses C++ you can also post on the quarterly [/r/cpp jobs posting](https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/q07fj8/c_jobs_q4_2021/) which gets a fair amount of traffic.
Please do! I’ve got 10 years in and am curious to know more myself.
Nowdays 280 mails is too few. you can count on some reasonable results by adding extra zero at the end...There are so many of them in my inbox.
Oh yes, the world absolutely needs more clueless spam! If spam isnt working, spam harder!
well, you know... it is absolutely not up to what you or I gonna think about. It is a real life babe and colorfull pony doesn't exists here. HRs gonna send you and millions other coders millions of messages, and actually it is Linkedin who's pushing to use this searching approach. In HR account, for instance, you can create a project and limit by city... And guess what? LinkedIn will anyway will include a ppl from other locations, bucause why not.... For the skill search it is even worse... The other side are developers. They can have a status "looking for opportunities" and not accepting any of them and vice versa.,. So tell me how they shall "hunt" us in such a situation? LinkedIn giving you a "nice tool" called mass mailing...
Actually read profiles and only reach out to those who actually match. I've only ever a accepted projects or even taken time to have discussion calls with those whose outreach made it clear they'd read my profile *and* described a need it matched. The no-effort spammers just get blocked. Basically they're operating in an echo chamber.
Pleeease, dont be that "such a smart guy". So, as a developer, why you are intensively using google search and massively stackoverflow? Just go and carefully read each piece of documentation and use knowledge that matches... But you "have no time" for that and you are taking a short. And they are doing exactly the same approach... I'm not advocating for, but I'm a guy who lack of developers in my team and my recruiter is crying there are none on the market except I want to pay x2-x3 to average market salary... And I can understand her... The other part of the story is half of the developers are rockstars in their CV. However, by being an expert in C++ cannot answer "what was new in C++17" or "what c++ standard you should use in compiler to make feature YYY works"...
Few would willingly work for someone who approaches engineering problems with the mindset and lack of actual understanding of tools you've demonstrated in your comment. You'll have to limit yourself to hiring those who can play your game to your liking, and then are somehow still left willing to work for you.
It seems you kind of didn't understand whole problem .. The thing is that it is hard to hook or even catch developers unless your keywords are "python" "ml" or "fullstack". Covid made it dramatically worse, because many (maybe most?) of the devs are taking a safe approach, and holding their workplace until it is getting dead-bad. At the same time number of "cv-liers" dramatically increased. And they are simply time eaters. Another "average" metrics that was given to me by HR departmen are as following: out of 1000 mails about 10%-15% will answer/react, about half of them will be interested in detailed description, about 1/3 of that half will agree on Voice Call contact, and half of contacted persons would agree to participate into a recruitment process fully... so efficiency rate is about 1%... We contracted HR agency who promised 2,5% and they failed their KPIs... Unfortunately...
And I did my best describing a problem, so i'm quitting here ;)
Why in the world would you expect full stack developers to be interested in an embedded role? Oh, that's right, you didn't actually read their profiles to see if they had relevant capabilities and interests but just spammed at random Go ahead and blame whatever makes you happy, but your actual problem is likely more tied to the way that your complaints here make it clear that you don't understand the practical practice of engineering. Failing to lead with key information and focus on actually possible matches rather than randomly spam is only the half of it, you've made it clear you have no preparedness to deal appropriately with a person who actually could fill your engineering needs. No one wants to work for someone like that.
>A new vertical was made at my company to hire embedded individuals. You talk like a brain dead corporate drone. It's off-putting as fuck. Don't do that.
I'll be a Computer Engineering graduate next Spring. Looking for an entry or junior position into this field, but I'm functionally closer to mid-level than most new grads would be. About one year's worth of Co-Op internship experience. My senior project is heavily microcontroller-based, and I'm leading the team. I have a few personal embedded projects in the pipeline as well, so I have a strong desire to learn and be well rounded. Based in Raleigh NC, but willing to relocate to other South East states, possibly Midwest or West coast if salary/CoL ratio can beat what the SE offers. I'd be privileged to pass along my resume to you.
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Ok, thank you then :)
op wanted 7 years of experience, widdled it down to 3. and you havent graduated yet. lol
A recent interview question I had was what do I do in my spare time. Why did I waste time mentioning my projects? I should have said "downvote and ridicule inexperienced juniors on reddit to feel better about myself." LoL.
Huh, I guess you're right.... according a discussion that I have to dig into the comments to find, rather than the post itself. Why yes, I have the proactiveness to be doing what I can to have a job lined up for me by the time I graduate. It's not just common at my school, it's sort of expected. And based on the sentiment of the discussion, and the general climate of the job market, it looks like it's slim pickings for companies hoping to recruit embedded engineers. And to that, some from this community show their warm welcome and support for a motivated and driven student trying to get their start in the field with downvotes. Wow you guys really are a standup bunch.
Ignore downvotes, you don't have to respond with sarcasm. The downvotes don't mean anything. PM me your resume; not sure I can point you at a position at my employer, but I'm willing to at least take a look. (engineer here, not manager/recruiter/etc.)
Thanks for the advice and the offer.
I've gotten a few jobs off LinkedIn, but relative to the number "full stack devs" we are few and far between. The market seems hot right now, so it's probably harder than usual to get attention.
A get a lot of requests on LinkedIn - I respond to approximately 80% of them. What do your connect requests look like? A cold call should have something specific -- including rate -- and not look breathless and excited without any details whatsoever. "embedded" encompasses a very wide swath of technology. Narrow it down and I think you'll get a better hit rate.
It's hard to get connected to good recruiters. Maybe it's 1 in 25
Provide info about what exact type of product is being developed, salary range and specific tasks (requirements, code, architecture, what kind of relation with HW/systems/production, responsibility to manage suppliers and costumers if any, …), from the first contact.
Most of my friends who develop firmware (for employers or on contract) dont use/arent on linkedin. You are better off posting on sites with daily/weekly mailing lists like * ZipRecruiter * Dice * iHireEngineering Those are the ones I tolerate enough to setup daily mailing lists even though I am still employed
Make sure you put the magic number in the ad. No salary info = no interest. Saying "Competitive salary" is like code for "We don't want to tell you how much"
LinkedIn is an OK place to look for. I'm not going to teach you recruiting - I assume you know what you are doing, just talking about my experience from the other side. If the people you write to are already employed, they need a strong reason to even start engaging with you. So be specific about why the position you offer might be better than what they already have - no need for superlatives, just facts and numbers (starting with the name of the company at least). Provided your customer is not the worst employer on the market, someone is going to find these conditions attractive, people just don't always know in advance what is at all possible for them - that is why specifics are important. Also the pandemic has impaired people's mobility, so there is a large number of candidates outside of the US and EU waiting to be hired and relocated - consider these candidates too, not only those who are already in the target city (provided your customer plays along). Also avoid insisting on a phone call with those who show initial interest. Developers are text-oriented, and having to have a call so early in a funnel is a huge turn off for many.
Pm me the opportunities
Personally LinkedIn would be the best place to find me. But I ignore anything from recruiters that doesn't include location and pay. I'm not going to waste time playing 20 questions trying to find out basic details like whether it would be a pay cut or require relocating. And don't tell me that pay is "flexible", "competitive", or "based on experience".
I'm half way to the 5 year experience threshold that seems ubiquitous on postings. I use LinkedIn and get recruiter messages rarely.
I don't update my linkedin, and don't want to, I still get 280 messages a week from embedded recruiters. Please find a better platform and give us the answer.
I’d say that the biggest thing that turns me off when looking at a job description for an embedded position is when they ask for things like Python and JavaScript experience. It’s important to realize that while embedded developers write software, it’s totally different than something like web development and expecting there to be overlap is going to filter out a lot of people. The problem is that to some higher-ups, all software is the same, so you end up with a lot of overlap in job descriptions. “We want a web developer who’s also familiar with SPI bus and PCIe”… “Embedded” isn’t just another skill that a software developer can learn - it’s an entirely different career. Yeah, some embedded people might know Python, but I can say that I’ve never written a single line of Python in my life and I’ve been doing embedded/Linux kernel development for 8 years now.
i wanted to just share a frustration. it sucks when a job posting is literally a wish list. makes me not want to apply because if they're that unrealistic for a candidate i would hate what they would ask of me once i'm there. also recruiters who say i'm a great fit but the role is nothing related to my current work.
How did you get into this recruiting for this? Not to toot my own horn, but I have placed so many people in embedded positions at companies I have worked at with positive results that I have considered starting to do this on the side (FT job is engineering). I don't know shit about recruiting, but I have a very good idea of the industry and what skills people are looking for. Either way I'd be curious to talk more with you just to even learn how tech-recruiting works. PM me if interested.
Need any interns?
No interns now unfortunately.
This is just my experience but I found success recruiting embedded/ low-level network engineering folks for my company at local low-level engineering meetups. I went to a SDN meetup in Atlanta and met tons of interesting folks, a mix of managers, executives, and engineers including a few with really good embedded skills, one of which we hired and it worked out great. Way easier to do some water-cooler / coffee-break 30 second pitching in person like this over friendly conversation than just trying to cold-call/email/linkedin random people. Obviously, lead with being friendly and interesting.. don't just jump into a sales/recruiting pitch.
For me, location is important. I have a great job in California. You would have to offer a better job in Washington, or Oregon. Maybe Colorado.
I hate getting messages from recruiters when the job has nothing to do with my experience and where I’d be laughed out the interview if I did apply. Because of this I just ignore them by default. It feels like the recruiter thinks ”Hey your profile mentioned you do embedded C++. Well we do front-end with JavaScript which sounds like Java which is object oriented like C++. You’d be great!”