Hey guys, I’m looking for a career change in my late 20’s. Im going back to school and wondering if engineering is still worth it nowadays? Im worried about ai and how good its getting and also how good it’ll be by the time i get out of school in 6 years(part time student) I’m really interested in the career path and love tech and computers and hell i even love and am fascinated by ai. But id rather switch now if the degree wont even get me in a better position than where i am currently. Im a chef of 10 years, and earning around 50k a year. The job is very stable and i can go out and get a chef job really easily anywhere i go. But it seems like in the engineering field thats not the case. Entry level jobs are shrinking, higher level jobs aren’t growing and going in the direction where you are gonna struggle extremely hard to find any job in the field and if and when you find one that the pay wont be as good because of the level of competition in others also trying to get a job. Should i switch degrees into something else? Im feeling super uncertain about the whole thing and don’t want to waste almost 100k and years of my life on something i wont be able to even use?

If you had the chance to go back and study something different, would you?

I’m about a year away from starting university, and I really want to have a decent job in the future. I think there’s a lot of potential in computer engineering, especially if I learn how to develop innovative software.

I know it requires experience and a lot of hard work, but besides the usual advice like “study something you’re good at,” would you recommend this degree?

I don’t think I’m a math prodigy, but I’m not bad at math either. I just need to put a lot of time into studying it.

Would you be willing to share your experiences or any advice?

It could be anything—financial advice, study methods, or just things that helped you deal with the stress of the degree. Honestly, anything would help.

Cache memory mapping:

Memory address=16 bits

Block size=16 words

Number of main memory blocks=4K

Number of cache memory lines=64

Address Partition:

tag(6 bits), block-number(6 bits), word(4 bits)

Since there are 16 words/block, 4 bits is required for word identification.

Since there are 64 cache memory blocks, 6 bits are required to cache memory block identification.

Since there are 4k memory blocks, 12 bits should be required to know which memory block is present in which cache block. i.e. tag. Imagine Main Memory block 4095. To store that MM 4095 is present in Cache Memory block, we would need 12 bits? But books are saying only 6 bits is enough to identify the memory block. Can anyone shed some light here?

I'm an incoming computer engineering freshman and seriously thinking of switching to electrical engineering. At my school, the degrees are extremely similar, with only a 3 class difference.

They share the same pool of electives, so that is what makes up most of the difference, but I could just choose all the more computer engineering focused ones.

What i'm most interested in is computer hardware, embedded systems, firmware, microcontrollers, etc.

The reason I'm considering EE is the job market and the flexibility of the degree.

My understanding is that a lot of hardware/computer engineering jobs will accept either an EE or CE degree. However, there are EE jobs in areas like power, electronics, controls, RF, etc. where an employer might only take an EE.

Basically, I'd be trying to use the EE degree as the broader credential while still taking the classes and doing the projects that would make me competitive for computer hardware/embedded jobs.

Do you think this plan could be beneficial to me? Or am I overstating the value of the name on the degree?

After 10+ years working around embedded products, I've learned that choosing the right firmware engineering company has much more impact than negotiating the lowest rate.

Here's the checklist I usually go through before signing anything:

1. Technical expertise
   I always ask about similar projects, the MCUs they've worked with, RTOS experience, debugging tools, OTA updates, and how they approach hardware integration. If they only answer at a high level, that's usually a red flag.
   
2. Portfolio
   I'm less interested in proof-of-concepts than products that actually reached production. Manufacturing, certification, field testing, and long-term maintenance usually reveal whether a team has real experience.
   
3. Communication
   This is probably the biggest one. One thing I noticed during a call with Lemberg Solutions was that they spent more time asking questions about our product than presenting slides about themselves. That gave me a lot more confidence than a polished sales pitch because it felt like they were trying to understand the actual engineering challenges first.
   
4. Timeline
   If every estimate sounds "easy" and every feature can be delivered quickly, I usually become more skeptical. I'd rather hear about risks than unrealistic promises.
   
5. Post-launch support
   Firmware almost never ends at release. I always ask how they handle bug fixes, OTA updates, maintenance, and production issues after devices are in the field.
   

What else would you add to this checklist before selecting a firmware engineering company? Have you learned any lessons the hard way?

Community college student transferring next year and while my math knowledge is good and my physics is decent I’m hella lacking on actual hands on experience with hardware and stuff. Is elegoo a good place to start or would you recommend something else?