I have a very basic question for you: what do you do and why do you do it? It is quite possible that, if you are reading this, you are an embedded software engineer. It is interesting to consider what that job actually entails. First off, how would you reply to the “What do you do?” question from someone you meet in a pub/bar? You would probably say Software Engineer, but they might ask you to expand on that. [Actually, such a reply can be a complete conversation killer. You might be better to reply with Airline Pilot or some such. Just invent a new persona and have some fun.]

It is easy to think of an embedded software engineer’s job as being all about writing code that programs a device to behave in a particular way. But that is a long way from the whole story… (more…)