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It can be a challenge to find work as a computer hardware engineer.
"It's hard to find R and D jobs, and I've seen friends get laid off and
they just cannot find another job, so they take sales jobs," says hardware
designer Erica Kwizak.
"I would say that the industry is not growing at the moment," says Mike
Fraser. He is a self-employed hardware engineer. "Hardware jobs, especially
entry level, appear to be few and far between. Most computer engineers will
likely end up in software positions, and those seem to be oriented toward
web programming jobs."
Darren Brownell designs ground-based satellite communications systems.
He agrees that software is becoming a bigger part of a designer's work, but
he still believes the future is bright for those going into this career.
"I think the job prospects are still very good in my field," he says. "While
more and more of any design involves software, you still need to have a physical
device to run the software, and that requires someone to design it."
Puneet Gupta is a senior hardware engineer at Amazon. He says the field
of consumer electronics offers lots of opportunities.
"With the fast pace at which the number and types of consumer electronics
products increase every day, job prospects have never been better," he says.
"Chip companies, test houses, design centres and manufacturing centers - everyone
is looking for talent."