Tuurbo46 said:
I need a bit of advice on what career path I should follow. I have recently
finished universtiy and am quite good a DSP, C, C++, Java and C#.
I'd say you really only have two significant skills you're presently here:
Those of someone designing signal processing routines and those of a generic
programmer. C, C++, Java, and C# can be used to program whatever you want,
and all the good programmers I know end up spending most of their time in one
language or another, but being familiar with lots of them -- and ready to
change if they switch jobs.
Saying you're good as DSP is pretty vague, unless you're saying you really are
quite experienced in most areas with it -- algorithm design (filters, control
systems, demodulation/modulation, etc.), architecture (fancy filter bank
arrangements and other architectures that typically aim to parallelize a
design so that you don't need to come up with 100GHz MACs
), as well as
implementation (in DSP chips from the likes TI or Analog Devices, in FPGAs, in
high-end CPUs such as Pentiums, even in esoteric devices such as CCDs).
At this point I relise I cannot persue all these paths and would would like
advice from current engineers on what would be the best most rewarding
career to follow (and one that has a future)?
Good programmers will always be in demand, as will good DSP people -- and
there are a lot fewer DSP people out there than "generic" programmers. So, if
you enjoy everything you've listed equally, I'd go the DSP route if you can
get a job in it, and if not find the most interesting sounding programming job
and still play around with DSP stuff in your spare time. If you're interested
in it, you can often readily parlay being a firmware programmer into
performing digital design. (I've worked at places where the digital hardware
was designed by people with software backgrounds, and it was quite scary!
)
---Joel Kolstad