Here are my thoughts:

- The grass is always greener on the other side. Other engineering fields have their own problems, the work is not always exciting, and you will have to learn a lot to be productive.

- Consider pursuing your interests as a hobby. Outside of cutting edge stuff or things like civil or nuclear you can do most things on your own. And the cutting edge stuff no one is going to let you do for a long time because it typically requires a large organization to do and large organizations get large because they have specialists. Plus they are generally risk averse. You could maybe find a startup doing interesting stuff, but they don't have the money to spend on mentoring you/bringing you up to speed.

- You are giving up a lot of money by leaving software. If you want to do things like have a family, own a home, start a business of your own, you should consider sticking it out in software and finding fulfillment outside of work.

Edit: Maybe you just want something to do that isn't behind a screen. Consider getting more involved in things like cooking, hunting/shooting, or working on your car. Those hobbies (and others) all have aspects that require similar skills as the interesting parts of engineering. Maybe you can find find some of what you're looking for there.

Nothing like a good long tangle with Vivado to make you wish you were working on web stuff again.

I think key to being a dev long term is keeping the curiosity going. Do it in whatever way you want. I must admit, its a pretty cushy way to live a life (WFH senior+ dev). I feel like an artist without the money troubles.

Definitely similar vibes to being a software dev, aka sitting in front of a monitor

If you want to get into hand machining and you have the space, save some money and buy a used bridgeport mill. Those things are tanks and you can do pretty much anything with one.

This is a key point - with the level of abstraction in software, iteration is exponentially faster than dealing with stuff in physical space

Important context is that my undergraduate degree was in mechanical engineering, even though I ended up moving straight into CS afterwards.

I found a job as a machine design engineer at a company that designs computer controlled milling machines and I've loved it ever since. 90% of my day to day job is mechanical, but I have a plenty of domain specific knowledge to handle the CNC side of things. I've found it's the perfect balance for me.

One word of caution for you about physical engineering: If you are working at a company that sells a physical product (not just working on 100% research and development ala Bell Laboratories) you will spend a lot of your time working on supply chains, handling quality control, helping the purchasing department, answering customer support questions that are escalated to you, etc. I would say that actual textbook mechanical engineering is about 20% of the job.

Addendum: I see that you are interested in the machining side of things as well. If you are looking for mechanical design jobs, this is something you will want to ask about early in the interview process. Some companies never let mechanical designers into the R&D lab to make prototypes and instead have a dedicated staff that only does that. Other companies (like mine) specifically select for engineers with manufacturing skills and encourage you to be able to make your own prototypes.

However, prepare for the fact that you will never make as much money.

I was trying to have it as a hobby for several years as I am very passionate about software development, but my full time job was taking so much of my time that I was never able make much progress. Now that I am working full time on the home automation product, I am moving much faster and I am working towards a pre-launch on Crowd Supply, which is in a couple of weeks. I am depending on my savings right now, and my goal is to make atleast sustainable income in the next 1-2 years and keep working on more home automation products.

Machining does sound fun to me, and I have a few things that I want to machine, but I don't have access to a metal CNC machine or know anyone who does. You can find a lot of software and hardware people in Silicon Valley, but not many CNC folks.

I want to second this.

I went into MechE specifically to be a MechE that also gets to do hands on portions in machine design. Unfortunately, as a young teenager with this goal in mind, nobody told me this is a very rare thing - especially for fresh out of college positions.

Very small niche, you’ll have to search far and wide to find a decent job as a MechE that also lets you touch the things you’ve applied your MechE to.

- Many jobs require travel; often with little to no advance notice. And you sometimes don't get to go home until the job is done. You know how devs joke about how hard it is to accurately plan a project? The same applies here too, but except the cost could be you stuck on the other side of the world, unable to visit family, until you reconcile the gap.

- Even lower upward mobility. There are still manager and project manager tracks most places, but VERY few have technical tracks that match. Oh, and if you choose the manager/project-manager path, expect to do zero technical work AND travel significantly more!

- Lower flexibility in expertise/duties. Most disciplines under "physical engineering" are highly regulated/mature and thus do not change much these days. One not-entirely-contrived example could involve industrial-scale boilers - any engineer working in this world has almost zero room for creativity/innovation, you are entirely bound to 50+ year old industry codes that are insurmountable. And if this is what you do for 10 years, you're going to have a terribly difficult time convincing another company to hire you to design gears or PCBs, etc.

This is a pretty gross generalization. I've known someone who ran single-point diamond turning machines, ~directly working with the metal (or whatever). It is highly specialized and my guess is he made probably mid-hundreds of k$/yr.

I got an interest what I'll call "human scale" electronics after getting and learning how to restore a 1985 VW van. That led to getting into the dash electronics, with through-hole LEDs, resistors, and the like, and me remembering playing with these things in childhood electronics kits.

From there, I started getting into microcontroller learning kits from Sparkfun, then something clicked about Raspberry Pi computers when I realized the GPIO pin bank could control lights, sensors, and sound, while building in software in the Linux environment I knew.

Once I started building custom electronics, I got an interest in enclosures for custom builds and then into 3D printing.

From 3D printing, I wanted to learn more about CAD (FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, Fusion 360, Shapr3D), mesh design & 3D modeling in Blender.

Today I'm doing a combination of microcontroller project consulting (where a solid C/C++ background helps tremendously), 3D modeling and prototyping, and working on a personal physical product for which I am writing the whole software stack.

Personally I feel that coming to hardware with a strong software background helps in code/firmware organization, thinking about flexibility, and fast prototyping.

1) Always change companies, change industries, and/or change locations multiple times before trying a career change. Unfortunately, if you are the type of person who gets burned out in software then you’re almost certainly going to get burned out in other engineering disciplines unless you learn how to manage your stress and self. Better to learn stress management and burnout prevention before investing in a career change.

2) Always get hands-on experience in an industry before investing in education to switch to it. Spending 2-4 years getting another degree is insanely expensive when you include the cost of lost wages and starting over as a junior. This alone could burn you out even more. You need to be 100% sure that the other career is the correct choice for you before you invest in education.

I don't have a super specific suggestion for somewhere to look, but anecdotally I worked for a small aerospace company and for some time was working on software/networking but was also physically turning bolts assembling a spacecraft, building test equipment, etc., some of the time.

You’ll also be a much smaller cog in a much larger machine. You can’t single handedly design a bridge the way Torvolds wrote the Linux kernel. That’s ultimately what convinced me to pivot to avionics and then ultimately software as I got through my degree.

I studied Engineering Science with Computer Science, did some Electronic Engineering before focusing on software.

Studying diverse fields of engineering is intellectually stimulating and creates lots of transferrable skills (Who knew all that math I learned makes learning ML easy?). You will be open to jobs both in physical and software engineering + It's harder to be self-taught in physical engineering.

..Just be aware the job market for physical engineering is orders of magnitude smaller than software engineering. You will have less choice and lower pay. Most of the smart engineers I know with degrees from good schools ended up in software.

I empathize deeply with the interest in being more physically situated and to use my body for thinking. Personally I'm still waiting for physical computing to happen (a la Dynamicland.org or something similar) so I can have my cake and eat it too!

I've personally settled with balancing software day job work with more physical hobbies and activities outside of work. Cooking, gardening, walking, etc. I like Cal's Deep Life framework here the best: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/04/20/cultivating-a-dee...

Another option to consider is to assess / reflect on the hard-won skills you have in software and see if you can't find a way to do it part-time / consulting instead. Maybe you need to move to a cheaper location to make this happen, not sure! But being able to charge $75 - 200 an hour and live in a cheap place means you could end up working only 15-20 hours a week. This way, you retain your skills but can fill the rest of your time with more physical hobbies.

I have undertaken extensive learning in electrical and mechanical engineering in recent months but from an applied perspective as I am dogfooding my own ideas after calculating that my recently installed PV system will be producing far more energy than I have chemical battery storage capacity. While my degree is in software engineering my current personal energy solution design correlates nicely to the global energy storage demand that is rapidly growing. As the sole creator and architect of the technology around my past founded entities, and in conjunction with my diverse exposure to physical and logical build outs; residential, commercial and industrial, I am heavily consuming and learning information as it relates to electrical and mechanical engineering in solving my own energy abundance issue. The technology side of my problem is "easy" having built several enterprise platforms but in learning anything new mistakes will always be made, that's the fun part! The speed at which I am able to learn and apply these concepts never would have been possible without the internet, we live in truly surreal times.

Point being that if one is motivated enough one can do anything you put your mind to no matter what anyone else tells you. I have been mocked and laughed at for my ideas and once you get past what other people think the world is your oyster, maybe it has a pearl in it or maybe not.

Learning engineering so i can do my own projects. Funding it with software jobs. But its so hard to get space for projects...

I want to build my own PV array and storage as well..

When I did some EE work, designing embedded boards, and writing code for them (more latter than the former), I usually worked with real HW, and often when I had to physically debug PCBs with a scope, and fix the issues with an exacto knife and botch wires, and the odd through-hole component dangling in the air.

I think what it boils down to is that ME is quantified and constrained. If you have drawings for everything else, then you make a new drawing based on those old drawings. We use CAD to determine if something will fit or work; a plastic piece of junk shaped like the part won't tell us anything we didn't know. Likewise, to test the part we need to build it out of the final material, whereas 3d printing for the most part doesn't produce anything strong enough. It's still mostly a Makerspace toy used for plastic widgets.

ME is much less artistic/creative than people think. What I find that most people have in mind with "hands-on building" is more akin to craftsman, carpenter, welder, or mechanic, rather than any engineer. Mechanics is a branch of physics. You apply that to parts to build a machine that works. Everything is calculated, from bolt spacing to sheet metal thickness, balancing tradeoffs like weight/cost/strength and so on. Then you write a 50 page report with tables, graphs, all of your analysis. It should be airtight, or people could die.

I just watch youtube videos about it so idk how bad it gets. Manual machining seems cool as a hobby but CNC is what im interested in.

Also install tooling, swear when a tap or drill inevitably breaks and gets stuck in a very expensive part, etc.

People way smarter and doing way more complicated things making HALF as much as i do now....

http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2016/Jan/code-monkey-or-cad-monk...

I started out as an EE doing mostly hardware work, continued to do more HW/SW integration and now do essentially 100% software work but with the ability to read and interpret schematics, datasheets, figure out HW/SW integration bugs etc. I have done a ton of physical system integration: i.e., getting my software to make things move, move properly, and work around mechanical or electrical bugs. Yes, there are also bugs in mechanical and electronic systems, and it's usually cheaper to "just fix it in software!"

You may just be switching one kind of burnout for another...

One of the most telling remarks I remember was from a friend who had done mainly software and was now coding for the electromechanical system that I worked on: "I'd really just rather work with the Simulator because when I put my code on hardware then I have to deal with a whole other set of problems that have nothing to do with software."

He eventually got past that but that's why I think you need to be really clear about what you want to get out of doing this.

And do the last debug round with a hand (sometimes both) tied behind your back plus a 'compile cycle' that can take days.

For what I hear from these people, they unanimously say that there's many more (quantity) and better (quality) jobs in software compared to their original field. This is probably a biased sample, so take it with a grain of salt.

I think you need to investigate what exactly is causing the burnout issues. It could be a whole new career isn't the thing that will fix it. I don't know you, so I can't make a judgement either way - just be very careful before spending thousands of dollars and years of your working life on school. Doing so could make your problems worse.

A while ago a family member was suffering from extreme burnout at his job. That person's mother (a very naive person) strongly encouraged him to leave the field he works in entirely, whereas I could see the problem was entirely personal and changing careers wouldn't help and would likely hurt him. I encouraged him to work on some personal issues before making such a decision, he did, and almost an entire decade later he is in the same field and doing much better.

In the end, these people get funneled into cubicles to do CAD/CAM work and spend their day fussing over customer foibles.

The pay is basically half of what I do and each promotion is more of a life event than anything. I've earned more per year in 5y in cybersecurity than my brother has in 18y as a fab engineer.

He loves his work though. Certainly has more days where he's pulling out his hair because he has to work alongside blue-collar, disinterested young adults though.

Also historically it was possible to get an engineering job without an engineering degree or similar, but that really isn't the case anymore.

So you may be SOL unless you want to go back to school for four years. That said, there are plenty of similar positions that don't need degrees, such as mechanical/electrical/civil designer or technician, but you more than likely need a certificate of some sort.

Don't give up!

Edit: Another commentor brought up industrial automation engineering, which doesn't necessarily need a degree. I've known many industrial automation engineers who were self taught. The pay is great and you can basically do it anywhere. PLC's are one of the most common and important things that most people have no idea even exist.

Overall, I was impressed by how modern software is built, engineering that goes into it and satisfaction from immediate gratification. I had amazing mentors. Since I am back to Hardware, things appear a lot slower, but having a software background is huge. I have working knowledge of the entire stack from load balancers to interface arbitrators at the FPGA level. I can design PCBs to database schemas. I honestly feel like I can build anything and everything.

At this point am the head of development at my company working on pretty wild projects like this:

https://norphonic.com/products/evacsound/

…or seemingly simple but painstakingly elaborate designs like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRXfV7x-dlo

Most of the meat in ME/EE is put on the bones by my talented colleagues, while I do outline approaches to implement and sign off the designs and still lean heavily on SW side.

This is so true. I was working with an older ME who was nearing retirement. My code was controlling a subsystem he designed and he was going over it with me to figure out how to get the best performance. It was when he showed me that a minor change to the angle of a bracket had a huge impact on reliability that I realized that as much as I enjoyed mechanical design, I was just a dabbler. This guy was demonstrating decades of expertise and would think of things that never occurred to me.

I was half his age and was probably already making more than he was.

However, from your statement, I would ask the following question: What is it you are looking for? It sounds like the underlying project goals might not be interesting enough and if you found something more meaningful/impactful it might be more stimulating?

I constantly think about different careers and grass is greener kind of thought process and come back to first principles. What is it I want out of life?

Why?

If you really want to learn engineering you need to learn trade skills. Go buy an old beater car and restore and customize it. You'll learn at a pace you can set and you can acquire the tools you need and learn how to use them as the project moves along. When it's done you'll have something pretty cool.

There are a lot of very good YouTube channels and videos that can help you along the way. One of my favorites is a channel called "RÜNGE CARS". This guy builds cars from the ground up like I learned how to do it from my father and the guys he worked with. He just finished a car he'd been working on for 5 years and it is awesome.

I don't build custom cars anymore, and I drive old beaters. But I do fix cars for family and friends and keep my old beater running. I've worked on four this month already, mine, my wife's, and two of our daughters. Just little stuff. Master cylinder, a shock absorber, an alternator, and tune up on my wife's car.

You learn how to restore an old car and you can pretty much jump in on most anything and get up to speed fast.

I knew nothing about hardware engineering at all when I started: I was hired for my programming skills as, essentially, an SDET who was expected to pick up the hardware stuff on the job. It was a rough transition at times, but it was extremely worthwhile. It made me a far more critical thinker and exposed me to a world far beyond what a typical programmer would have had: I tinkered with robots, learned a little about experimental design, relearned some statistics I had forgotten, spent time in data wrangling and visualization, and worked with some incredibly brilliant people in the process.

If you are any good at architecting software systems (I am not), a baptism-by-fire is probably sufficient to acquaint you with systems engineering—although nothing will replace experience. I don't know that you'd need to go to school for it as long as you're prepared to ask stupid questions. My step-up manager told me that systems engineers are generally made rather than educated, and there's probably a bit of truth to that.

I'm a physical scientist, was working in a HW role, and moved to an R&D group where I make extensive use of my programming skills. So I've gone the opposite way. While I do a lot of work in the lab and the factory, if I got hit by a bus, my replacement would need to be a good programmer. I think I'm compensated accordingly.

What I've observed is that anybody who's good enough at programming to do it for money, will eventually be doing so. An option might be for you to up your programming game by getting some more formal training, which your employer might even pay for. This would give you more options in the SW business.

You can expose yourself to the hardware world through a hobby, but it can't turn you into an engineer. Also, the "hard" engineering disciplines require you to get through the full math sequence. Since you're out of school, you'll probably want to brush up on your high school math. Taking the SAT or ACT would be a good way to find out where you stand.

In short, I'd highly recommend finding something that intrinsically interests you, whether materials or particular products, and finding a path to immerse yourself in it. No idea where you are, but ping me if you're interested.

Tangential : the more I study early era scientist, the more it baffles me how some of the greatest discoveries in mankind were made by people who had the luxury of not equating an intellectual pursuit with a breadwinner.

Thinks pre-revolutionnary french aristocrats.

Burn out with chemistry ? Let's just switch to revolutionize physics, and then we'll have a party.

Can't wait for some society to find some modern way of that.

We need a way to enable polymath again.

These days also Functional Safety and maybe equipment for explosive atmospheres also in play, plus any specific industry or project nuances, eg fired equipment.

Look away for a few years and you are out of date and need to really put some effort in to catch up, eg networking and OPC, MQTT etc are really making inroads last few years, some PLC's come with built in OPC servers now.

Reason to know such a wide range is many times it is the control system engineer who rolls up at the end, and all the bits and pieces forgotten or not thought of become his/her problems.

Very common one on process plant is they designed it for steady state operation at full load, but never really thought about how you start it up, or how much turn down you have got to run at half or quarter rates.

Often for industrial plant of decent size they haven't really made anything quite like it before, so it always has things to iron out.

Been doing it 30+ years now, I live in heavily resources based city where this kind of engineering pays more than any straight software job every day of the week.

Footnote: The difference from IT software to real time very reliable software might look like it's trivial, but it is a whole different game. The number of times I have seen real time systems projects assigned to the IT department and fail, is every time.

(though I will admit the comments in this thread are making me want to, at least, check the salary before I commit to anything!)

The problem is that I'm not sure where to start. Software was easy -- I'd make some toy games, or write a script to automate something. Hardware is less obvious -- there's nothing physical that's immediately fun or automatable in my life.

I have done it both ways! I left a great career in computer graphics to go through a long journey through the aerospace and energy sectors, and now I am on a return trip to CG.

During this process, I -Built my own machine shop -Worked at <Cutting edge aerospace company> -Built up an entire material science research lab -Learned how to manage an amazing team -Got really into machining, manufacturing and facilities

Whoever said that most of your time as a mechanical engineer is spent buying stuff and sorting through boxes/messing with supply chain/inspection is right. Your tolerance for cardboard boxes must be very high to do physical engineering.

Machining is really fun and soothing at times, but once you have learned it enough, you realize that Xometry and Protolabs and Front Panel Express and SendCutSend are just... better than you. One thing I learned is that machining was a fun hobby, but it is not fun to have it as a part of another hobby. It is always cheaper and quicker to outsource that labor. I want to make a telescope eyepiece tray, and I know I can design it and find a makerspace with a laser cutter and make it myself, but I am probably just going to order it from FPE so it will show up to my door, done, without any painting etc. I almost bought a mini lathe again (I sold off my first machine shop), but I realized that the thing I was thinking of making with it (tiny model biprop rocket engines) were hard to make and if I did pick up that hobby, I would rather just pay my buddy to make it on his superlathe and spend that time on designing the stuff he would make.

Another huge part of physical engineering is relationship management. You need to have someone to do everything. You need a good relationship with your sputter coater, with your weld shop, with your general contractor.

There is not actually that much senior level design engineering work to be done. Usually design work is done by about 10% of the org, and the rest of the org does support activities for that. There is nothing wrong with that, and there is plenty of interesting work in the support activities (I made a career of doing those activities)

I did all this with no formal education in the sector. I spent a lot of time in machine shops, reading books, going to rocket launches, networking. John Carmack was my principal inspiration (I met him at a tiny rocket conference once)

As far as comp is concerned, it is decent but not MANG like. I got lucky at <Aerospace place> and got in early enough that my TC was actually pretty solid due to relatively large share grant. I did have 5 room mates when I worked there because the cash level was low. My first aerospace job was paying me the same salary as an In N Out employee makes now. (They were taking a chance on me, so no hard feelings at all, it was a privilege to make that sacrifice!). You can make a living as a physical engineer, but you might not make a killing.

So, if you are committed to a huge downlevel for 5 years, you can have some fun adventures!

PS: Knowing how to write python is a superpower in these fields, I would guess than less than 10% of mechEs at the senior level know how to code. I imagine new grads know how to code now. I always was able to sneak a quick victory in various projects because I could write some hack code that did something tedious quickly.

PPS: Respect. Your. Technicians. Respect them. Treat them as partners. Do right by them. Value their feedback. Do their work from time to time. Pay attention when they speak, and act on what they say. Same goes for your machinists, material handlers, buyers, etc.