[healsjnr1]

Yep, this was my experience.

I graduated a double degree of EE and Comp Science. My final year thesis was a project with a local company integrating their custom designed GPRS module with a GPS module to demonstrate mobile tracking tech (it was 2003).

Because of the project I went straight into a hardware design job out of uni. I was designing boards for mobiles! Working on circuit design, prototyping PCBs, I was psyched!

Problem is the company was run _terribly_. 3 months in we all got put on 2 weeks forced leave and then given redundancies. Aside from dinner pretty terrible management, the economics of doing mobile hardware design in Australia just didn't stack up (we were the only company trying).

In the end there were probably 10:1 software jobs for every hardware job. Given my experience so far, I opted for software.

It has been great, I love software, but I sometimes wish I had lived somewhere that had a higher critical mass of EE work.

[nice2meetu]

Very similar to me! Double degree in EE/IT, my first job out of uni was with a small company building gps chips. I actually spent a lot of time writing testing software. A couple of years in it went down the drain and I just naturally transitioned in to a software role (paid a lot better).

[toomanybeersies]

Funnily enough, there are quite a few Australian (and a few Kiwi) companies in the telematics space these days. Not sure how many of them are designing hardware from scratch though, versus off the shelf devices with custom firmware.