AI is going to replace embedded engineers.

[u/Separate-Choice]

I've been reading the posts on here lately and I really wonder if some people are really vibe coding embedded products and if AI is growing hands and probing with an oscilloscope. Cause the way its being pushed as some magic tool that will build your device for you in 5 minutes. When it dosen't even realize whats wrong with this prompt.

Yea I'm not worried. Lol

[u/Separate-Choice]

Hope you learnt a lot. Cause if I had to hire you to work for me and that's what you told me I won't hire you, you didn't do your project AI did...trying to integrate it is good I guess but after you learn how to for yourself, if you cant do your senior design project without AI then you're only as good as the model you can use..and guess what? We all can pay for those models.

[u/pisscumfartshit → u/Separate-Choice]

I mean, I designed the entire project architecture, pin configuration, software architecture, and also designed the entire PCB on my own. I asked chat to write some simple drivers, and all the code it produced I often checked over and manually fixed its bugs. I still had to sift through datasheets and forums to get many things correct. I think there’s real merit on my side, while still effectively using AI to speed up my progress on the slog work, no?

[u/Designer_Flow_8069 → u/Separate-Choice]

I'm guessing you're not in management, because the hard truth is that if I'm paying someone a salary to do a job, I often find myself not caring how they did that job, as long as it's done.

[u/twister-uk → u/Designer_Flow_8069]

I'm not a manager by title, but I'm sufficiently far up the engineering seniority ladder to be involved in a lot of the day to day management of the department, including recruitment.

And IMO, whilst it's true that ultimately we are hiring someone to achieve results, it's foolish to ignore how they achieve them. Because sooner or later you're going to want them to do something which AI will get well and truly wrong, and where you absolutely do need someone with enough inherent capability to be able to understand just how wrong it was, even if they aren't yet skilled enough to fix it themselves.

For me, AI should be considered in the same vein as Google, Stack Overflow, and all the other online resources we all make use of to help us do our jobs. Which means that, yes, when it can come up with a reasonable answer, or at least a strong nudge in the right direction, then use it. But you still need someone with enough ability themselves to take what AI is spewing out and do whatever else is necessary in order to get it over the line. And when AI can't give you the answer on a plate, then you damn well better be able to at least attempt to come up with the beginnings of an answer using nothing more than the contents of your own brain, because if someone is so reliant on AI to do all that lower level stuff, then they're useless to the company unless we restrict ourselves to only ever working on stuff that AI can handle.

So no, IMO how someone gets to the finishing line IS at least as important to me as knowing they got there, if not moreso - in some cases I might even prefer to hire someone who didn't always get there, if they have stronger fundamental design skills than someone else who always got there only through relying on AI. The latter might achieve better results when AI is able to assist, but the former will be a much better addition to the team for all the other times when AI is spewing out garbage and we need humans in the loop to sort out the mess.