[the_only_law]

On a related note, I get the idea that a lot of the companies working on embedded products have a culture where that degree is valued regardless of whether you can do the work or not.

Additionally, I very rarely see roles in that area listed that someone from another fields could “break into”. Often they’re looking for someone who has significant domain experience, and by domain experience I don’t just mean my embedded software in general, but experience around the actual product target business itself (medical devices, cellular networks, whatever).

For example I looked at a job near working working on integrating 5G chipsets into boards. The work was relatively high level (you weren’t designing the 5G stack or anything, maybe at most writing some modem drivers) but they were looking for people who from that domain and had experience with all sorts of strange proprietary Qualcomm crap.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

One way I've seen people "break in" is by being hired into a related role then expanding into the embedded side. e.g., someone I know was hired as an app developer, but the guy writing the firmware that the app connected to got sidetracked by another project. The app dev learned enough about the chip & the firmware to get the bit he cared about working, then discovered he liked doing firmware and started working on both the device firmware and the app on future projects.