The deal is, coincidently we both need folks who can do things (yesterday)…Not someone who is going to screw around for the next 4-5 months “figuring things out from scratch”….Perhaps we’re both being harsh, but we’re like dude, if you really want to do this, couldn’t you have possibly tried to learn this during the past 1-2 years when you already thought your existing skillset needed to be expanded. Why are you going to do this on our dime?
That’s what your company gets for not hiring the best 2-3 software and hardware engineers right out of college every year and then helping them grow in a rewarding career. Had your company been doing this all along you would have a rich, diverse staff of software and hardware engineers able to tackle any challenge.
That’s actually the way things used to work until the MBAs took over. As soon as that chain of new talent coming in was broken, all was lost. The older high-paid guys got laid off as their work was sent overseas, and a lot of the kids entering college realized that engineering was a sucker’s game and all went for law, medicine, or biochem instead. Now those MBA-run shops are screwed, always trying to find that one engineer that has every single buzzword of the day on his resume and bitching on websites like this one that they can’t find one and that all American engineers are lazy and don’t want to learn new stuff.
And as another poster here pointed out, no employer will consider experience done at home in a hobby as real experience. They want you to have done exactly the same thing that they are doing, never mind the fact that that implies that they aren’t doing anything new. But of course most MBAs can’t think that far ahead…
But yes, your last line is right on the money. Try to get your company hiring a couple of sharp grads every year, take care of them and allow them to grow and your company will be in good shape down the road. But then again what company thinks farther ahead than the next quarter anymore?