Whether you've been laid off or not, you know hardware engineering jobs are in decline. If you've been in the field 15 or 20 or 25 years, but still got mouths to feed and bills to pay, what practical advice does anyone have? Software is good but it'll be years before you can catch up and not everyone was born to program. If you have a conscious you're unlikely to grow very far up the management chain. Let's stop whining for a bit and think of positive ideas. H1Bs are here to stay.
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http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/04/quit-job-right-way/
"Employees are paid salaries that allow the shareholders to extract as much profit as possible.
And innovation forces the gap wider between the needs of the shareholders at the top and the employees who are moving closer to the bottom.
This is not a bad or a good thing. It’s reality.
Corporations want to ultimately fire you, whether you like your job or not. Their entire purpose is to create and squeeze the efficiencies out of you until you drop dead or are no longer needed.
You can love your job so you don’t want to quit. But the company that hires you eventually will quit you.
Eventually they will squeeze every bit of profit out of you. Eventually you will join the class of workers who have become outdated. Eventually they will fire you."
Honestly it is very rough. Learn Python and Selenium and go into software test automation. You would have to take a significant pay cut up front from Hardware but the future of hardware in the USA is extinction
Huawei, Xiaomi, MediaTek, TSMC, Samsung
A friend got laid off about a year ago. He's gotten PMP, became a certified SCRUM master, and been brushing up on software. No luck yet. It's a tough world out there
Hardware jobs are now in Asia, China, Taiwan, Korea are the hot places to be.