Context: US Citizen, multiple internships across SWE and embedded and ML.
I graduated. I am in an internship that does embedded systems and ML research. I have proper experience and am not looking for anything at the moment.
What advice would you, an (I assume) longstanding engineer in the field, give to yourself now, a new graduate?
Like, how do I approach projects? Should I feel confident in my job currently, or work extra outside of it to maintain skills and an edge? What if I wanted to branch to other skills (I want to get into 3D printing)?
One major thing I’m curious about: do people typically target jobs and/or cities and study specifically for those skills just so they can land that specific role? Like I wanna go to a major city. Do people eye their companies like hawks, or just spray and pray applications?
Do you have any advice as overarching as “try to get into defense as opposed to big tech” or the opposite, or what? Idk, gimme some help here and a good perspective into the field.
Anything helps. We (this gen) are lost and scared.