New grad — embedded C offer. Good stepping stone or career trap? Tldr at the bottom. Got a new grad offer at a mid-top tier company. The pay is solid and I'd be coming in at L2. Role is mostly embedded C - drivers, firmware, that kind of thing. I don't hate embedded work. It's fine. But I can't picture myself still doing it in 5 years. My actual targets long-term are something like: \- GPU firmware / AI inference engines \- OS / kernel development \- Performance and systems programming (low-level SW, not HW) Basically I want to keep moving toward the software side of low-level. My concern is getting pigeonholed. If I take this and do it for 2+ years, do I become "the embedded guy" and struggle to pivot into GPU firmware or kernel roles? Or does strong embedded experience actually read well on a resume for those positions since the skill overlap is real (memory management, concurrency, hardware-software interface, debugging)? Has anyone made this pivot successfully from embedded → kernel / GPU / inference?…