Most software engineers think they deal with complexity… until they enter the world of hardware. After years of leading web development teams, I moved into engineering leadership at a smart device startup and quickly realised that writing backend services is the easy part.

This talk shares hard-earned lessons from that transition, covering real-world differences between web and IoT engineering. From the horror of bricking hundreds of devices with a bad firmware update, to building physical test rigs because "unit tests" now involve screwdrivers, to managing production, supply chains and mechanical failures that no software patch can fix. And let’s not even start on hardware iteration, where redeploying means spinning a new PCB and waiting weeks.

Expect candid stories, some painful hindsight, and a few laughs. This talk is a survival guide for software engineers tempted by the world of physical products.

Key takeaways include: what makes IoT genuinely hard, where traditional dev practices break down, and what teams should know before jumping into hardware. If you think deploying a web app is stressful, try shipping a box with a chip inside.