3 ms·
Ok, to be fair, they did say "when we turned it on, part of it blew up" when I asked for more details, and it was just a 2-page schematic with 6-7 subsections.
by PascLeRasc 7y ago
Ok, to be fair, they did say "when we turned it on, part of it blew up" when I asked for more details, and it was just a 2-page schematic with 6-7 subsections. I think it was pretty fair, I'm just frustrated that it felt like I couldn't solve it by thinking slowly and methodically.
It was a really cool company and I'd have loved to work there. It's the kind of place where I want to be a good fit.
- makomk 7y agoI do wonder if this is just a scenario where there's no way to win. The person writing this blog post has exactly the same interview prompt - something went pop when the board was powered up - but they expect candidates to spot subtle things like missing decoupling capacitors that almost certainly aren't the cause of the problem.
- cushychicken 7y agoJust about every person I've used this prompt on has found the prompted error, and then gone on to find a few more. However, I don't really care about the number of errors you find nearly so much as I do seeing and hearing you reason your way through a new problem. I don't expect you to find all the issues. (But if you do, then congratulations! I'm gonna try to hire you.) I do expect you to talk to me about your thought process when confronted with a novel issue. That's what good electrical engineers do. They don't know all the answers - they reason their way through unexpected challenges.
- mng2 7y agoDid they tell you exactly where it blew up? Then it might be fair, 2 pages is not that big. Though you'd still be at quite a disadvantage compared to someone who spent a lot of time designing the thing. I gotta say though, if they themselves designed this board that promptly blew up, perhaps they should recalibrate their expectations for EEs.