Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Jens-Michael Gross — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:13:06 GMT

Larry: it depends on the transistor material (plain silicon?), temperature, base current and even collector/emitter voltage. The often cited 0.7V are only true in few situations.

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Tom Hendrick — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:04:51 GMT

Great read Bruce!

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Larry Beaty — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:45:04 GMT

I have but one question for prospective engineers or technicians: What is the base - emitter junction voltage of a transistor?

Many engineers could not answer that question. Only people who know working electronics know that answer.

Larry Beaty

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Jens-Michael Gross — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:19:03 GMT

A really interesting story. And I agree with Myron. The capability to understand is IMHO much more important than the capability to store knowledge. Any book can store knowledge but it won't make a good eingineer. And for any calculations, well, there's software for almost each problem - if you can properly model it.

During my university times (which stretched long enough - as a student) I too often discovered that you only get the best ratings when you simple memorize what the professor has said. It was unimportant whether you really understood. Not knowing the right 'buzzwords' was putting you into the lower ranks. It was so frustrating that I often considered prematurely ending my studies. Luckily I'm not the type who easily gives up - I usually finish what I started.

This continued when looking for a job. The jobs I got where those where my future employers already knew what I can do. And all have been very happy with what they got. But I never got a job when I was asked in the interview about what I know.

However, often (not always) are people doing the interviews who by themselves do not know much about the operating field of the future employee. So they ask predefined quesitons and compare the answers. What else could they do?

A typical failure was someone we hired for our next software version. We looked for someone who can program UI in JavaScript/Dojo. The 'winner' was indeed capable of doing the first steps for the new software. However, new versions of IE did require changes to the Dojo lib. And this guy was unable to figure out what to change where. The new situation was outside of his knowledge. At the end he left us and we lost the time we invested into the whole project. The prject was dumped and restarted using Flash. And the same thing happened again. When the existing knowledge wasn't enough, the project stalled. At the end, I was assigned to the software team and I had to learn Flex from scratch, expanding the range of my duties from hardware and firmware development to Flex client debugging and improvement. Everyone is happy now - except me :)

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

roger dorsch — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:36:17 GMT

Good question, but what is the phase shift? If you did not know the voltage, how could you tell when you where at .707Vac by phase shift?

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Michael Rossiter — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:21:22 GMT

I would offer the position to the applicant who asked "Is this a typo? Because capacitive reactance should be non-positive."

For the record, if I had happened to remember that about capacitive reactance, I probably would have assumed that I was misremembering or had missed something. At least back when I was interviewing.

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Myron Steinberg — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:39:50 GMT

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for an interesting topic.

I was responsible for hiring people in one company from the technical side until I stopped it. What happened? I realized that the result was 50/50. After a few years of thinking I found the reason. The passion and motivation are the main questions. I would tell you a story. Many years ago a young fellow came to an interview. He did not know anything!

I offered him a very low position. I thought he would decline it, but he accepted it. After 10 years he was still young and he was a great engineer. I had never met before and after such a great and talented young engineer.

RE: Interview Questions—memorable times on both sides

Mike Sims1 — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:34:16 GMT

Those of us that are audio geeks would recognize right off that V = .707VAC, since the -3dB point of a single pole RC filter is where the resistance and capacitive reactance are equal in magnitude. You can answer the question by observation without recourse to any calculations at all.

I remember interviewing at Tektronix just after college, and one of my interviewers asked me how to design a low-pass filter circuit with a -3d/octave slope rate. Fortunately, I was familiar with converting white noise to pink noise, so i was able to give a sensible answer. I've never forgotten that interview question,