The interviewer was good. He explained me that there was requirement in the Automotive department of NVIDIA and they were looking for somebody with a good background of multimedia(image processing, computer vision, video processing etc) along with a bit of programming experience. He then went through my resume and asked me about the projects, he could understand (to check my ability to understand I guess). Then he asked some basic questions related to programming, like optimization factors in a filtering operation (what can be done it make the process faster). I discussed a few parameters which I felt were relevant. He asked me a few questions of similar type, not too difficult.e.
On site was supposed to be a 4-5 long process. I was given the name of the first interviewer. He received me on time and took me to a conference room. He was a Software person, so he started with some basic C programming problems. They were like "Find whats wrong in the code" type. I am an average programmer, so it took me some time to understand the problems, but the interviewer was kind enough and gave me hints and was in general helpful, and I guess he realized I wasn't a very good programmer, he let me take my time to answer. I was able to answer the questions, but was a bit slow and unsure of myself. So, I didn't think it went so well. I was planning to make amends in the next round as I was better at multimedia concepts, embedded concepts etc.
I was then taken to lunch by a Sr. Manager. He was very kind and we had a good casual chat while having lunch. After lunch I was greeted by a Sr. person, who also wanted to test my programming skills. So he first started with the concepts of Static and Volatile variables, which I answered. Then he asked me about a particular code and see if it will work or not. I told him that it will and explained why. It was half right and there was a condition when it might fail, which he explained to me. Then he asked me to write a proper program to find if a number is a factor of 2 or not. I took some time, but wrote the code. Overall, this one was also OK. I did manage to answer the questions, but was a bit slow on the coding part.
The third interviewer came in. He also said he was going to test my CODING skills. I was a bit surprised as, on phone I was told, that it required basic understanding of programming, and the position was mostly related to multimedia and embedded!! Anyways, this one was the WORST. As mentioned the previous two interviewers were courteous and were understanding enough to realize that I was not professional with 5 years of experience, I was a new grad. This third guy came in, talked about my resume. Then went to the board, wrote a question, explained a bit and sat and said write the code. It was a very different type of question about memory mapping. I wasn't expecting and most of all, I hadn't dealt with such question before. I tried to understand the question, but the interviewer was not helping, he was more like smirking that I was not able to get it. When I asked him to please simplify and explain the question, he repeated the same thing. Anyways, he was not helpful. I somehow managed to write a pseudo code, which satisfied most of the conditions, but he was mad that i didn't write a proper code and that my idea was not Efficient for programming. I apologized and said that I hadn't worked on such a problem before,he kinda gave a condescending reply. I had realized that this was the final nail, i wasn't gonna make it.
Then the HR came in, with some generic questions about my status n all. I asked him exactly WHICH position, I interviewed for, cos, I am not a programmer by education, so if I was being interviewed for a pure software position, I was obviously not the correct person. Also, I was made to understand over the phone interview that programming is somehow secondary for this position. He gave me the most stupid answer, that this a GENERIC interview. Now, if thats the case then whats the point in even having a Job positing, right? Just interview any one. Also, the HR had the name of the person who was SUPPOSED to interview me on PHONE, not the one who ACTUALLY interviewed me. I told him so, then he changed it. But, then I wasn't sure, if I was given an interview believing to be somebody else's phone interview response.
wer and not even know what he is talking about.
