Motorola Interview Part 2

Dec 23, 2005 11:37

I wasn't really sure about accepting an offer at Motorola if I got one. I was able tomake up my mind after the excellent event put together and hosted by Tim, a very talented manager in Motorola's HR department. About 70 candidates were flown in and hosted for the night at a hotel, and the following day on location, which must have been an organizational nightmare. We got well fed (which I was definitely not expecting - the breakfast I had was awesome), and were given plenty of bathroom breaks (very important!).

There was an evening reception the day I arrived in Chicago, with a VP talking about the history of Motorola and the current outlook and position of the company. It was very insightful and I learned a lot; although I was a bit skeptical due to the obvious biasness of the VP. I was sitting at a table with about 9 other interview candidates, and one of the hiring managers - a very nice lady named Azar. Lucky for me, she was very helpful and straightforward in answering my questions about working at Motorola. I learned for the first time that Motorola is going to move to a Java/Linux solution in their future phones; this is a big thing for me, as it is one of the reasons I wanted to work for a government contractor - they deal with Java/J2EE and Unix platforms almost exclusively. Now C++ is widely used and all, but I'm not the biggest fan, I'd much rather be working on Java so I got very excited hearing about the new java/linux platform. It's being developed in-house from scratch; doing away with the behemoth, hard to maintain C++/C code used in Moto's current phones (Moto isn't alone in software problems on phones - I think only RIM has gotten it right so far).

The next day was spent at Motorola's location where the mobile devices division is HQ'd. I spent the morning touring the facility, the afternoon doing interviews. We were shown their blue room (I think it was called), which is loaded with their upcoming and latest devices. I love gadgets and new tech, and I was really impressed with some of the new phones. The SLVR L7 is just a badass looking device - I think it's going to give Nokia candy bar phones a run for the money (FYI, Nokia is #1 in candy bar phones, Motorola is #1 in clam-shell). This got me hooked. Working with cool new tech devices that millions of people will use? [Check] Working on cool new Java/Linux software for next gen phones? [Check]

Interviews were pretty straightforward. Two technical interviews, and one behavioral. In typical engineer geek fashion, I nailed the tech interviews and did - I thought at least - horrible on the behavioral. It really seemed to me like the behavioral questions were geared towards someone with more experience, not entry level. I was asked mostly questions about how I responded to situations that came up in past projects; not having a lot of past project experience to draw from, I did my best but I felt like I was stretching. I was asked how I would respond to a manager if he put a lot of pressure on me to get something done by the end of the day that I knew I would not be able to get done. Also questions about how I would prioritize tasks. Stuff like that. Wasn't too bad in retrospect, but I didn't feel very confident about my answers.

Technical interviews were a breeze. I had the amazing fortune to be interviewed by Azar, the nice lady I had met the night before at the reception! We had already hit it off so the interview went very smoothly. I was asked some simple C bit manipulation questions, and a question about how to store the numbers zero and negative zero as constants in one's complement so that they are portable. The next technical interview went very well too. I was asked questions about how to program threads safely (semaphores, critical sections, locking), what a real time system is and give examples, how schedulers work and give an example of a scheduler, how interrupts are used in a real time system for scheduling and multi tasking, and about the way caches work. I slightly messed up on the interrupt question, I'd forgotten the details of handlers. But otherwise, I answered everything well.

We were told that if you nailed all three interviews you'd be getting a position. Otherwise, you might get a position at a satellite location also located in the Chicago area if they had the need. I was worried because of the behavioral interview. The following Monday I got a call. They made me an offer, and told me that I was the first person they had picked! Very cool, and I couldn't quite believe it. I accepted and have been looking forward to working at Moto ever since. I just recently found out I'd be working with the 3GSM team - which is working on all the latest tech. I can't wait!

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