bullshit questions get bullshit answers
(and no, i don't mean bullshit as in untruths)
Are they hiring engineers or guidance counselors here?
Are they hiring engineers or guidance counselors here?
- Can you, within 3 days after employment begins, submit verification of your legal right to work in the U.S. for LSI Logic? Please answer by selecting letter a, b, or c a. Yes b. No c. N/A - I am a current employee
a - If you are currently an employee, have you been in your current position for a minimum of 6 months (for non-exempt) or for a minimum of 12 months (for exempt)? Please answer by selecting letter a, b, or c. a. Yes b. No c. N/A - I am not an LSI Logic employee
c - Are you available for relocation?
Yes
No - What geographical location are you most interested in?
a) Milpitas, CA
b) Minneapolis, MN
c) Waltham, MA
d) Rockville, MD - Describe how you have used verbal communication skills to resolve a technical or personal issue. What three elements of your communication style contributed to your effectiveness?
Human verbal communication is an innate, complex, and non-granular ability. Unlike an engineering problem, which can be analyzed and measured against specific sub-goals, determining three particular effective elements of one's own communication technique is well nigh impossible. Of course one strives to be clear, concise, and accurate when the goal is pure information transmittal, but even these elements are seldom the most crucial in verbal communication. Often the goal is persuasion or support, in which case empathy, humor, appeasement, cleverness, et cetera are often more important. Regardless, to pick a particular problem and analyze how effect one's own communication skills were toward the outcome is extremely difficult if not impossible. In the case of vocal communication, what is left to analyze is but a memory unless by chance the speech was recorded. Much detail is lost. Attempting to determine the accuracy of one's listening skills after the fact is all but pointless without the other parties to question, and while one may have faith in particular elements of one's verbal abilities, it is almost impossible to determine with certainty which of one's abilities, if any, where crucial to achieving a desired outcome. Frequently resolution comes of its own accord, and more often, clever words fall upon deaf ears. - What extracurricular activities are you involved in?
While still in college, I did Judo and Taekwondo regularly. Since then i've been working full time, game programming, despite my affinity for logic design. I devote much of my free time to exercise, music, travel, cooking, friends, and family. - What software languages and simulators do you have experience using?
Languages: Verilog, C/C++, Java, Basic, Scheme
Simulators: Xilinx, Matlab, some ModelSim - Describe a challenging technical problem that you have solved individually or as part of a team.
Several years ago, while in school, my boss at the time was consulting for Texas Instruments. He was assisting a division building classroom networks consisting mainly of calculators and wireless hubs. He'd designed parts of a software system, but the calculator interface needed to be written. As the TI-83+ was at the time the best selling TI calculator, an interactive client had to be written in Z80 assembly to directly interface through the control lines of computer's serial port via a proprietary asynchronous protocol to a Java-based proxy/client running on the computer. The TI-83+ provides no operating system support for any communications other than non-interactive file transfer, and it was believed that Java couldn't control a serial port at a low enough level to communicate with a TI-83+. TI itself had tried to develop a system that allowed simultaneous reliable communication, user input, and screen display on an 83+, but hadn't come close to success. A lot of research into the poorly documented DBus protocol, many discussions with my boss about error correction over an unreliable, asynchronous connection, and the lucky discovery that unsupported Sun Java APIs supported direct control of a serial port's control lines got me started. Seeing the first bytes run across the wire after implementing the relevant state machines in Java was incredibly exciting. The difficult part was developing a robust protocol on top of that that would catch the random bits the calculator tended to insert into the data stream, shifting values and leading to error-prone transmission, flag them and resynchronize the bit streams of the client and server while allowing the client to continue accepting keystrokes without overloading the 8 MHz processor with interrupts. - What is your overall G.P.A.?
3.69 - What life experiences have given you the greatest reward?
Many of the things I've done in life -- most of school, for example, have been easy for me. While I must say that last February spent exploring Thailand was rewarding beyond compare, it has generally been those things that have been hard that have been the most satisfying. Athletic things mainly -- the miles and miles run each day for high school track, crawling to the top of Mt. Shasta, the cool wind on your face on the way down after bicycling to the top of the ridge in Berkeley. Likewise, it is those things at which I’ve tried the hardest, and failed, that have been the most painful.