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      LSI

      Acquired by Avago Technologies

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      Firmware Engineer Interview

      Jun 28, 2011
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      Milpitas, CA
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at LSI (Milpitas, CA) in Jun 2011

      Interview

      I applied for a firmware engineer position in their RAID controller department, through their career website. They contacted me in about 2-3 weeks . Phone interview was fairly easy and straight forward. Questions about my current job and some questions on C ( volatile, interrupts etc ) and also on Cache management ( write through/ write back, Non cacheable memory etc) . At the end of it the interviewer was convinced enough to invite me for an in person interview at their site in Milpitas , CA. The onsite interview was from 10 am to 4.30 , with about 6 people ( all Indian ). Only a little interest was shown by most interviewers on my current work experience . Most of the interview was on coding in C and on algorithms. The topic range was also very wide and in some cases very specific to the work that they do . Most of the questions were on pointers ( function pointers , call back ptrs , pointer to const , volatile pointer, wild pointer etc ) and data structures ( Link list - delete a node, reverse , find Nth node, find middle , find loop etc. and Trees - I have not worked much on hierarchical data and so could not answer that ). Also questions on dynamic memory management ( prototype of malloc, free ) , sorting algorithms , code compile process ( linker, assembler, compiler ) , RTOS concepts ( scheduling, interrupts , cooperative,preemptive etc ) . There were also questions on string manipulation generic functions in C ( sprintf, strcmp etc ). The easy ones were questions on bit operations ( set ,clear, XOR ) , use of bit fields , storage classes in C , SAS protocol ( which I have experience in ) , inline functions versus macros ,enum , about tools I use at my current job ( emulators ( diff between onchip/ soft breakpoints) , analyzers etc ) . I was able to answer a lot of those . But, I guess they required some one with even more experience in coding ( which they had not mentioned in the job description ) . I personally think that I was a bit unlucky here that I got a tough panel . My advice to fellow job seekers would be to study the areas mentioned here and you should be able to land the offer. My impressions on the company were not that great. Office building and the cubicles/offices inside looked a bit old . I have to agree with another reviewer in this forum that I felt like the company did not have enough cash flow for all these little things that go a long away in affecting employee morale. Also , this view point is limited to the building I visited. I heard that the other locations outside CA are a bit better off and have a better work/life balance and company culture. Also the demographics was overwhelmingly Indian, as admitted jokingly by the hiring manager who was also one. And yes I am one too. I guess that is true for most bay area companies.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Questions on prototype of dynamic memory management functions like malloc and free in C. Issues that can occur ( fragmentation , memory leak etc ). And use of static and auto variables in this context.
      Answer question
      6

      Other Firmware Engineer Interview Reviews for LSI

      Firmware Engineer Interview

      Mar 27, 2013
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at LSI in Jan 2013

      Interview

      Two rounds of phone screenings, followed by on-site interviews. The on-site interview process consisted of a an intro by the HR, followed by technical interviews by engineers and managers. You are expected to be an expert C programmer (you should know difference between static and non-static objects, stack and heap allocation, things like "volatile"), and an expert in firmware and device drivers. Storage experience (SCSI, RAID) helps.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      A question about cache coherence protocols.
      1 Answer

      Firmware Engineer Interview

      Oct 26, 2012
      Anonymous Interview Candidate
      No offer

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at LSI

      Interview

      what is Volatile memory- what is Non volatile memory- ex: ROM, Flash memeory, hard disk OS Concepts Context switching Preemptive scheduling Digital Designing concepts- How you will turn NAND into inverter What_is_the_difference_between_malloc_and_calloc Inline functions . Difference b/w structures and unions Where are the local, global, static, auto, register, extern, const, volatile variables are stored?

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      what characteristics of the probe you will see when you are trying to measure sensitive load ?
      Answer question
      1

      Firmware Engineer Interview

      May 22, 2012
      Anonymous employee
      Atlanta, GA
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at LSI (Atlanta, GA) in Mar 2012

      Interview

      Initially it was a telephonic interview. I was contacted two weeks after the first interview for an onsite. The telephonic interview consisted of questions from C. Pointers, arrays and structures and bit manipulation. After that was an onsite interview, It was a really long process. Started at 9:30 am and finished at 5:30 in the evening. It was a lot more in detail. Pointers, arrays, structures, unions. Bit manipulation, assembly language, embedded and real time systems were part of the interview.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      how do u pass Variable number of arguments in C?
      1 Answer
      1

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