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Updated May 27, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 44 ratings

3.1

“Average” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 44 ratings

Positive	50%
Neutral	41%
Negative	9%

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3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Mar 2010 in San Diego, CA (took a day)

Applied online and was contacted by a staffing coordinator. The interviewer was good and encouraging. Asked Qs in c++, c and some concepts from networking and some previous project related Qs from resume. There were 3 to 4 Qs for which algorithm or verbal solution was expected:
1] reversing a string
2] multiply a number with 7 without using * or + operators
3] finding a loop at the end of single linked list

the experience was good and waiting for the result...

Interview Questions

C++ Qs : virtual functions and function overloading

View Answers (2)

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Jan 2010 in San Diego, CA (took a day)

Submitted my resume through my University's online recruiting system. Received a call a couple months later to participate in their Destination Q recruiting event. Interview consisted of three interviews. One was on Operating Systems, another C programming concepts, and the last one was general problem solving and critical thinking. The interviews were fairly easy for the most part and the interviewers really nice. I was surprised because I was expecting much more difficult interviews.

Interview Questions

If you have a variable i decalred as "int i" that gets incremented in an interrupt handler, how would the graph look as a function of time and the value of i?

View Answers (2)

Reason for Declining

I did not like that the interviews were entirely technical. It felt like I was just a number to them instead of a person. The HR people also seemed kind of stuck on themselves. Qualcomm is a good company, but the work didn't sound as interesting as my other offer and their offer was not nearly as competitive salary wise with such a high cost of living in San Diego.

Other Details

I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview, an IQ/Intelligence Test and a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2009 in Santa Clara, CA (took 1 week)

I had an on-site interview with GPS team. Interviewed with 6 people, including 2 managers, 3 Sr. engineers and 1 HR person. Each took about 50 minutes. Very technical. Was tested with wide range of questions including OS, C, boot sequences, and microcontroller architecture. Interviewers are all very nice. Imo too nice that sometimes you thought you did better than you really performed.

Interview Questions

implement a routine to control timers.

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Jan 2010 in San Diego, CA (took a day)

As part of the recruiting event Destination Q, I flew to San Diego to participate in interviews. There were three technical interviews focusing on: C/C++, RTOS, and Problem Solving. The interview experience depended entirely on who you were fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to get. Some interviewers were phenomenal while another was absolutely terrible. San Diego is a beautiful area, though, and should be considered.

Interview Questions

How would you limit access to memory between multiple processors?

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Skills Test, an IQ/Intelligence Test and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jul 2008 in San Diego, CA (took 2+ weeks)

I had a phone interview on simple C and C++ . The interviewer basically looked into if I know wat i am talking.

After that I had an online test..They sent me a ssample program and wanted me to mail it in 30 minutes.
It was on reversing the bits of a number.

I was invited for an on site interview . The interview went daylong...may be 5 in total (including lunch interview).

It was on C, C++ and data structures and OS concepts.

I am not a CS major and all though I kept OS on my resume, I dont know much abt it and I didnt perform well in 2 interviews.. Although the rest of the interviews were good.

But the interview was not tough at all. Know all that u keep on ur resume.

Interview Questions

If 4 ants start on four sides of a square at the same time in either direction... whats the probability that they wont collide?

View Answers (2)

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Aug 2009 (took 2+ weeks)

initial phone screen and then onsite....onsite was a pleasant experience...3 rounds of interviews..with various coding and networking/os questions..was fairly ok..

be sure to get your networking and os fundamentals right ..and also c, c++ language features, data structures.

it's a grt company to work for...esp after being recently in the limelight with snapdragon processor..

Interview Questions

write a multi threaded server application

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a College or University and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2009 in San Diego, CA (took a day)

My skill sets match perfectly with their wireless system jobs but got selected for some software position interview. Have a feeling that either their HRs are not doing their job or they are bluffing on their career website. Anyways, I got 6 technical interviews, 4 from the group I am interviewing with and two outsider engineers. Questions are typical CS questions. They value skill sets rather than potential. Guess only Microsoft will consider people from Mechanical or Philosophy major as SDEs.

Interview Questions

Count the 1s in the number

View Answers (2)

Test the acyclic linked list.

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Dec 2009 (took 2 weeks)

The process began with a screen phone interview which lasted about 40 minutes.The interview consisted of a few technical questions and a general discussion of my work experience.The on-site interview lasted 1 day.I was interviewed by about 6 people. Questions ranged from general software development questions to technical OS and C questions. Every single one of them went very well.At the end of the day I was extremely confident in getting an offer and I was stunned when that offer did not materialize. I may be biased here,but I seriously question their evaluation metrics.I have never been this off in my judgement.

Interview Questions

How much do you make currently?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview and a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Nov 2009 in San Diego, CA (took 3 weeks)

Gave my resume at job fair. Was later called up and offered to be flown out to their college candidate weekend event (Destination Q) without a phone screen.
Event as weekend-long and consisted of a several different social events in addition to the recruiting events. There were 3 hour-long interviews: One on C++, one on "problem solving", and one on operating systems. Talking to others, the questions seemed to vary significantly based on interviewer. Was called around a week later to be told about the offer.

Interview Questions

Provide Psuedocode for malloc

Answer Question

Reason for Declining

1. Compensation was poor compared to another offer I had.
2. I decided that I didn't really want to work in the area of low-level systems software, which is essentially the only available area for software engineers there.

Other Details

The interview consisted of a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Nov 2009 (took a day)

The whole interview process took 3 hours, 1 hour for each section. Each section I talked to one engineer and all the questions are technical questions. We talked about problem solving, operating systems, embedded systems, real-time systems, and C/C++ programming etc. The engineers would discuss with you and try to give you some hints if you did something wrong. The whole discussion was very nice experience for me.