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Ashish's Weblog

Posts to escape from reality to logic

National Instruments R & D

Filed under: Programming 1 CommentSeptember 6, 2009

Hello guys, its been long since I last blogged. I have been wanting to get back to blogging from a

long time, but was looking for some topic to resume, and now that I have one, I hope to continueblogging

In this blog I will talk about my interview process in National Instruments R & D. So, withoutwasting any more words, lets get started .

Something about the company:I really dont know much about it, except that it producessoftwares required which are used typically by electrical and electronic engineers for designingtesting Ive always wanted to work in a products company, though of late i was getting moreinclined towards systemsprogramming, but no issues

Profile they offered :

Two profileswere offered one for software, one for hardware. Hardware was open for ECEand EEE, Software was open for CS, IT, ECE, EEE

They had three kinds of postings:

1) Full time positions(the regular thing)

2) Full time interns I dont know much about it, except that it is for 6 months, at the end ofwhich based on ones performance, s/he is inducted into the company. This was for MCAs.

3) Part time interns This is for people who are in and around blore, who can visit thecompany 23 days a week

Coming to the more interesting, the interview process :
https://ashishjain.wordpress.com/category/programming/https://ashishjain.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/im-back-national-instruments-r-d/#commentshttps://ashishjain.wordpress.com/https://ashishjain.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/im-back-national-instruments-r-d/https://ashishjain.wordpress.com/https://ashishjain.wordpress.com/category/programming/https://ashishjain.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/im-back-national-instruments-r-d/#comments


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I was sitting for the software profile, so I dont know much about what happened to hardwarepeople. There were basically 3 rounds, 1 written and 2 interviews. They asked about coding rightfrom the first question in first round to the last question in the last round.

Round 1: Written round, basically a C Apti

This round lasted for an hour, basically consisting of 2 parts. The first part contained codesnippets and simple questions on it. There were around 12 questionsand the answer had to bewritten(not MCQ). The second part involved wrting an algo/codeor both for a prob statement.

Some simple problems were find what does the following code does ( one was about printingnodes at kth level, one was about calculating sum of a number until single digit), replace agiven code with a more simpler code, finding number of graphs with n vertices, n few moresimpler ones. The only question for which i didnt get a solution was

if((a == 5) || (a ==7))

{

//label

The compiler generates following assembly code

cmp eax, 5

z label

cmp eax, 7

z label

Optimise above code with single jz statement

The second part of Round 1 was to give an algo/code a problem statement. The jist of thestatementis

N soldiers of two armies are standing in two rows facing each other. Their individual strengths isgiven by two arrays G and F. You are commander of army F. If Gs soldier strength is greater

than or even equal to Fs, Gs soldier wins or else Fs soldier wins. The soldier who looses dies,but strength of winning soldier is unaffected. Rearrange Fs soldiers such that the sum ofstrengths of alive soldiers in F is maximum.

Given two arrays int G[], int F[], int n = number of soldiers in both G and F

The indices represent the strength of a soldier

G[] = { given and order fixed}, ex: G[] = {2, 10, 7}


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[] = {given, order not fixes}, ex: F[] = {2, 9, 6}

sum = 0, all are dead

Rearrange F so that the sum of strengths of alive soldier is max. The above can be rearranged as

[] = {2, 6, 9}, sum = 9

That was pretty much the first round. Around 8090 people wrote the first round, and around 22were selected. 3 from IT, 4 from CS, 1 from MCA and the rest from ECE.

Round 2: First round of interviews

After the written round, the shortlisted candidates were called for an interview. It was scheduledfor half an hour for each person. My interview started almost on time. They took my resume,studied it for 10 mins and then I was called in. It was a one on one interview. The interviewerstarted with asking me to tell about myself. After clearing the purpose of the interview and whatthey are looking for in a candidate in that round, he proceeded on to ask questions. The question

themselves were easy. I was asked about 4 5 such questions in the entire round.

I always proceeded with first telling the interviewer what my strategy would be in solving theproblem, and when he was satisfied, to write the code. The following questions I can recall wereasked to me:

Given two arrays A[a1, a2an] and B[b1, b2bn], write a program(WOP) to find the fractionA/B in its simplest formGiven an string, find the largest palindrome in itGiven two trees, find out if one tree is subtree of the other(this was not required to be coded)

I dont remember any more questions

This round was pretty much easy, the interviewer was friendly and would change the question ifyou were to get stuck at some point. The sad part was some people were eliminated in this round

based on such easy questions.

Around 14 ppl were selected from this round, 2 from IT, 3 from CS, 1 from MCA, rest from ECE.

Round 3: Second round of interviews + HR

This 1on1 interview round was scheduled for one hour. It started almost on time. My interviewwas slightly different from others. My interviewer spent around 10 mins asking me about thingsin my resume, regarding extra curricular activities, on my role in club, specifically the workshopsevents I conducted, cocoordinated, attended, regarding my role in the cultural fest, on myinternships. Then he started with the technical questions.

In the entire remaining duration we discussed only one question. He asked a question, whichfortunately, came in my earlier round. He asked on how you will say, given pointers to twonodes, one is a sub tree of the other. He asked it on two approaches comparing the value of thepointer, and comparing the values of nodes themselves.


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The solution is rather straightforward, if comparing memories, traverse one tree and check eachnodes address with the other node. If its comparing by value, it gets more complicated as all thechildren of the other node also needs to be compared to infer whether its a subtree or not.

I was asked to code both the approaches, and he checked it against various boundary conditions.had made some implementation mistakes here and there which he founded out, and some Irealized while explaining him the code. He was cool with it, as long as I corrected it.

After the tech questions, there were two HR questions

1) Have you spent too much time on debugging something, and if yes, where was the fault, howdid you correct it and how did you go about finding it?

2) As this was an R&D position, he asked me to give an example where I have shown motivationand initiative, when I didnt really have to do it.

I didnt have much trouble answering the above questions.

Finally, after around 3045 mins of discussions within themselves, they published the results. Fivpeople made it through: 1 from CS, 1 from IT and 2 from EC. They gave 1 full time internship to aMCA.

So thats my entire experience. They haven yet given the joining dates. From my entire experienctwo things that helped me the most

1) The ability to code, even when they say algo is enough, after giving algo, if u have time, codit. It gives you an advantage.

2) Extra curricular activities. Depending on the profile of the company and the job position,change your resume to highlight few key areas, instead of putting all information, specially thelangs/platforms/etc you know and the subjs which you studies.

These are my personal opinions, which I feel will help you.

All the best to everyone, who is looking for placements this year or in future. If you can code andhave practice, you dont really have to worry about anything else.

Tags: national instrument, placements, Programming

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