Most people have explained what the procedure is. Here are my $0.02.

Step 1: Applied via their website on December 26th, 2013.

Step 2: Received an email within a week asking to complete a video interview. The five questions asked were:

• Tell us more about yourself.
• Why this position at MathWorks?
• Future aspirations.
• Research experience.
• What are you looking for in a job?

Answers were very straightforward. This was a very easy interview.

Step 3: Received an email in another week asking for a phone interview. One could have an interview in engineering or computer science specialties. I selected engineering, and within that, control theory (other options were signal processing and embedded systems).

Step 4: Received the phone call. They asked many questions on math, C++, general programming, MATLAB, and controls. The math and MATLAB questions were very ordinary:

• Find the velocity of a body after 5 seconds if the acceleration is X and the initial velocity is Y.
• Find the determinant of a matrix.
• What is a singular matrix?
• Find eigenvalues.
• If f(x) is given, and f(0) and f(3) are given, find the integral of f at x=5.
• What is the @ function in MATLAB for?
• What is ~ for?
• How to plot in 3D in MATLAB?

So, nothing out of the ordinary. Most people have repeated the questions that I received.

Control theory questions were easy, and I received only 2-3 questions:

• What happens if the poles move to the right, left, up, and down on a pole-zero plot?
• Find the poles of a state-space system.

C/C++ and programming questions were not to my liking, as I have done enough programming to make robots do what they do.

• What is the difference between ++i and i++? (This was easy.)
• What other language has a similar syntax but a different meaning? (No idea.)
• What is static for in C?
• Data structures. (I messed up on this one too.)
• Pointers.

And a few other questions that I do not even remember now.

Step 5: I was not expecting a call, given that my C++ and programming parts of the interview were such a mess. But I guess they make some concessions for PhDs. So I received a call from them on January 13th and scheduled my college day interview for January 31st. They booked the tickets that same day.

Step 6: At Natick. General "we are this and that" type presentations. And then there was the technical interview. That interviewer was really young. He asked some math questions:

• Find the area of a rectangle inside a parabola. (He asked it wrong, and I had to correct him and get the right questions out of him.)
• Decay rate of a material, write it in an equation. (This also he asked wrong, had me working it out with him.)
• Plot df/dx of a function f(x) which he drew on the board.
• Some other really easy math questions which other people have discussed.

Programming and C++ questions were again a headache:

• Types of classes.
• Inline function. (Who the hell knows?)
• calloc, malloc.
• Sorting algorithm.
• Character arrays and pointers, integer pointers.

MATLAB was easy again. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Control theory was decent:

• Write transfer functions of schematics; add this block to the schematic and write the TF.
• Routh-Hurwitz.
• Final value theorem, steady-state values of TF.

Then came the HR interviews. Typical ones:

• Describe an occasion when things did not go according to plan.
• When you handled more than two assignments.
• When you had to take help from your colleagues.
• When you helped colleagues.
• When you had disagreements with colleagues, advisors, or collaborators, and vice versa.
• Are there any other job offers or interviews in the pipeline?

Overall, C/C++ and programming were my nemeses. I did not expect anything this time as well. But they did extend me an offer. However, after being there and talking to folks there about the nature of the work, it made me reconsider pursuing this position. So I declined the offer on the grounds that I am not seeking this employment at this time anymore. Hopefully, my review will be helpful to others though.

C/C++ and programming questions