The interview process was somewhat long, partly because I scheduled the interview dates a little later for convenience. As most people noted, this interview process is actually very easy. Unlike other companies where they ask you one coding question and you need to tackle it in one hour, MathWorks seems more interested in asking you 10-20 small trivia questions and some coding "puzzles," such as explaining what goes wrong with provided code or posing knowledge-based questions about various programming concepts like stacks, heaps, etc.

The interview process begins with a simple online interview, where you record responses with audio/video for various generic questions that most people here have posted. Then, HR called and set up a phone interview. In the phone and on-site interviews, you will be asked questions on various topics, and you get to choose them:

• One engineering topic: signal processing, control systems, embedded systems, or object-oriented design.
• Programming concepts.
• Two languages: C/C++, Matlab/Python, Java, or Web programming.
• Math: Calculus/linear algebra or discrete math.

The phone interview was a one-hour rapid-fire round on the aforementioned topics. Quite an experience.

I was notified for an on-site interview a week after that phone interview. The day starts at 9 AM on site and immediately gets into the only technical round, a two-hour rapid-fire session on the aforementioned topics! Whew!

Then, there was a brief chat with a manager in the Engineering and Development Group, who asked HR-style questions. This was followed by lunch.

After lunch, I met with HR again for more HR-type questions, and to ask my own questions. Oddly, HR went through the company benefits as if I had already gotten the job, but hold on to your horses!

I was then sent off around 4 PM and informed that I would be notified later of my status.

One point to remember, as I was told, was that if you stick around until the end (i.e., 4 PM), it means you did well. If you had screwed up the first technical round, I was told that would have been the end of the day.

Interestingly, I was notified later that very day, in a matter of minutes, that I had done well and was being considered for the job. I was told I would soon receive a job offer with pay details, etc. In fact, MathWorks also requested me to fill out background check forms and sent a request to my references (whom they asked for) to provide references, in order to process the offer.

However, what rubbed me the wrong way is that a few days later, I got an email from MathWorks saying that I am no longer being considered for the position I applied for! Extremely unprofessional!

I asked for clarification and have not yet received a response.

One of my references said they received an email requesting a reference, but the very next day were informed it was not necessary. This is extremely unprofessional from MathWorks!

About stacks of different threads.

Difference between stack memory and heap memory.