HR found me over LinkedIn and went over the job description. I expressed my interest, and the next step involved answering a few technical questions via email. They liked my answers and scheduled a technical phone interview.

• The interviewer arrived 10 minutes late, complaining that he couldn't find the conference room.
• His English communication skills were poor.
• He directly jumped into questions, seemingly following a standard list of technical questions and proceeding through them one by one.
• He asked approximately 25 questions covering SI, PI, general hardware design guidelines, layout, and debugging skills.
• The interviewer passively sat and took notes. I expected a hardware interview to be more of a discussion. He did not offer any commentary on my explanations, which made me question if he was listening.
• I answered pretty much all questions, except for a couple where I misunderstood the question. I provided my detailed approach to those problems, but the interviewer seemed to be looking for a specific answer.

Interview feedback was negative.

HR provided feedback that I failed to answer 2 out of 25 questions, leading to their decision not to move forward. However, I explained that I gave a good explanation for those questions and was unsure if my explanation was insufficient, as the interviewer was quietly taking notes without providing feedback.

Summary: The interview felt like an undergraduate exam where the professor was more interested in the final answer than the approach. It didn't matter how I arrived at the answer. Think about it.

Basic board design guidelines DC converter working principle PCIe debugging Trace width impedance Routing guidelines near power SI basic questions