WCDMA Embedded Software Engineer Interview Experience - San Diego, California
Process
The process started with a phone interview. It was quite smooth, and the manager asked me a couple of technical questions related to C basics and wireless basics, which I found easy. He mentioned during the call that I would be invited for an onsite interview. A couple of days later, HR contacted me to schedule the onsite.
Observations:
The onsite interview began with an HR representative, followed by interviews with five other people from three different groups. Although HR indicated that convincing just one of these groups would be sufficient, I don't believe this was entirely accurate. In my opinion, there were one or two key individuals among all the interviewers. Therefore, it's advisable not to solely focus on what HR says. The most crucial aspect is convincing the main manager. HR might aim to make you feel confident and put you at ease by saying they'll score you highly, but ultimately, they cannot secure an offer without the main manager's approval. This approach is likely intended to help candidates relax.
The onsite process was generally positive, with one exception. One interviewer crossed his legs, ate an apple rudely, and this somewhat disrupted my concentration, making me a bit nervous. I believe some interviewers need to be more mindful of their conduct towards candidates; this behavior at Qualcomm was particularly impolite. Being an interviewer doesn't grant anyone the right to behave rudely. The rest of the interviewers were professional. I had lunch with one of them during the interview, which was a pleasant experience. However, once again, I don't believe convincing a regular interviewer is as critical as gaining approval from the main manager. By 'regular interviewer,' I mean that HR will typically provide an interview schedule notebook upon arrival. This schedule outlines your interviews. Look for individuals listed under the title 'manager' and focus your efforts on them. The others (e.g., staff, engineers) are often there for formality, based on my experience.
In my case, four out of five interviews went very well, and one went poorly. I was expecting an offer from one or two different teams, but I didn't receive one. I suspect the negative experience with the one interviewer, who was the manager, affected other teams' decisions. This raises the question of why I was interviewed by the other four individuals if the hiring decision primarily depended on one person. If the hiring process hinges solely on the manager, what is the purpose of interviewing with the other four people?
Another concern regarding Qualcomm involves unfortunate political issues operating in the background. I've heard there's a dominant community from a particular country that seems to have an advantage, and several friends from that country have confirmed this. This situation is not fair. Nevertheless, I believe I performed my best overall. I know many people join Qualcomm with standard skills. If you know someone inside, I believe the rest of the process is detail.
One last point: by sharing this, my intention is not to accuse or insult individuals or the company. I am simply recounting my experience. I've had onsite interviews with QCT more than once, and being invited for an onsite interview does not guarantee a job offer. You can be rejected even when you feel you deserve the position. If you are rejected, don't lose focus and keep striving. Believe me, many people who work there might not deserve it, and many who do deserve it were rejected. It's up to you to prove your worth through hard work!
Regards,
Questions
Timer-based questions in OS intervals other than it was OK.
Was this helpful?
Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Qualcomm WCDMA Embedded Software Engineer role in San Diego, California.
Success Rate
Qualcomm's interview process for their WCDMA Embedded Software Engineer roles in San Diego, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Qualcomm's WCDMA Embedded Software Engineer interview process in San Diego, California.
Qualcomm Work Experiences
- 5.0Love This Organization!Algorithm Developer • Current EmployeeSan Diego, California, United StatesJune 30, 2022Pros: Best place to work!Cons: None! I love this organization!
- 3.0Suffering from big corporation symptoms in various waysSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Diego, California, United StatesJune 15, 2015Pros: 1. Good starting point for new grads, easy interview. 2. Good pay in San Diego area. 3. Free on-site gyms. 4. Good benefits and on-site hospitals. 5. Nice and talented people to work with; you can learn a lot of new things.Cons: 1. You will regret hiring so easily and cheaply in a couple of years. 2. Low pay with trivial increase/promotion opportunities compared to the Bay Area, while San Diego's rental home and real estate markets aren't cheap at all, compared to the Bay Area. You save $10,000 per year at maximum in renting a home in San Diego, but your annual salary is at least $30,000 less than your peers in the Bay Area, and everyone can do the math. 3. Workload is heavy all the time, and that is the way the Project Management wants to hire you. You won't have time for exercising in the gyms. 4. Benefits will be significantly cut starting from 2016. In the past, $0 out from the pocket; the 2016 deductible plan requires self-pay for the first few thousand dollars. The company seems to encourage senior people to leave by themselves and discourage employees to take sick leave and see a doctor by announcing this benefit change. 5. Apart from those good people, there are too many bad people as well. Some guys refuse to collaborate every time, and they just blindly throw issues to other teams, wasting other people's time, even without doing a simple checking by themselves. Some guys with Electrical Engineering backgrounds are really bad in their coding styles. Those poorly written implementations create a whole lot of traps for other people, and they are creating bugs every day for their owners too. 6. A lot of politics. When an issue comes, every team declines their responsibility. A poor guy with a politically powerless leader will usually make the fix and gets blamed at last. 7. Too complex and unscalable systems with crappy design. Every team stays in their own technical area and does not know what other teams are doing. This partially contributes to the politics mentioned in (6). 8. Greedy and unrealistic scheduling with no software engineering methodologies. For instance, to bring up a feature with teams from layer-1, layer-2, and layer-3, and a high layer has functional dependency on a low layer. If the waterfall method can be used, i.e., let layer-1 start first and resolve all their issues before delivering things to layer-2 and layer-3, things will be much easier. The reality is that the Project Management always wants all teams to work in parallel and expects things to get done within a month. It seems like the Scrum method is always the choice at QCT, and in fact, every day is a mess with this SW engineering method. In order to have the bring-up happen, every team is making temporary but dirty workarounds, which should be replaced or discarded in the near future. So, why not start earlier and leave more time for the ultimate clean solution? It turns out that all the efforts for those dirty and temporary solutions get wasted. 9. Long hours throughout the year, and promotions take long for ordinary people. I am not a racist, but I did realize that some guys with the same race as those mid-management guys seem to be favored by the mid-management, and they can enjoy their days lazily and get promotion even quicker than other employees who work really hard. For ordinary people, it usually takes 5-6 reviews to get a promotion, no matter how hard you work. It's not worth it to work so hard and sacrifice your health and your family. 10. A lot of global testing/technical support offices, and they are generating issues late at night or on weekends. All issues are shot back to San Diego, and you are expected to resolve them ASAP. Why can't those offshore teams resolve issues locally? Why can't they wait until business hours in San Diego? 11. A lot of inefficient weekend support, which turns out to be a waste of time. When those leaders try to resolve an issue during weekends, it takes a long time for engineers to wait for each other. Time for relaxing the body and recovering from tiredness is wasted in such meaningless waiting. An issue that can be resolved in 30 minutes on a business day will take almost a whole day to get resolved on weekends. So why not do the work quickly on Monday? Engineers cannot take a rest on weekends; as a punishment, they won't work efficiently during business hours the next week. What is gained? What is the benefit for rushing on weekends? Even worse, weekend support is forcing good engineers to leave the company. 12. No investment in growing technical areas from the high management. In recent years, QC has been creating trivial feature combos, which customers do not even pay attention to. Those nasty combos have created millions of bugs and have exhausted QC's engineering workforce. As in a negative feedback loop, everyone is busy fixing bugs every day and won't have time to invent for the future. 13. Bug fixing is preferred over a clean design. Things happen too quickly, and there is always no time for a good and clean design. There are far too many poor designs implemented in products, and they simply do not work in reality. Various teams are forced to hack out dirty workarounds that might break something else tomorrow. Test teams are testing the same thing over and over again before things can work.
- 2.0Lower pay and a political company if you switch jobsSenior Hardware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Diego, California, United StatesJune 15, 2008Pros: For a green card, kind of stable.Cons: Lower pay without considering experience. Have a good reputation to bring in people with a lower title.
Qualcomm Interview Questions
