Lanarcam <l...@yahoo.fr> writes:
> It was hard to convince him that such things could be useful.

Take him out to his car, and start taking it apart until you get to
the computer controlling things.  Point to it and say "we're doing
that" then go back inside.

Eric wrote:
> What types of questions could we ask to make sure the interviewee is an
> embedded software candidate and not just a high level CS major?

Ask him what trade-offs are involved with choosing the right ICs,
passive components, etc for a given project. He should have a grasp on
trade-offs between the these: features/speed, current requirements,
time-to-market, cost/supply channels, experience at your company.

Give him a scenerio and ask which MCU he might use and why. The best
engineers will do more that just a simple and obvious comparison, but
they'll talk about toolsets and existing experience at a company. The
"best choice" in an absolute sense may not be the best if your company
lacks experience with that type of device and this is a small project.

Is HE willing to learn about the devices YOU use, assuming he hasn't
got any "hands on' with those particular devices?

And are YOU willing to learn from HIM in the areas of expertise he has
that may be different than your own? Remember, an interview is a
two-way street :-)

On Thu, 9 Nov 2006 18:09:42 -0000, "Tom Lucas"
<news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote:

>Is the UK currently experiencing a surplus of jobs for engineers? I'm 
>currently recruiting a contractor/permanent hardware engineer and I've 
>had several not even bother to turn up for the interview. This would 
>imply that there are so many jobs available that they are not having to 
>put any effort into finding them. Or perhaps they just take one look at 
>the rough estate our premises are on and turn around :-) 

How much are you prepared to pay? I have colleagues with 30 years
experience from embedded design through database-driven websites
(and connecting them together). They report pay rates have fallen
because managers are scared to hire people aged 50+. Do you
want good or cheap? I know everyone wants both, but ...

Stephen
Where? When? required experience?


-- 
Stephen Pelc, s...@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads

Pete Fenelon wrote:

> Eric <e...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>The company I work for is in the process of interviewing several
>>embedded software candidates.
>>
>>What types of questions could we ask to make sure the interviewee is an
>>embedded software candidate and not just a high level CS major?
> 
> 
> You ask them questions that involve writing code, on a whiteboard, to do
> realistic but simple embedded systems tasks.  Another good question to
> asks is getting them to explain their understanding of how an embedded
> system starts up - which leads on to their understanding of code and
> data sections, interrupt vectors, linkers and loaders etc.
> 
> A good open-ended question we used to ask was 
> 
> ...
> int x=1;
> int y=2;
> int z;
> 
> z = x+y;
> <---- breakpoint here
> ...
> 
> At the breakpoint, z does not equal 3. Why?

Is "your tools are broke" an acceptable answer?

Pete Fenelon wrote:
> z = x+y;
> <---- breakpoint here
> ...
>
> At the breakpoint, z does not equal 3. Why?

Because our lame debugger will always say "Local Not Alive" :-)

--
Darin Johnson

DJ Delorie wrote:
> Take him out to his car, and start taking it apart until you get to
> the computer controlling things.  Point to it and say "we're doing
> that" then go back inside.

No, don't go back inside.  Put the car back together, otherwise
the consultant can't leave.

--
Darin Johnson

Al Borowski wrote:

> You've got me. If I was asked this in an interview I'd be stumped. What
> kind of non-seriously broken system could have z not being equal to
> three?

Erm, who said anything about the system in question not being seriously 
broken? ;->

Depending on what's hiding in the "..." of the grandparent posting, one 
definite possibility, particularly in an embedded environment, would be 
that buggy startup code failed to actually carry out the initialization 
of x and y.  Yes, we all know that shouldn't ever happen.  But 
nevertheless it does.

"Tom Lucas" <news@REMOVE_auto_THIS_flame_TO_REPLY.clara.co.uk> wrote in 
message news:1...@damia.uk.clara.net...
> "Eric" <e...@hotmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:1...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>> The company I work for is in the process of interviewing several
>> embedded software candidates.
>>
>> What types of questions could we ask to make sure the interviewee is an
>> embedded software candidate and not just a high level CS major?
>
> Is the UK currently experiencing a surplus of jobs for engineers? I'm 
> currently recruiting a contractor/permanent hardware engineer and I've had 
> several not even bother to turn up for the interview. This would imply 
> that there are so many jobs available that they are not having to put any 
> effort into finding them.

Not in my area there isn't. (I freelance in comms)

In the past 6 months, I've had three interview offers:

One that, after 4 weeks to consider my CV, was offered
the day before I went on a week's holiday.  By the time
that I came back, they had offered the job to somone
else.

One that I didn't get after, having passed the technical
interviews, the R&D director thought that some of my
previous contracts were too short (make of that what
you like!)

And the third that I am quite sucessfully filling right
now.  But TBH, I only got that because the location
isn't one that's particularly popular and the manager had
difficulty filling it.  (and I don't really want to stay here
either, but I might have to!)

tim

> Or perhaps they just take one look at the rough estate our premises are on 
> and turn around :-)
> 

"Darin Johnson" <d...@usa.net> writes:
> No, don't go back inside.  Put the car back together, otherwise
> the consultant can't leave.

"Don't you consultants know *everything*? Put it together yourself."

Robert Adsett wrote:

> 
> CBFalconer wrote:
>> Al Borowski wrote:
>> >
>> > [..]
>> >
>> >> A good open-ended question we used to ask was
>> >>
>> >> ...
>> >> int x=1;
>> >> int y=2;
>> >> int z;
>> >>
>> >> z = x+y;
>> >> <---- breakpoint here
>> >> ...
>> >>
>> >> At the breakpoint, z does not equal 3. Why?
>> >>
>> >> A good candidate should be able to come up with many failure modes.
>> >
>> > You've got me. If I was asked this in an interview I'd be stumped.
>> > What kind of non-seriously broken system could have z not being
>> > equal to three?
>>
>> Me too.  All I can think of is that the debugger is flawed, and
>> actually setting the breakpoint before the completion of the
>> statement.  Alternatively the code has been optimized so that the
>> bp location no longer makes sense, indicating that the compilation
>> should be with optimization disabled.
> 
> Interrupt run amok or bad prologue/epilogue.
> In a tasking system, too small a stack and the local storage has
> wandered into an actively used area of memory.
> 
> If the variables are global rather than function local (as seemes to be
> implied) then bad startup initialization also comes to mind.
> 
> My first step would be to figure out what x and y were.

I am glad someone has his head screwed on round here. One also has to
realise that there are debugging systems out there that might let an
interrupt that arrives just as you hit the breakpoint complete before
presenting the processor status (I have seen a couple of very grotty ones
that did such things some years ago).

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett ....................<email://p...@amleth.demon.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>;
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Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095
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