561541 INTERVIEW Placement Interviews

8/8/2019 561541 INTERVIEW Placement Interviews

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THIS FILE CONTAINS THE QUESTIONS WHICH MS SCHOLARS FACED IN PLACEMENTINTERVIEWS

Name: Biswajit Sain

for(int i = 1; i


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My Ans. Rightmost parameter pushed first on stack.

[n+6] What is a page-fault and how is it handled in UNIX?My Ans. [Refer to MJBach, Ch. 9 for details].

Personal questions in the first round ---------------------------------------

1. What was your overall position in the Univ. in B.E.2. Why did you choose to join MS here.3. How do you like the MS course.4. Anything you want to know about us.

Technical Questions in the second round -----------------------------------------

[1] What are the current trends and areas of focus in IT.My Ans. Talked about emerging trends of S/W Engg and ISO 9000 stuff(gave vague ideas about them as I don't know much nor do I careabout these topics myself ;-)). Then mentioned the proliferation of O-Omethodologies and their usefulness in speeding up development process,

code re-usability, ease of maintenance, ease of bug-fixing.Thirdly, mentioned the work going on in High-Speed N/w - FDDI, ATM,Fast-Ethernet(100Mbps). Told whatever little I knew about ATM inresponse to another question.

[2] What is a Micro-Kernel architecture.My Ans. This is a developing area in OSs where instead of building thekernel as a single monolithic structure starting from scratch, it isbuilt as a set of layers. The micro-kernel provides only the bare-boneslike Device-drivers, rudimentary filesystem support etc. on which,depending on the intended area of application of the OS, it can becustomized to provide various higher level OS features likeMultiprocessing, IPC, etc.

Personal Questions in the second round ----------------------------------------

1. Tell us about yourself, your background.2. What does your father do currently.3. Your performance in schooling, B.E.4. Your +/- points.5. Why do you think Wipro should take you.6. What qualities do you have that make you a person suitable for going

into the IT industry (a corollary to the previous question).7. What do your friends opine about you.8. When do you think you will complete and be able to join.

9. How can you assure that you will join by that time.10. Anything you want to know about us.

} /* End of for() */

Name: G.KartikYear: 1995

Company name: Wipro Infotech


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FIRST INTERVIEW:(First the interviewer asked me to name twofavorite subjects - OS and Networks)

a) Describe the memory management policies in Unix. How is pagingimplemented? How page faults are handled?Seems to be a favorite question for these chaps ---- Maurice Bach.

b) Write a macro in C for swapping two nibbles in a byte.

-Use the shift operators and be careful while defining temporaryvariables( if you do so) as you have to write a macro. Otherwiseit is pretty simple.

c) What is the CPU-scheduling policy in Unix? - Round robin schedulingwith multilevel queues.

d) Diffrence between short term, long term and medium term scheduler.-First two should be peaceful. The last one is also known asswapper. (See Taenenbaum and/or Peterson)

e) Name various page-replacement policies. Which can be implementedboth with and without pre-emption? - see Peterson.

f) Describe the Sliding window protocol. What is it's advantageover stop-and-wait? - Saves bandwidth. (Taenenbaum please)

2ND INTERVIEW (Both personal and technical interleaved)a) Tell us something about yourself.b) Aren't you going for higher studies abroad? Why?c) Rank and CGPA. MSites do not have ranks but still they wanted to

know my approx position in my batch.- Shady question. It is your job to convince them that forMS, grades do not hold any meaning.

d) What is re-entrant code? --- Non-self modifying code. Can beshared by many processes simultaneously. Gave e.g. of text-editorslike 'vi'.Counter Q: But then no code modifies itself. What does 'non-selfmodifying' mean? ---- I don't know for sure.

e) Diff between compilers and interpreters. Some fundaes abouthow to link code in different files.

f) What would your friends tell us about you if we ask them?Standard question for everyone.

Company: Motorola (came in August'95)Just one question: When do you expect to finish? ---By August'96

That is too late. We are looking for guys whofinish by Jan'96. Pl. apply a month before yousubmit your thesis. Thank you very much.

Company: HCL-HPWritten test:One GRE type anals. section, and two comp Sc. sections. One Comp Sc.


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section was problem solving type. Quite easy. Only question worth mentioningin it was:

You are given a stack on which you can do the following:

Push X ----push the contents of memory location X on the stackPop X ----pop the contents of top of stack into mem. loc XAND ----pop top two elements of stack, AND them and push the

result onto stack.

NOR ----pop top two elements, NOR them and push the result onto stack.

Given two data elements at memory locations A and B, obtain A XOR B usingthe above.

First Interview:- mostly technical.

a) Asked about my B.E. and why I joined MS.

b) My preference of posting. They asked this initially beforelaunching into any other questions. I told them Madras.Remainder of the interview was mostly on OS and C. Nothingon networks. Thus I have this inkling that they frame their

questions on the basis of what you specify as your preferenceof posting and depending on what projects are available there.

c) What architectures, apart from 8085, do you know? --- Nothingvery deep and I told them as much.

d) Give the contents of process stack for the execution ofa particular C-program they give.------ The C-program as such is not important. You just haveto remember the order in which the return address of anyfunction/procedure call, the parameters, and the local variablesare stored on the stack.( I guess, any CO book should have this. Maurice Bach talks

about user and kernel stacks)

e) What all are shared by parent and child processes immediatelyafter parent executes a fork system call? Cross questionedabout the 'copy on write' facility and 'dup' system call.--- again see MB, and also Stevens' 2nd chapter.

f) What events happen when the following command is given?cat /etc/passwd | more

---- Describe how the shell forks the two processes and howthe pipe gets created between them.

Cross question: How does 'cat' know that its output has to be

written into the pipe and not into standard o/p?

g) Have you written any TSR's? --- No.What are TSR? ----Terminate but stay resident programs.Then does it mean DOS is a multitasking system?---- No, TSRs are interrupt driven

h) How are Windows programs different from normal C-programs?---- Windows programs are event driven.What can be the various types of events? --- See Primer/API bible.


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i) Difference between swapping and paging.---- Swapping is moving entire processes between main memoryand hard disk. Paging is moving individual pages of a process.

j) Write a program to list all palindromes in a string.

----- Hint: use a stack and some extra storage for rememberingprevious palindromes.

k) What's the outout?

char *cp;int *ip;

cp=(char *)0x100;ip=(int *)cp;

ip++;cp++;printf("cp = %x ip = %x", cp, ip);

Ans:cp = 0x101 ip = 0x102 ...(why?)

l) What are static variables and functions? There are two files,say, file1 and file2. file1 has a global declaration

static int x;file2 has a global declaration

int y;What is the difference between the two types of declarationswhen you link file1 and file2?--- x is local to functions in file1 and cannot be seen by

functions in file2. y can be seen by functions in bothfile1 and file2.

m) How does a debugger set breakpoints in a code you are debugging?---- some funda regarding insertion if an interrupt instruction

in the code....don't know for sure.(It seems that this q was also asked by some other company.Worth knowing the answer.)

This was followed by a shady psychological test. You are given aset of six pictures. Look at each picture and write a story on each.

Second interview: (fully personal) --- This was more interesting;-)a) What did you feel about the ppt? --- wasn't very impressiveso gave some shady answer.

b) Have you heard of creativity? -- Ya.

Have you heard of Bernard Shaw? -- Ya.(Then he rattled off some quote of BS regarding creativity)What do you say? --- I put some shadiest fundaes regardingvisionaries and Leonardo da Vinci conceptualising Helicoptersin his time!

************************************************************************NOTE: If you have been offered a job previously by any other company

after your BTech/BE or if you have even slightest of work experiencethen make it a point to mention about it. It is a major plus point.The interviewers will be definitely interested in knowing that some


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other company also found you good enough to be selected.************************************************************************

***************************************************************************Name: VivekanandaCompany name: Cadence design systems(I) P Lts, Noida.Year: 1995Area of work :

They develop CAD tools for VLSI design etc.They call it EDA ( Electronic design automation)They expect people with good C knowledge, data structures ,

compiler knowledgeSelection procedure :------------------1. Written test

a. Logic and aptitude test - 20mts.b. software and hardware part -30 mts.Software part - questions on datastres

e.g. given inorder exp.and preorder exp. findout the postorder exp.,binary tree insertion,stacks - set of operations are given , predict the output..,

static variables..Hardware part -

basic questions on digital systems such as K-maps,DMA , floating pt. representation, signed integer representation,cache location etc.

2. InterviewTechnical Questions asked: For me almost Nil.

a)question:what 'lex' does ?

Personal Questions asked:a)question1. Tell me about urself, family background ..

2. Btech projects and M.S. projects( spend more time here, even if u have not done much

workl; create a good impression)3. Significant achievements in life.

( may be paper publications etc. )4. Why did u leave ur previous company ( If u were working)5. What do u expect from a company ?( like how shd be the work environment etc. etc. )

************************************************************************

********************HCL-HP written test*******************THE address of hughes [email protected]

A [email protected]


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Note: Please call Mr Vijay (Ph 8279312) to confirm or reschedule the timing.

This is a very good question bank for written test of some software companies.This can be passed freely to anyone. No restrictions of Class, Branch,Institute , bla bla ...

Optimize the below 1,2,3,4 questions for time:

1)int i;if i=0 then i:=1;if i=1 then i:=0;

2)int i;if i=0 then i:=1;if i=1 then i:=0;(given that i can take only two values (1,0))

3)

int i;if i=0 then i:=1;else if i=1 then i:=0;(given that i can take only two values (1,0))

4)int m,j,i,n;for i:=1 to n dom:=m+j*n

5) Expand the followinga) ISDNb) CASE

c) CSMA/CDd) OOPSe) MIMD

6) In the following questions, answer A,B,C,D depending on whenthe errors are detected?A if no error is detectedB if semantic and syntactic checkingC if during Code genration & Symbol allocationD run time

a) Array overboundb) Undeclared identifier

c) stack underflowd) Accessing an illegal memory location

7) How many page faults will occur for below sequence of pages when LRUpage replacement algorithm is used ( The memory can only have 3pages):

1,2,3,4,2,1,5,2,4 (something like that)

8) If a CPU has 20 address lines but MMU does'nt use two of them.


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OS occupies 20K. No virtual memory is supported. What is themaximum memory available for a user program?

9) For a binary tree with n nodes, How many nodes are there whichhas got both a parent and a child?

10) Understand the funda of incrementing a variable usingval++ and ++val . Some programs are given for error correction.

11) Learn datagram . (Computer networks)

12) Which of the following can be zero? (only one)a) swap spaceb) physical memoryc) virtual memory

13) What is a must for multitasking?a) Process preemptionb) Pagingc) Virtual memory

d) None of the above

14) A question on call by value,call by name,call by reference.

f(x,y,z){y := y+1;z := z+x;}main(){

int a,b;a := 2b := 2;f(a+b,a,a);print a;}

what is the value of a printed for three different calls in main.

15) Using the following instructions and two registers , A&B.find out A XOR B and put the result in APUSH POP

NOR These instructions operates with A & B and puts the result inAND A

(question basically to get XOR in terms of NOR and AND)

16) True/False questions:1) The page size should be the power of 2.2)


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17)int i=0;int j=0;

loop:if(i = 0)

i++;i++;

j++;if(j


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message passing, sockets etc etc hi fi stuffs? Hint : Think Simple5. What are the tables and their relations when two processes accesssome files ?

Company name: MotorolaYear: 1995Technical Questions asked:1. Give a general algo for converting a m-ary tree to a 2-ary tree.

2. How many links are there in a binary tree of N nodes? Give aproof?3. What are skew trees? For a tree with 4 nodes draw all possiblebinary ? Generalise for n nodes how many binary trees can be drawn?4. Have u used threaded trees anytime in your life time?

Company name : NetQuest1. Assume a long linked list. Some nodes instead of pointing totheir next node, point backwards. This is called a corrupted node.Give an algo in C to test whether a list is corrupted or not.No extra space in nodes, in efficient time. less memory. marks afunction of time and storage used.

2. A macro to test whether a number is a power of 2.3. There is a two-dimensional linked list. Each node has a, North,South, West, East pointers. Write fragment of C Code to do someinterchanging stuffs. North points to West, West point to South etetc, ( A glorified version of reverse of linked list)4-7. Questions like these, basically pointer stuffs8 Assume there are two cubes. U can write one digit (0-9) on eachof these sides, Write in such a way that when u keep two cubes sideby side, u should be able to show all days in a month. (1-31)

Name: Srichand J

Company name: INFOSYSYear: 1995Technical Questions asked:

1. Explain your project2. What are your areas of interest in Appli Prog

Personal Questions asked:1. Introduce yourself2. Why do you want to join INFOSYS3. Do you have a passport4. Have you taken GRE/TOEFL5. Will you go abroad6. Which prog is better - MTech or MS7. Which prog do people prefer - MTech or MS

8. Why

Name: K. Bhuvaneshwari

1) Name of Company: Wipro InfoTech

Technical Questions:Why doesn't fortran support recursion?

Dynamic Storage allocation not there (I think)


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What is the problem with a software like ethernet monitor?No security and privacy for network users.

Give page table format and translation of virtual addressto physical address?

Tanenbaum - os book

Device Drivers in general and Streams drivers in particular

What is a clone open in Streams?Sun Device Driver Manual (No. 17 I think not sure)

CPU scheduling, which is best and why?Which will cause starvation?

Tanenbaum - os book

Deadlocks?Tanenbaum - os book

Hierarchical resource allocation?Tanenbaum - os book

How is a macro different from a function?Who doesn't know!

Explain your research work?

Summarize what you learnt in each of your course work.

2) Personal Questions:

Some - They wouldn't be relevant to others.

Name of company: Novell

Technical Questions:

Device Drivers, Structure of a streams driver.Sun Device Driver Manual (No. 17 I think not sure)

How do you enforce consistency of data structures of the driver in amultiuser environment?

Sun Device Driver Manual (No. 17 I think not sure)

TCP/IP fundamentals.Internetworking with TCP/IP - Comer

ARP/ RARP fundamentals.

Internetworking with TCP/IP - Comer

How long does a packet of size ... take to travel in an ethernet?Networks - Tanenbaum

List all the process calls generated in Unix from the time a processis created till it dies?

(GOK - God Only Knows!) Try Maurice Bach - might be there.

Tell why fork and exec are implemented as two different calls andnot as one?


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(GOK - God Only Knows!) Try Maurice Bach - might be there.

Differentiate Repeater, Bridge, Router, Gateway.What is an adaptive learning bridge?

Networks - Tanenbaum

Explain your research work?

Personal Questions:Hajaar - Wouldn't be relevant.

3) Oracle

Technical Questions:Explain your research work.

Given a C program, tell me how it would go into theaddress space of the computer? Which would go where?There were uninitialized and initialized globalvariables and local variables and two functions?

(I don't know)

Distributed memory - cache consistency problem, issues and solutions.(Tanenbaum - os)

Write a CPU Scheduler implemeting priority scheduling inC language - 20 lines of code, 10 minutes time. Alsogive the data structure to use.

Use a doubly linked list. Quite simple if youdon't get tensed up.

Personal Questions:None.

Name : Neharika Adabala

Company name:MotorolaYear:1995Technical Questions asked:

1)Describe Thesis work.2)Are you interested in working in GUI3)Are you interested in "List of user interfacerelated software".

4)What is the latest in continuous speech recognition?5)What other methods other than neural networks can be

used for recognition of speech?6)What are the differences between pascal and C?7)What is strongly typed?8)What other differences......

Personal Questions asked:a)Which other companies are you applying to?

Company name:TISLYear:1995Technical Questions asked:

1)About project


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2)What will you do three years from now?3)Which other companies have you applied to?

From kartik Sun Oct 1 09:41:23 1995Return-Path: Received: from pterano by pelican.iitm.ernet.in (4.0/SMI-4.0)

id AA01099; Sun, 1 Oct 95 09:41:22 IST

From: kartik (G. Kartik (CSRM))Received: by pterano id ; Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:41:25 --5-30Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:41:25 --5-30Message-Id: To: bagiSubject: Pl. add to qbankContent-Length: 884Status: R

Your Name: N.Sudha

Company name: Wipro infotech

Year: 1995Technical Questions asked:

a)questionDMA operation, cycle stealing, scope rules in Crecursive function for fibonacci series generation,complexity for searching in binary trees.

b)answer (if you know it)Personal Questions asked:

a)questionb)your response

Company name: Cadence designsYear: 1995

Technical Questions asked:Written test consisting of1. Aptitude test,2. C programming and data structures,3. Digital electronics

Personal Questions asked:in interview

a)questionmy weakness, kinds of friendship, family details

b) responseThey are impressed if one presents papers.I have presented conference papers

in the national level.

Generally most of the companies asks about the project.Regarding other technical questions, they put questionson the courses I did.

**********************************************************************

U.V.Ravindra - D.J.Ram's student. Passed out in Jan '95.**********************************************************************


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The first thing any IIT-ian should realize while attending CampusInterviews is that the Companies have come to take you, and that*you* are not looking for a job. I refer to the attitude of the mind.Therefore, there's no need to treat it as a life and death issue. Inmy opinion, several students take this matter as a very serious careerissue, and think that if they don't get a job in the campusinterviews, they are sunk. This is not true. A good case in point

will be Sudhakar's, who didn't get any job that he wanted in theCampus Interviews, but when he came to Bangalore and applied to thedifferent companies, he landed a job in *every* company he appliedfor. And these companies were by no means insignificant ones: TataElxsi, Wipro Infotech, Novell, C-DAC ... all those which areconsidered to be respectable employers. So, the catch phrase duringCampus Interviews is, "don't panic, be cool, relax, you have *nothing*to lose, and everything to gain." This is the attitude you shouldhave in mind when you go for the interviews.

About the companies, now. There are mainly two kinds of companies inBangalore. Those that are small, like Tata Elxsi and Novell, with amore or less flat organizational structure, and those that are very

huge, like Wipro and TISL, where there's a veritable populationexplosion. There are merits and demerits of both. In the smallorganizations, there are fewer people, so it is easy to make yourpresence felt and to make yourself noticed, and to get proper creditfor what you are doing. The flip side of the coin for theseorganizations is that you have to be very careful in what you say anddo, for everything you do/say is audible at the highest levels, and,as the American Police say when they are arresting a criminal"anything you say may be used against you." Smaller organizationsalso have a flatter structure, so the amount of responsibility on yourshoulders may be quite heavy. In one sense it is good -- you cancontribute well to the organization and get credit for it, but inanother sense it is bad, for you may have to work late and quite hard

too. The advantages of being in a large organization like Wipro isthat you will never be *overloaded* with work, unless you choose to doso yourself. You can be in the company as you are in the CSDepartment right now, light-headed and carefree, even a bit careless.The obverse side of the coin here is that in such huge organizations,you will never be anything but small fry in a big pond ... and gettingcredit where it is due may be a little difficult (specific referenceto TISL here).

Another issue that should be considered when seriously aiming at acompany is the nature of the job that you will be put in. In myhonest opinion, since the pay structures of most companies areverisimilar now, and the salary differential between employees of

different companies is very minimal, the nature of work is the mostimportant criterion that one should pay attention to. If you arespecifically interested in some kinds of jobs, such as, say UNIXInternals/Device Drivers, Networking (Unix/DOS), or graphics,multimedia, etc, you should aim at companies that are primarilyworking in those areas. Also, you should try to find out, throughother channels, as to whether openings exist in those companies forthe kind of job that you are aiming at. For example, Wipro Infotech'scommunication group has no openings right now. Most people who joinWipinfo are taken into the Testing/Debugging groups, or put in theTandem Group. These are pretty low down in the job priority order of


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the average computer professional in Bangalore. Novell is working inDOS based networking (Netware) and is by far one of the best companiesin Bangalore -- good salary, flat structure, nice working environment.Tata Elxsi is also working in Networking, but that is mainly UNIXbased. Other companies that work in Unix are TISL and Wipro Systems.Device drivers and Unix Internals are a big word in WipSys, Wipinfoand Elxsi. There are other companies like Siemens Information SystemsLtd., Siemens Computing Services Ltd., which I am not sure of. Texas

Instruments is working VLSI CAD and chip design stuff. Motorola,can't say. Other companies working in Unix Internals and Networkingare Hughes and HCL HP. Also, some companies in Delhi are there ...

That's about companies. Now about the interview. A typical interviewpanel will have one to two people from the technical cadres and acouple (or more) of chaps from the Human Resources division. Thetechnical guys are usually interested in grilling you on an area thatyou choose -- typically they ask you what areas are your favouritesand then ask you questions in that. This happens in companies likeC-DAC, Wipro, Elxsi etc. In addition, they might ask you, if you sayyou like working in Unix, to select one particular area of the OS andask you fundaes in that. Therefore, prepare for all this kind of

thing. Read up the C-FAQ and the UNIX FAQ. Be prepared for dumbquestions in recursion in C and, if you know C++, some questions onInheritance etc. About UNIX, try to concentrate on some topic likeIPC etc. Otherwise, device drivers etc would be fine. Also, if youare planning to suggest networking as an area of interest, be clearabout what the various layers of the TCP/IP stack do, where they fitin with respect to the OSI protocol layers, and also internals of theTCP or IP processes in the kernel. If you are preparing for theNovell interview, there is no harm in saying that you don't knowanything about Netware, but you have only heard about it. However,say that you have good basics in TCP/IP networking, and be prepared toprove your statement.

Another thing you should be prepared with is how to give an overviewof your project/thesis topic in two-three minutes. This is thetypical attention span of the people who interview you, and it isbetter to try and fit in as much info as you can into the first twominutes of your talk about your project/thesis topic. Also, try tomake it as interesting as possible, and leave a few loose ends if youwant them to ask you some questions on that, so that you candemonstrate your mastery over the subject.

I really can't think of many more things to write. Perhaps I wouldhave said more if I were giving you people a talk or something likethat. It is more interactive that way, and more issues crop up. Tellme if I can be of any more help. Do mail back.

Regards,Ravindra.

********************************************************************U.V.Ravindra : Ex-student of D.J. Ram********************************************************************


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Hi Srichie (and others),

My boss is on leave today, and I just finished my work slightly aheadof schedule, so here are some answers to your questions. Find themensconced comfortably amongst the questions themselves. For yourconvenience, I have prepended a '===>' string to each of my responses.[e]grep it!

J. SRICHAND (Dr.Hema) writes:>> Hello everybody,> Here is a detailed list of those software firms which are destined> to be our destiny.

===> Well, first of all, you, Srichie, at least, don't seem to havelearnt anything from my earlier mail. Learn from this one, therefore.Learn that these companies are *not* _DESTINED to be your DESTINY_... you have the choice to make as to which one *you* want. Learn toremember, always, and never forget, that the companies are coming to*take* you; *you* aren't dying to join them. Learn that, it is *you*and not the companies who are in the commanding position. Learn that

you aren't in the proverbial beggar's position: you *can* choose.Learn that you *should, must, have to, ought to* choose.

> The list is ordered alphabetically. My request is --> Please> furnish as much info as possible about the companies marked with an> '(*)'. Hope that you get back at me AFAP. Also furnish info about all the> other firms, i.e. whether they deal in Appli s/w or sys s/w, and any other> info about interviews, which will help us anchor a job. PLEASE!!!!!

===> The *PLEASE!!!!!* stinks thoroughly of insecurity. Pleaseabolish that thought from your mind forthwith!

And finally, before I go on, be warned that this is a

Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooongmail, and be prepared to spend some time with boring details ofcompanies.

All the best to all of you in all your endeavours,The guy with the magic (illuminating) lamp:Ravindra [*Alli* Baba!]

---------------------------------------------------------------------

> 01. BEL, Ba. ===> Can't say anything about it, though it's about 20min. walk from my house. I suppose they mostly deal with VLSI CAD andstuff like that, which deals directly with Electronics.

> 02. CMC, Hy. ===> Ask J. Sriram ;-) :) He will by far be the bestinformation provider.

> 03. Cadence Design Sys, Noida. (*)

===>

A company that deals extensively with VLSI CAD. Amongst the highestpayers in the job market today. When they came last year they offered(me!) 1.75 lakh per annum. I, of course, spurned the offer. The kind


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of money they offer will be good for anybody, even if they live in anexpensive place like Delhi, where it is situated. If you areinterested in doing a job with *no* work (I do mean you will have tosit idle), which purportedly deals with VLSI CAD, join this company.They were really desperate for people last year: I had given in myapplication, but had decided against joining the company, so Iabstained from the interview. They *rang me up at the SUNLab* to askwhether I would attend the interview, please. To which, of course, I

answered in the negative, thank you.

If you join this company, be prepared to meet a lot of louts fromDelhi College of Engineering and/or Delhi Institute of Technology,which our own dear Kakka swears (alma) 'mater'nity by!

Incidentally, I should warn all those who are looking at "no work +1.75 lakhs is a great deal," that although it is all very well in itsappearance, having no work at office is a real killer. I was withoutwork (I mean *really* doing nothing) in Elxsi for about two months,and I alone know how frustrating it can get. Be prepared to befrustrated in the first few months of your employment in Cadence,therefore.

> 04. Computervision Res & Dev, Pune. (*)

===>

This is a "wholly-owned subsidiary* of the US firm, Computer Vision,Inc. The parent company commands a lot of respect in corporatecircles. I don't know much about them, except that they doproprietary research and development (the corporate name for "bugfixing and documentation") for the parent company. You will *not* besent abroad till you are at least 8-12 months old in the company, IFAT ALL. This is the case with most multinational undertakings inIndia.

The pay must be good. I don't know if this is another one of those*workless* (worthless!) front-ends for a big body-shoppingmultinational, but from what I hear from the Pune-ites here, it isn't.That means it isn't a body-shopper, most probably; no comments aboutworthless :) or not.

A big one for Graphics. The only challenger to Silicon Graphics Inc.,the most powerful Graphics company in India (and the world) yet.

Disadvantage: Location. Pune is *not* a part of India's siliconvalley. Believe me, it places employees at a considerabledisadvantage.

> 05. DENEB Hitech, Ba. (*) ===> Absolutely no idea about this one.Will try to find out, but can't assure anything.

> 06. DBSS, Md. ===> Never heard of this one either.

> 07. Frontier Info Tech, Hy. (*) ===> Am I deaf/blind, or are newcompanies cropping up in "satellite silicon vallies" (hey! I hold thecopyright for that phrase) like Hyderabad, Madras, Pune, etc? I'venever heard of this one either.


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> 08. Geometric S/w Services, Bo. (*) ===> Boy! I *am* in the wrongroom, aren't I? So many new and strange companies ...

> 09. Hughes S/w Sys, ND.

===> Ask our resident dark-horse Unit Sirsiwal for details on thisone. Also ask him *why* he left the company. My other friends inHughes seem to be quite satisfied with it. One of them (my classmate

in BTech) worked there for two years. He booked a Maruti 800, whichis due for delivery in Feb '96; they sent him to US immediately! ;-)

> 10. IMRL, Ba. (*) ===> Sounds like one of those quasi-governmentalorganizations like C-DAC, C-DOT, BEL etc. Can't say if it *is* one ofthem or not, for this is the first I have heard of it.

> 11. IMI S/w, Hy. (Dunno expansion of IMI) (*)

===> Neither do I :-( Looks like I'm in the wrong party now. I'llhave to stop and ask for directions.

> 12. INFOSYS, Ba. ===> The best company for non-CS people who want

to make an entry into Software jobs. A cousin of the dreaded TCS.Better than TCS. A "no-no" for all CS BTech/upwards degree holders.Give it a clear berth (this is for all MS/PhD scholars). For theothers: prepare well for the test. Flunk the interview. They willselect you.

For details about the test, ask Ravan.

> 13. Info Tech Ltd, Faridabad. (*) ===> Faridabad is a factory area,close to Delhi, in Haryana (for all practical purposes, it can be saidto be the Industrial Suburb of New Delhi). I've never heard of thiscompany, and it might be a good idea to check up on this before evenattending the PPTalk.

> 14. L&T, Bo. ===> A couple of my friends joined here after BTech.I lost all touch with them promptly. Either L&T ate them forlunch/dinner, or they have just joined the ranks of thosemultitudinous Bombayites, for whom the world outside doesn't exist.They used to manufacture PCs. I don't know what they do now.

In any case, L&T would be working in Manufacturing CAD, if I am notmistaken. Try it, if you are interested in MfCAD. The pay may be*good*, not *excellent* and by no means *stupendous*.

One thing about L&T. They hold the worldwide patents for the"zee-pump" ... the "Z"-shaped pump that you see at the petrol bunks in

Adyar and the one near Malar Hospital. A great achievement. Anotherthing about L&T. The person who headed the zee-pump project, a guy bythe name of Chakravarti, has quit. He now rests in comfortableobscurity in the cosy arms of IIT Delhi, in his position as AssistantProfessor, Mech. Engg. Department.

> 15. MIEL, Ba. ===> Sorry, can't provide data on this. They're toosecretive about what they do. :-) :-)

But seriously, they work in cellular telephones and pagers and stufflike that. Could be good work, but I don't know. A good job for CS


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MTechs with an Electronics background. At any rate, they're going toprefer ECE MTechs and MSs to CS chaps. Try nonetheless.

They pay a little less than Wipro Infotech, where the take home rangesclose to 9k pm.

One positive point about a Motorola job is that they offer leasedaccommodation in Bangalore. Believe me, it's a very tangible benefit.

They also don't seem to have any restriction on how many laserprintouts are taken (and *what* printouts are taken) by employees. Ihave seen people downloading pictures of Madhubala and Meena Kumariand taking laser printouts of them.

Of course, you can do that in Wipro Infotech too, provided you are inthe AT&T bug fixing project.

> 16. NEXUS, Pondicherry. (*) ===> Pshoo! I thought people ofPondicherry were a more spiritual lot! Aurobindo and all that.Remember our trip to that place?

Can't help feeling that I've lost myself in the woods somewhere. Have

to yell for help ... there's a wicked wolf gazing hungrily in mydirection ... grandmaa .... help!!!

> 17. Netquest, Ba.

===> A company started by IBM/Microsoft defectors (dunno which oneexactly). It's said to have a good work culture, but can't say muchabout it. It was established sometime last year. DOS work. I don'thave much respect for DOS (indeed, I hold it in the utmost contempt).Therefore, I will desist from saying anything more about it, lest Ishould colour your mind with my biased opinions.

> 18. Novell S/w Dev, Ba.

===> From what Sudhakar tells me, it seems to be a good company.However, they work mostly in DOS-based (NETWARE) networks. As far asnetworks is concerned, a company worth putting in the Dream Job list.As far as Unix is concerned, they don't have much work going on. TheUnixware guys are treated as some sort of poor cousins of the NetWareguys, I am told. The pay and perks are good. Based onemployee-employer trust, so you can get away with a lot of fraudulencein the name of overtime, house-shifting ... etc.

Ask Sudhakar for more details. I'm sure he will supply enough to makeyour mouth water, and your pens to rush for the dream job form.

> 19. ORACLE Corp, Ba.

===> THIS IS THE BEST PAYER IN BANGALORE TODAY!!!!

Yes. And Sanjay Patil, who was porting Oracle to SCO-Unix has alreadygone to US! A good company, but only if you are willing to condemnyourself to working in Oracle all your life. They work in all aspectsof Oracle, right from the internals (file system, concurrency control,etc) to the User Interface. Quite a lot of their work is bug fixingand stuff, but some lucky fellows might get to do a bit of portingfrom one OS to another, which isn't as bad as it sounds, actually.


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> 20. Ramco Sys, Md. ===> Ask somebody else. I never thought thatcompanies in Madras were worth joining, and, consequently, neverbothered about them.

> 21. River Run S/w(formerly Comsoft), Noida.

===> Said to be working in Networks. Someone should have asked

Shalini Agrawal what she does apart from sending mails to her friendsin Cadence etc. Perhaps someone from Sarayu already did that when she(Shalini A.) came for the Convo.

Said to pay decently. Which means nothing, because, being in Delhi,you'll still be away from the heart and soul of the computer industry,Bangalore.

BTW, my home is in Delhi, and, since I *chose* to work in Bangalore, Imust know what I am talking about! :-)

> 22. Siemens Commn S/w, Ba.> 23. Siemens Info Ltd, Ba.

> 24. SIEMENS Ltd, ND.

===>All three are good companies. I have already detailed all these in myearlier mail. They work in communications.

> 25. Sonic S/w Sys, Hy. (*)

===>A company working in Systems and Networking.

> 26. TCS, Bo.

===> The avoidable giant!

> 27. TI, Ba

===> The only other company working in the same field as Cadenceabove. All I said for Cadence holds good for it, except that the payis slightly lower. The perks are good, working conditions excellent,etc. Attend the PPT.

> 28. TISL, Ba.

===> A cousin to my own organization, Tata Elxsi. The TATA Stamp, andso called IBM culture. Can't say anything much. The pay is amongst

the highest in the Industry. It is actually a big bodyshopper.

> 29. VSNL, Bo.

===> The Government's only value-added network service providercompany. The pay may not be too good, considering you will be placedin Bombay, and you might become on of the nondescript millions whoshuttle between one end of Bombay to the other in the dreaded localtrains. There may be certain perks that I don't know of. Theinterviewers are bound to be knowledgeable, and from NCST, Bombay.Perhaps Dr. Ramani, the virtual head of the ERNET project may come. A


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job whose interview I can predict will be interesting to attend. Ican't say much about the job itself, for I am not sure about it atall.

> 30. WIPRO INFOTECH Ltd. }> & } Ba.> WIPRO SYSTEMS }

I don't think there's anything to be said about these giants. Onlything is, Wipro is not into the holidays business. I firmly believethat joining Wipro will further your student-like life for a few moreyears, and if you are really raring to get into the corporate line ofjobs, then Wipro is not for you. When I say Wipro above, I meanInfotech. Wipro Systems is one of the more Pseud-ish companies, whatwith their formal attire, replete with Tie and associatedappurtenances of a western lifestyle. Both Wipro-s have a very goodpay, and *sure-shot* revisions once a year, where you do end upgetting at least a 20% hike, usually. Don't quote me, however. Thisis strictly off the records.

> 31. Fujitsu Optel Ltd, Bhopal. (*)

Search me!

> Love,> Srichie.

Thanks for your time. Kudos for lasting this far through my sicklyhumour! :)

Best Wishes,Ravindra.

Hi guys and gals,

It must be time for the Campus Placement Interviews, judging from themultitudes of mails that I receive about this topic. As I throw mymind back to when *I* was preparing to attend my Campus Interviews, Irecall that one important question we were all faced with was "whichcompany do I name as my dream job company?"

Here are some simple rules of thumb which you can use to decide whichcompany to give as your dream job, but first, remember to FILL IN BOTHENTRIES.

The dream job system in our IIT is organized such that

a) you can attend any number of interviews till you get a job,after which you can not attend any more interviews other than that forthe dream job.

b) if the first job you got was your dream job, you can'tattend any more interviews.

c) if you have a non-dream job, and you flunk your "first"dream job interview, you can't attend the second "dream job"interview.

d) if you don't get any job, you can go on attendinginterviews till you get sick of them.


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IMO, the problem with the dream jobs arises only because of the "youcan't attend any more interviews" clause.

Hence, for your dream job, select a company

1) which you will be willing to join, if you get it.2) whose interview dates are among the last (in Dec/Jan)3) which, in case you don't get it, won't make you feel like it is the

end of the world.

This means that you should never give as your dream job a companywhich is actually your dream. For example, if you dream is Wipro,it's better not to give it as you dream job, because it fails in allthe criteria mentioned above.

Please take the recommendations given above as *my* opinions, andweigh them wisely before accepting them as your own. I am *NOT* to beblamed for any unfortunate turn of events that befalls you out of yourfollowing any of my advice :-)))

Wishing you all the best,

Ravindra.

***********************************************************************>From Pradeep : Ex-student of CSRM.***********************************************************************

About the job opportunities for you, dont worry, there are plenty. Ifyou are not tied to B'lore then you have got even more opportunities,especiallyin Delhi. In B'lore there are good firms like, Tata-IBM (TISL),Hewlett-Packard (HP), Wipro Infotech, Novell, etc. Recently Wipro is

taking hajaar people. These companies in the general field, undertaking projectsin a variety of fields. There certain specialist firms like, Wipro GE (Medicalsystems), Tata Unisys (RDBMS), Texas Instruments (Chip designing, tools forCAD), Verifone (Transaction automation), Siemens Commn systems (communication)etc. If u are not so much bothered a about the nature of work, the best companyavailable is Texas Instruments, the most well established multinational inBangalore, which is also the first to come here. In Delhi there are twocompanies whose main area is Networks - Hughes Network systems, and River Run(Old name CompSoft). These people pay very heavily. The only minus point isthat it is in Delhi.

Dont be bothered too much of the interviews. Of course, if you canfamiliarize with unix internals, then it is an added advantage. In the

case of some companies, there will bewritten test (aptitude, reasoning, etc.) before the interview. If u can getthru the written test with a good performance, chances are high that u may beselected. I dont recommend C-DAC, as pay is very less now, compared to privatefirms. Never join any govt firm.

With best wishes...pradeep

**********************************************************************Return-Path:


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Hi Everybody,These questions were e-mailed to me by Tom (MSscholar). It suddenly reminded me of how littleinformation we had about companies when weappeared for the campus interviews - and also abouthow much we cursed our seniors for not having sent

any. So ... in case you have already cursed .. bettertake them back ... for here comes some info aboutTEIL (Tata Elxsi India Ltd.)...

> 1- Your exact pay (take home & gross)(7500 + 950 + 500)

> 2- Acco-scene in Bangalore ??Note : The company does not give any acco for thefirst few days. (This, I think is the ONLY drawbackof TEIL).

Generally what happens with every guy (and which

also happened to me) is that the chap madly searchesfor an acco for the first 15-20 days.

He then gets damn pissed off and is on the verge ofgiving off - when lo !! - he finds a real goodapartment. The funda is that the brokers show theunwanted and shady houses for the first 15-20 dayshoping that you will get despo enough to go for them.Keep on refusing them and at end they will show youthe right one.

As for gals ... I dont know much about their acco.I dont know how they manage it, but they always get

PG, rented house accos, etc. much more easily thanguys. God knows how ???

But generally one can forget of living alone, sincethe cost of a proper apartment is around 2500-3500.

> 3- Does the company have a canteen or mess where you can have your> meals from? (No don't laugh, I don't relish the prospect of cooking)

The lunch is provided by one reasonable good `NourishCaterer'. Biscuit, Coffee, Tea is provided - on thehouse. Maagi noodles or bread-omlette is alsoavailable in the kitchen at proper cost.

> 4- Transport ??Van/Bus leave from HO, Richmond Road (centre of city,for those who dont know {PUB-CITY-}Bangalore - YET !!) toWhitefield at :

7:00 am8:15 am9:30 am12:15 pm2:45 pm

From Whitefield to HO at :


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9:40 am11:10 am4:30 pm6:15 pm8:30 pm10:00 pm

Personally I dont think that the location of officein Whitefield (out of Bangalore city) is a big

problem. The company provides transport as listedabove which is good enough. Only problem is that onecant have a break from the office-work by looking at the MGRoad girls!!! In fact I love the location since itsaves me the daily ordeal in BTS (Bangalore Transport Service)buses.

> 5- 1 or 2 lines about each of the major projects currently being> undertaken by Tata Elxsi.

Client-driven projects :NETLABS :Maintenance of a s/w called DIAMONDS (an SNMPservice provider). Some design-work has also been

alloted to TEIL offlate.

ANALOG DEVICES :Vedio Telephony project consists of design anddevelopment of a vedio telephony system using ADSPchips of Analog.

Medical Imaging System (in collaboration with theSingapore University). I heard that a lot of portingwork goes on in this project. A lot of GUI fundaesis also used here.

Some other new project from the defence orgn.s are

also being carried out. I donno what exactly.

> 6- Chances of going abroad.The rest of the lot, i.e. those who are not workingthere pretty behind off in the client-drivenprojects, form expertise development teams. Thereare teams in Image Processing, SNMP, ISDN (of whichI am a part). We try to do in-house projects and getour fundaes clear (which we should have done incollege - long time back !!!).

Dont you turn your nose in the other direction onhearing the words `in-house projects'. Altho these

projects are not client-driven, they offer muchbetter scope of learning in many cases. Also in caseof any new project which includes overseas requirements(also known as body-shopping) there is a good chancethat these people will be sent.

> 7- Any tips on how to get through the interview?Dont thro away other books, but I think the generaldirection will be on OS and Networking.

One important thing is that the interviewers generally


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dont ask you very high funda questions. They onlywant to test how well you did, whatever you claim tohave done.

It goes without saying that each of you must haveone claim of of having done something.

> 8- Is there something like batches in which you have to join- Eg:

> March batch, Aug batch, etcNot exactly. These people generally want everybodyto join as early as possible.

luv,dip.

PS : Tastes differ ... and so I cant predict whetheryou would like this place ... but rest assured - ILIKE IT. In a small place like this you are givenmuch more responsibility than in `big oceans'(courtesy TAG).

But apart from those hi-funda things, dont you

think that it is better to be in a small cute placelike TEIL rather than in hujjar big places wherethings become impersonal and where people are known bytheir floor and extn. no. rather than their names ??

*******************************************************************Dear MS-Scholars,

Here are some typical questions asked in the Job interviews.I have divided the questions into two categories a)Technical and b)Personel. Generally all the companies will have atleast 2 interviews.The first one will be a technical interview and the second a personalinterview. Even if the company has only a single interview the panel

will have a mix of both technical and HRD personnel. The 'Technical'part has been divided according to the topic of your interest. HereI would like to mention that, the courses you take during your MSmatter a lot during the technical interview. The questions are mainlybased on the courses you have done during the course of your MS andyour area of interest. Its a wise choice to indicate area of interestas a separate field if you are strong in a particular field and wishto draw the attention of the panel to your strong area. Lets begin thevoyage in ernest. Before I begin, I request MS scholars to regularlyupdate the Jobs-QB for the benefit of the scolars to come.

- Regards,

Sudhakar.

A) Technical---------

OS:--Suggested readings: Modern Operating Systems; Tannenbaum (Must)

Design of Unix Operating Systems (Internals Fundaes)The Magical Garden Unexplored (SVR4 internals)Unix FAQ; available on internet


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Questions every scholar should know:

i) Paging, segmentation fundaes.ii) Scheduling policy used by Unix.

Should know how and why Unix assigns priorities to some processes.iii) How and who handles a page-fault.iv) Contents of an inode

Other Questions:

i) Unix buffer management.ii) Unix Page-replacement policyiii) Unix directory structure/files/Links (soft and hard link:difference)

Networks:---------

Suggested Readings: Computer Networks; TannebaumUnix Network Programming; StevensNetworking with TCP/IP: Vol 1; Comer (A Good book)


i) Seven layers of OSI stack, and a few functions of each layer.ii) The different modues of a TCP/IP stack and the functions of

each module.

Other Questions:

i) Flow control, out of band data and how is it handled.ii) How and who handles data looping (A packet is stuck in a loop)iii)Structure of an IP Datagram headeriv) Structure of an ICMP header

v) What is ARP and how does it find a physical address given aninternet address. Similarly for RARP

vi) Classes of internet addresses. Given an address you should be ableto tell which class it belongs to. Fundaes on Sub-netting andhow will you assign addresses to the sub-networks.

vii) Some other stacks like the IPX/SPX and X.25

Computer Architecture:----------------------

Suggested readings: Hwang and Briggs;Hamacher


i) Location of a cache in the storage heirarchy.ii) Cache access/replacement techniques.iii) Full-associative and set-associative caches.

Other Questions:---------------i) TLB; look-aside-bufferii) SMP (Sequential Multiprocessor: Jani-Wipro Infotech asked)


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C:---

Suggested Readings: Kernighan and RitchieC-FAQ; internet


i) Fundaes on Null pointers; what happens if you increment a null pointer.ii) About bit-operators (Every interview will have questions where you

will have to operate on the bits; So remember or bit operators)iii) Swapping 2 numbers without extra variables (Still the favourite?)

Can you swap two floating numbers using the same technique?iv) Swapping two nibbles of a byte; write a macro for that.v) Counting all 1s in an integer.

Other Questions:---------------

i) Variable parameters of a function. How is it implemented in C.Give example of functions which use varible parameters (printf etc).

ii) How are the fields in a printf accessed (from right to left) and why?Read the C-FAQ for such questions.

iii) Doubly linked lists.

Data Structures:----------------

i) B-Trees; B-Plus trees?

B) Personal-----------

i) Tell us something about yourself. (This has to be there)ii) Strengths and weaknesses (This question also disguised in various

forms is always asked).iii) Why should we hire you?iv) Can you describe your project in short?v) Why did you take 2-1/2 years to complete (My case!)vi) If given the job when can you join. (Caution: Don't think that if

you give some unreal early deadlines they will offer you the job.Always play safe and give a deadline by which time you are sure tocomplete and join. Asking for extensions is the worst scenario).

Tips: Be confident, frank (But need not give away information which may weighagainst your case), free (use first names while addresing them, so bealert when they introduce themselves) and cheerful (attend an interviewwith a positive frame of mind). Remember you are IITians and you alwayshave an edge. That may sound arrogant, but its true.

Best of luck.-------------

Some more info on some companies


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1. Cadence Design System, Noida, New Delhi- Design automation- Tools for Electronic Design Automation (EDA)- Pay is great- Application is Motorola propreitary - hence switching jobs tough

2. Computervision Research & Development, Pune

- CAD/CAM research- Clientserver - Unix based- Look into Express Computer / Dataquest for more info- Pay is good

3. Frontier Info. Tech., Hyd- Bodyshopping- Teaching- Junk company according to several people who joined us from there

4. IMI s/w., Hyd- Bodyshopping- Offshore project for 2 years before sending u abroad- Pays decent

5. NEXUS, Pondicherry

- Decent company- Look into ads in Express Computer for further info

6. Sonic s/w., Hyd- Same as 4. - into some client-server stuff too

7. Steer clear of a firm called Silverline. It's black-listed in the USbecos of some VISA goodals.

>From the list above, only (1), (2), and possibly (5) can be consideredanything near to good for M.S/ M.Tech guys. I'll try and get more infoabout other organisations.

561541 INTERVIEW Placement Interviews

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