THIS FILE CONTAINS THE QUESTIONS WHICH MS SCHOLARS FACED IN PLACEMENT INTERVIEWS IN 1994 AND 1995

Name: Biswajit Sain for(int i = 1; i <= 1; i++) { Company name: Wipro Infotech Ltd., Bangalore. Year: 1995 Wipinfo has 2 rounds of interviews. The first round is fully technical. The second round, depending on the members of the board, may be technical, semi-technical or personal. Last year the second round was more technical than the first(!) and the board was headed by Mr. P.V.Sanjeeva Reddy, one of the no-nonsense, hardcore-technical, project leaders in Infotech. This year it was headed by Mr. Victor Jayakiran, G.M. (Technical, Global R&D) who was a much sober man and therefore spent most of the time in the second round dealing with personal questions. I detail here the technical questions asked in the first round --------------------------------------------------------------[1] Tell us about your work in brief. My Ans. Mention first the title, followed by a brief overview work, what we plan to achieve, what has been achieved so far, the relevance/scope of the work to the related area (i.e. how going to be useful). [ 5-10 mins. depending on interest of listener.] [2..n] Questions related to the work. Ans. Area dependent. [ ~ 10 mins ] [n+1] Tell us what you know about DMA and why that is needed? My Ans. As usual, mentioned the wastage of CPU computation power spent in busy-waiting. Told how DMA works. [n+2] What are the various types of scheduling algo, what is used by UNIX? My Ans. Mentioned Round Robin, First-come-first-served, Shortest-job-first, Earliest-deadline-first, Least-laxity-first, Priority-based-event-driven. UNIX uses RR with multi-level feedback. [n+3] How can you implement SJF in UNIX? My Ans. Usually, SJF means that we know the job-duration in advance. In UNIX where we cannot know that, we have to make assumptions about that based on which we should initially schedule. Periodically however, we have to fine-tune our initial assumptions based on the times taken by various ready jobs, and recompute estimates and change the schedule accordingly. [n+4] Different types of subroutine calling conventions? My Ans. Call by value, reference, value-result. [n+5] Parameter passing sequence used by C? My Ans. Rightmost parameter pushed first on stack. of the finally is it the

[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. 2. 3. 4. What was your overall position in the Univ. in B.E. Why did you choose to join MS here. How do you like the MS course. 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 care about these topics myself ;-)). Then mentioned the proliferation of O-O methodologies 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 in response to another question. [2] What is a Micro-Kernel architecture. My Ans. This is a developing area in OSs where instead of building the kernel as a single monolithic structure starting from scratch, it is built as a set of layers. The micro-kernel provides only the bare-bones like Device-drivers, rudimentary filesystem support etc. on which, depending on the intended area of application of the OS, it can be customized to provide various higher level OS features like Multiprocessing, 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.Kartik Year: 1995 Company name: Wipro Infotech FIRST INTERVIEW:(First the interviewer asked me to name two favorite subjects - OS and Networks) a) Describe the memory management policies in Unix. How is paging

implemented? 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 temporary variables( if you do so) as you have to write a macro. Otherwise it is pretty simple. c) What is the CPU-scheduling policy in Unix? - Round robin scheduling with multilevel queues. d) Diffrence between short term, long term and medium term scheduler. -First two should be peaceful. The last one is also known as swapper. (See Taenenbaum and/or Peterson) e) Name various page-replacement policies. Which can be implemented both with and without pre-emption? - see Peterson. f) Describe the Sliding window protocol. What is it's advantage over 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 for MS, grades do not hold any meaning. d) What is re-entrant code? --- Non-self modifying code. Can be shared by many processes simultaneously. Gave e.g. of text-editors like 'vi'. Counter Q: But then no code modifies itself. What does 'non-self modifying' mean? ---- I don't know for sure. e) Diff between compilers and interpreters. Some fundaes about how 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 who finish by Jan'96. Pl. apply a month before you submit your thesis. Thank you very much. Company: HCL-HP Written test: One GRE type anals. section, and two comp Sc. sections. One Comp Sc. section was problem solving type. Quite easy. Only question worth mentioning in 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 stack Pop X ----pop the contents of top of stack into mem. loc X

AND NOR

----pop top two elements of stack, AND them and push the result onto stack. ----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 using the 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 before launching into any other questions. I told them Madras. Remainder of the interview was mostly on OS and C. Nothing on networks. Thus I have this inkling that they frame their questions on the basis of what you specify as your preference of posting and depending on what projects are available there. c) What architectures, apart from 8085, do you know? --- Nothing very deep and I told them as much. d) Give the contents of process stack for the execution of a particular C-program they give. ------ The C-program as such is not important. You just have to remember the order in which the return address of any function/procedure call, the parameters, and the local variables are 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 immediately after parent executes a fork system call? Cross questioned about 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 how the 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 What Then ---you written any TSR's? --- No. are TSR? ----Terminate but stay resident programs. 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. i) Difference between swapping and paging. ---- Swapping is moving entire processes between main memory and 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 remembering previous 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 declarations when 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 both file1 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 a set 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 impressive so 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 regarding visionaries and Leonardo da Vinci conceptualising Helicopters in 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 experience then make it a point to mention about it. It is a major plus point. The interviewers will be definitely interested in knowing that some other company also found you good enough to be selected. ************************************************************************ *************************************************************************** Name: Vivekananda Company name: Cadence design systems(I) P Lts, Noida. Year: 1995 Area 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 knowledge Selection 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 e xp., 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. Interview Technical Questions asked: For me almost Nil. a)question: what 'lex' does ? Personal Questions asked: a)question 1. 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 worki ng) 5. What do u expect from a company ? ( like how shd be the work environment etc. etc. ) ************************************************************************

Name: Raju N N Interviews Attended : Siemens, Motorola, NetQuest Company name: Siemens Year: 1995 Technical Questions asked: 1. Draw the Architecture of Unix ? I asked please elaborate He then told Draw the Unix Architecture ! 2. Suppose there are two processes communicating via TCP ports One of them on one machine dies. What will happeen to the port? If another process is allocated that port will it receive garbage.? 3. What are the various IPC mechanisms? Why is message passing

coslier than semaphore? 4. Name a simple scehme to communicate among two processes on a same machine without the pipes, semaphores, shared memory message passing, sockets etc etc hi fi stuffs? Hint : Think Simple 5. What are the tables and their relations when two processes access some files ? Company name: Motorola Year: 1995 Technical 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 a proof? 3. What are skew trees? For a tree with 4 nodes draw all possible binary ? Generalise for n nodes how many binary trees can be drawn? 4. Have u used threaded trees anytime in your life time? Company name : NetQuest 1. Assume a long linked list. Some nodes instead of pointing to their 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 a function 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 some interchanging stuffs. North points to West, West point to South et etc, ( A glorified version of reverse of linked list) 4-7. Questions like these, basically pointer stuffs 8 Assume there are two cubes. U can write one digit (0-9) on each of these sides, Write in such a way that when u keep two cubes side by side, u should be able to show all days in a month. (1-31) Name: Srichand J Company name: INFOSYS Year: 1995 Technical Questions asked: 1. Explain your project 2. What are your areas of interest in Appli Prog Personal Questions asked: 1. Introduce yourself 2. Why do you want to join INFOSYS 3. Do you have a passport 4. Have you taken GRE/TOEFL 5. Will you go abroad 6. Which prog is better - MTech or MS 7. 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)

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 address to 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 a multiuser 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 process is 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 and not as one? (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 the address space of the computer? Which would go where? There were uninitialized and initialized global variables 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 in C language - 20 lines of code, 10 minutes time. Also give the data structure to use. Use a doubly linked list. Quite simple if you don't get tensed up. Personal Questions: None.

Name : Neharika Adabala Company name:Motorola Year:1995 Technical Questions asked: 1)Describe Thesis work. 2)Are you interested in working in GUI 3)Are you interested in "List of user interface related 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:TISL Year:1995 Technical Questions asked: 1)About project 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 1995 Return-Path: <kartik> 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 <AA00650@pterano>; Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:41:25 --5-30 Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:41:25 --5-30 Message-Id: <9510010411.AA00650@pterano> To: bagi Subject: Pl. add to qbank Content-Length: 884 Status: R Your Name: N.Sudha Company name: Wipro infotech Year: 1995 Technical Questions asked: a)question DMA operation, cycle stealing, scope rules in C recursive function for fibonacci series generation, complexity for searching in binary trees. b)answer (if you know it) Personal Questions asked: a)question b)your response Company name: Cadence designs Year: 1995 Technical Questions asked: Written test consisting of 1. Aptitude test, 2. C programming and data structures, 3. Digital electronics Personal Questions asked: in interview a)question my weakness, kinds of friendship, family details b) response They 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 questions on the courses I did. ********************************************************************** U.V.Ravindra - D.J.Ram's student. Passed out in Jan '95. ********************************************************************** The first thing any IIT-ian should realize while attending Campus Interviews 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. In

my opinion, several students take this matter as a very serious career issue, and think that if they don't get a job in the campus interviews, 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 the Campus Interviews, but when he came to Bangalore and applied to the different companies, he landed a job in *every* company he applied for. And these companies were by no means insignificant ones: Tata Elxsi, Wipro Infotech, Novell, C-DAC ... all those which are considered to be respectable employers. So, the catch phrase during Campus Interviews is, "don't panic, be cool, relax, you have *nothing* to lose, and everything to gain." This is the attitude you should have in mind when you go for the interviews. About the companies, now. There are mainly two kinds of companies in Bangalore. Those that are small, like Tata Elxsi and Novell, with a more or less flat organizational structure, and those that are very huge, like Wipro and TISL, where there's a veritable population explosion. There are merits and demerits of both. In the small organizations, there are fewer people, so it is easy to make your presence felt and to make yourself noticed, and to get proper credit for what you are doing. The flip side of the coin for these organizations is that you have to be very careful in what you say and do, 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 organizations also have a flatter structure, so the amount of responsibility on your shoulders may be quite heavy. In one sense it is good -- you can contribute well to the organization and get credit for it, but in another 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 is that you will never be *overloaded* with work, unless you choose to do so yourself. You can be in the company as you are in the CS Department 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 getting credit where it is due may be a little difficult (specific reference to TISL here). Another issue that should be considered when seriously aiming at a company is the nature of the job that you will be put in. In my honest opinion, since the pay structures of most companies are verisimilar now, and the salary differential between employees of different companies is very minimal, the nature of work is the most important criterion that one should pay attention to. If you are specifically interested in some kinds of jobs, such as, say UNIX Internals/Device Drivers, Networking (Unix/DOS), or graphics, multimedia, etc, you should aim at companies that are primarily working in those areas. Also, you should try to find out, through other channels, as to whether openings exist in those companies for the kind of job that you are aiming at. For example, Wipro Infotech's communication group has no openings right now. Most people who join Wipinfo are taken into the Testing/Debugging groups, or put in the Tandem Group. These are pretty low down in the job priority order of the average computer professional in Bangalore. Novell is working in DOS based networking (Netware) and is by far one of the best companies in Bangalore -- good salary, flat structure, nice working environment. Tata Elxsi is also working in Networking, but that is mainly UNIX based. Other companies that work in Unix are TISL and Wipro Systems. Device drivers and Unix Internals are a big word in WipSys, Wipinfo and Elxsi. There are other companies like Siemens Information Systems

Ltd., 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 Networking are Hughes and HCL HP. Also, some companies in Delhi are there ... That's about companies. Now about the interview. A typical interview panel will have one to two people from the technical cadres and a couple (or more) of chaps from the Human Resources division. The technical guys are usually interested in grilling you on an area that you choose -- typically they ask you what areas are your favourites and then ask you questions in that. This happens in companies like C-DAC, Wipro, Elxsi etc. In addition, they might ask you, if you say you like working in Unix, to select one particular area of the OS and ask you fundaes in that. Therefore, prepare for all this kind of thing. Read up the C-FAQ and the UNIX FAQ. Be prepared for dumb questions in recursion in C and, if you know C++, some questions on Inheritance etc. About UNIX, try to concentrate on some topic like IPC etc. Otherwise, device drivers etc would be fine. Also, if you are planning to suggest networking as an area of interest, be clear about what the various layers of the TCP/IP stack do, where they fit in with respect to the OSI protocol layers, and also internals of the TCP or IP processes in the kernel. If you are preparing for the Novell interview, there is no harm in saying that you don't know anything about Netware, but you have only heard about it. However, say that you have good basics in TCP/IP networking, and be prepared to prove your statement. Another thing you should be prepared with is how to give an overview of your project/thesis topic in two-three minutes. This is the typical attention span of the people who interview you, and it is better to try and fit in as much info as you can into the first two minutes of your talk about your project/thesis topic. Also, try to make it as interesting as possible, and leave a few loose ends if you want them to ask you some questions on that, so that you can demonstrate your mastery over the subject. I really can't think of many more things to write. Perhaps I would have said more if I were giving you people a talk or something like that. It is more interactive that way, and more issues crop up. Tell me if I can be of any more help. Do mail back. Regards, Ravindra.

******************************************************************** U.V.Ravindra : Ex-student of D.J. Ram ******************************************************************** Hi Srichie (and others), My boss is on leave today, and I just finished my work slightly ahead of schedule, so here are some answers to your questions. Find them ensconced comfortably amongst the questions themselves. For your convenience, 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 have learnt 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 to remember, 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. Please abolish that thought from your mind forthwith! And finally, before I go on, be warned that this is a Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong mail, and be prepared to spend some time with boring details of companies. 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 20 min. walk from my house. I suppose they mostly deal with VLSI CAD and stuff like that, which deals directly with Electronics. > 02. CMC, Hy. ===> Ask J. Sriram ;-) :) He will by far be the best information provider. > 03. Cadence Design Sys, Noida. (*) ===> A company that deals extensively with VLSI CAD. Amongst the highest payers 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 of money they offer will be good for anybody, even if they live in an expensive place like Delhi, where it is situated. If you are interested in doing a job with *no* work (I do mean you will have to sit idle), which purportedly deals with VLSI CAD, join this company. They were really desperate for people last year: I had given in my application, but had decided against joining the company, so I abstained from the interview. They *rang me up at the SUNLab* to ask whether 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 from

Delhi 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 its appearance, having no work at office is a real killer. I was without work (I mean *really* doing nothing) in Elxsi for about two months, and I alone know how frustrating it can get. Be prepared to be frustrated 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 corporate circles. I don't know much about them, except that they do proprietary research and development (the corporate name for "bug fixing and documentation") for the parent company. You will *not* be sent abroad till you are at least 8-12 months old in the company, IF AT ALL. This is the case with most multinational undertakings in India. The pay must be good. I don't know if this is another one of those *workless* (worthless!) front-ends for a big body-shopping multinational, 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 about worthless :) 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 silicon valley. Believe me, it places employees at a considerable disadvantage. > 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 new companies cropping up in "satellite silicon vallies" (hey! I hold the copyright for that phrase) like Hyderabad, Madras, Pune, etc? I've never heard of this one either. > 08. Geometric S/w Services, Bo. (*) ===> Boy! I *am* in the wrong room, 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 this one. Also ask him *why* he left the company. My other friends in Hughes seem to be quite satisfied with it. One of them (my classmate in BTech) worked there for two years. He booked a Maruti 800, which is due for delivery in Feb '96; they sent him to US immediately! ;-) > 10. IMRL, Ba. (*) ===> Sounds like one of those quasi-governmental organizations like C-DAC, C-DOT, BEL etc. Can't say if it *is* one of

them 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'll have 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 the others: prepare well for the test. Flunk the interview. They will select 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 said to be the Industrial Suburb of New Delhi). I've never heard of this company, and it might be a good idea to check up on this before even attending 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 for lunch/dinner, or they have just joined the ranks of those multitudinous 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 not mistaken. 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. Another thing about L&T. The person who headed the zee-pump project, a guy by the name of Chakravarti, has quit. He now rests in comfortable obscurity in the cosy arms of IIT Delhi, in his position as Assistant Professor, Mech. Engg. Department. > 15. MIEL, Ba. ===> Sorry, can't provide data on this. They're too secretive about what they do. :-) :-) But seriously, they work in cellular telephones and pagers and stuff like that. Could be good work, but I don't know. A good job for CS MTechs with an Electronics background. At any rate, they're going to prefer ECE MTechs and MSs to CS chaps. Try nonetheless. They pay a little less than Wipro Infotech, where the take home ranges close to 9k pm. One positive point about a Motorola job is that they offer leased accommodation in Bangalore. Believe me, it's a very tangible benefit. They also don't seem to have any restriction on how many laser printouts are taken (and *what* printouts are taken) by employees. I have seen people downloading pictures of Madhubala and Meena Kumari and taking laser printouts of them. Of course, you can do that in Wipro Infotech too, provided you are in the AT&T bug fixing project.

> 16. NEXUS, Pondicherry. (*) ===> Pshoo! I thought people of Pondicherry 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 my direction ... grandmaa .... help!!! > 17. Netquest, Ba. ===> A company started by IBM/Microsoft defectors (dunno which one exactly). It's said to have a good work culture, but can't say much about it. It was established sometime last year. DOS work. I don't have much respect for DOS (indeed, I hold it in the utmost contempt). Therefore, I will desist from saying anything more about it, lest I should 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 as networks 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. The Unixware guys are treated as some sort of poor cousins of the NetWare guys, I am told. The pay and perks are good. Based on employee-employer trust, so you can get away with a lot of fraudulence in the name of overtime, house-shifting ... etc. Ask Sudhakar for more details. I'm sure he will supply enough to make your 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 already gone to US! A good company, but only if you are willing to condemn yourself to working in Oracle all your life. They work in all aspects of Oracle, right from the internals (file system, concurrency control, etc) to the User Interface. Quite a lot of their work is bug fixing and stuff, but some lucky fellows might get to do a bit of porting from one OS to another, which isn't as bad as it sounds, actually. > 20. Ramco Sys, Md. ===> Ask somebody else. I never thought that companies in Madras were worth joining, and, consequently, never bothered 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 friends in 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, I

must 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 my earlier 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 Cadence above. All I said for Cadence holds good for it, except that the pay is 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, and so 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 provider company. The pay may not be too good, considering you will be placed in Bombay, and you might become on of the nondescript millions who shuttle between one end of Bombay to the other in the dreaded local trains. There may be certain perks that I don't know of. The interviewers are bound to be knowledgeable, and from NCST, Bombay. Perhaps Dr. Ramani, the virtual head of the ERNET project may come. A job whose interview I can predict will be interesting to attend. I can't say much about the job itself, for I am not sure about it at all. > 30. WIPRO INFOTECH Ltd. } > & } Ba. > WIPRO SYSTEMS } I don't think there's anything to be said about these giants. Only thing is, Wipro is not into the holidays business. I firmly believe that joining Wipro will further your student-like life for a few more years, and if you are really raring to get into the corporate line of jobs, then Wipro is not for you. When I say Wipro above, I mean Infotech. Wipro Systems is one of the more Pseud-ish companies, what with their formal attire, replete with Tie and associated appurtenances of a western lifestyle. Both Wipro-s have a very good pay, and *sure-shot* revisions once a year, where you do end up getting at least a 20% hike, usually. Don't quote me, however. This is strictly off the records.

> 31. Fujitsu Optel Ltd, Bhopal. (*) Search me! > Love, > Srichie. Thanks for your time. Kudos for lasting this far through my sickly humour! :) Best Wishes, Ravindra. Hi guys and gals, It must be time for the Campus Placement Interviews, judging from the multitudes of mails that I receive about this topic. As I throw my mind back to when *I* was preparing to attend my Campus Interviews, I recall that one important question we were all faced with was "which company do I name as my dream job company?" Here are some simple rules of thumb which you can use to decide which company to give as your dream job, but first, remember to FILL IN BOTH ENTRIES. 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 for the dream job. b) if the first job you got was your dream job, you can't attend 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 attending interviews till you get sick of them. IMO, the problem with the dream jobs arises only because of the "you can'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 company which 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 all the criteria mentioned above. Please take the recommendations given above as *my* opinions, and weigh them wisely before accepting them as your own. I am *NOT* to be blamed for any unfortunate turn of events that befalls you out of your following 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. If you are not tied to B'lore then you have got even more opportunities, especially in 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 projects in a variety of fields. There certain specialist firms like, Wipro GE (Medical systems), Tata Unisys (RDBMS), Texas Instruments (Chip designing, tools for CAD), Verifone (Transaction automation), Siemens Commn systems (communication) etc. If u are not so much bothered a about the nature of work, the best company available is Texas Instruments, the most well established multinational in Bangalore, which is also the first to come here. In Delhi there are two companies whose main area is Networks - Hughes Network systems, and River Run (Old name CompSoft). These people pay very heavily. The only minus point is that it is in Delhi. Dont be bothered too much of the interviews. Of course, if you can familiarize with unix internals, then it is an added advantage. In the case of some companies, there will be written test (aptitude, reasoning, etc.) before the interview. If u can get thru the written test with a good performance, chances are high that u may be selected. I dont recommend C-DAC, as pay is very less now, compared to private firms. Never join any govt firm. With best wishes... pradeep ********************************************************************** Return-Path: <dip@tata_elxsi.soft.net> Hi Everybody, These questions were e-mailed to me by Tom (MS scholar). It suddenly reminded me of how little information we had about companies when we appeared for the campus interviews - and also about how much we cursed our seniors for not having sent any. So ... in case you have already cursed .. better take them back ... for here comes some info about TEIL (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 the first few days. (This, I think is the ONLY drawback of TEIL). Generally what happens with every guy (and which also happened to me) is that the chap madly searches for an acco for the first 15-20 days.

He then gets damn pissed off and is on the verge of giving off - when lo !! - he finds a real good apartment. The funda is that the brokers show the unwanted and shady houses for the first 15-20 days hoping that you will get despo enough to go for them. Keep on refusing them and at end they will show you the 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 than guys. God knows how ??? But generally one can forget of living alone, since the 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 `Nourish Caterer'. Biscuit, Coffee, Tea is provided - on the house. Maagi noodles or bread-omlette is also available 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 !!) to Whitefield at : 7:00 am 8:15 am 9:30 am 12:15 pm 2:45 pm From Whitefield to HO at : 9:40 am 11:10 am 4:30 pm 6:15 pm 8:30 pm 10:00 pm Personally I dont think that the location of office in Whitefield (out of Bangalore city) is a big problem. The company provides transport as listed above which is good enough. Only problem is that one cant have a break from the office-work by looking at the MG Road girls!!! In fact I love the location since it saves 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 SNMP service provider). Some design-work has also been alloted to TEIL offlate. ANALOG DEVICES : Vedio Telephony project consists of design and

development of a vedio telephony system using ADSP chips of Analog. Medical Imaging System (in collaboration with the Singapore University). I heard that a lot of porting work goes on in this project. A lot of GUI fundaes is 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 working there pretty behind off in the client-driven projects, form expertise development teams. There are teams in Image Processing, SNMP, ISDN (of which I am a part). We try to do in-house projects and get our fundaes clear (which we should have done in college - long time back !!!). Dont you turn your nose in the other direction on hearing the words `in-house projects'. Altho these projects are not client-driven, they offer much better scope of learning in many cases. Also in case of any new project which includes overseas requirements (also known as body-shopping) there is a good chance that these people will be sent. > 7- Any tips on how to get through the interview? Dont thro away other books, but I think the general direction will be on OS and Networking. One important thing is that the interviewers generally dont ask you very high funda questions. They only want to test how well you did, whatever you claim to have done. It goes without saying that each of you must have one claim of of having done something. > 8- Is there something like batches in which you have to join- Eg: > March batch, Aug batch, etc Not exactly. These people generally want everybody to join as early as possible. luv, dip. PS : Tastes differ ... and so I cant predict whether you would like this place ... but rest assured - I LIKE IT. In a small place like this you are given much 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 place like TEIL rather than in hujjar big places where things become impersonal and where people are known by their 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 personal interview. 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. Here I would like to mention that, the courses you take during your MS matter a lot during the technical interview. The questions are mainly based on the courses you have done during the course of your MS and your area of interest. Its a wise choice to indicate area of interest as a separate field if you are strong in a particular field and wish to draw the attention of the panel to your strong area. Lets begin the voyage in ernest. Before I begin, I request MS scholars to regularly update 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 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 policy iii) Unix directory structure/files/Links (soft and hard link:difference) Networks: --------Suggested Readings: Computer Networks; Tannebaum Unix Network Programming; Stevens Networking with TCP/IP: Vol 1; Comer (A Good book) Questions every scholar should know: 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 header iv) Structure of an ICMP header v) What is ARP and how does it find a physical address given an internet address. Similarly for RARP vi) Classes of internet addresses. Given an address you should be able to tell which class it belongs to. Fundaes on Sub-netting and how 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

Questions every scholar should know: 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-buffer ii) SMP (Sequential Multiprocessor: Jani-Wipro Infotech asked)

C: --Suggested Readings: Kernighan and Ritchie C-FAQ; internet

Questions every scholar should know: 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 to complete and join. Asking for extensions is the worst scenario). Tips: Be confident, frank (But need not give away information which may weigh against your case), free (use first names while addresing them, so be alert when they introduce themselves) and cheerful (attend an interview with a positive frame of mind). Remember you are IITians and you always have an edge. That may sound arrogant, but its true. Best of luck. ------------Some more info on some companies 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 US becos of some VISA goodals. >From the list above, only (1), (2), and possibly (5) can be considered anything near to good for M.S/ M.Tech guys. I'll try and get more info about other organisations.