Ayush Laddha - PPO at Mathworks
Written on October 5th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}Q.1. Could you please introduce yourself and describe your SI?
A.1. My name is Ayush Laddha. I'm a fourth-year, single degree student from Electronics and Instrumentation. I did my SI at Mathworks, and it was a seven-week long internship. It was supposed to be eight but was cut short on account of the Coronavirus problem. My stipend was around 42,000 INR. Including me, there were five selects for the SI. Out of the five selects, only three of us got a PPO, one ME student, and two BE students.
Q.2. What was your position at Mathworks while you had your SI there? What was your project at Mathworks about?
A.2. I was selected as an EDG intern, which stands for the engineering development group. That's an entry-level group in Mathworks for the new hires. Although I was a part of the EDG group, my project was in DLHDL toolbox team, that's what it's known as in MATLAB.
Q.3. Could you tell us about the selection process, the testing process, and the interview you had for getting your SI?
A.3. Our selection process was of two rounds. The first one was an online round, and it consisted of two or three coding questions. These were elementary and very generic questions. I would not say any of these required competitive coding, just some basic knowledge of programming would be good enough, and you'll be able to breeze through the interviews.
The second round was an interview. Mathworks came for two roles: for the hardware, another for the software, and eight students selected for both of those, a total of sixteen. Only five of us were chosen for the SI. Everything from the managerial to the coding round, the behavioral round, and the HR were included in the Interview. They did not ask any DSA or coding questions. They did ask the others some basic coding questions related to using binary operators, how would you replicate a flow of digital design on using C++, etc. One tip I have for interviews is that when answering any question, try to quote examples from experience. That's where projects will help you a lot.
In my project, my task was to make an activations function API by which you can extract individual layer outputs. Let's consider a deep neural network. What happens is you give it some input, and you get an output, so if you want to check the output from each layer, that's where the activations API will enable you to do that.
Q.4. When did you start preparing for your SI? How much time and effort would you ideally advise for the same? What are the resources you used to prepare for your interview process?
A.4. I started preparing for my SI when I was in my PS1. I would usually practice code for one hour or so after I was done for the day. I was not very particular about coding. I started doing it gradually since I had done no coding before except for the compulsory C programming course. I started with following the BPHC competitive coding group. They were posting some summer internship series at that time. I did all the questions they posted and some other Codeforces questions, which gave me an excellent start. I would advise people who are starting right now with competitive coding to practice some basic questions from GeeksForGeeks or InterviewBit. And for learning theoretical concepts like DSA, I would recommend referring to CP Algorithms, HackerEarth, and Geeks for Geeks. And if you want to practice coding, then go for Interview Bit, Leetcode, or Codeforces.
Q.5. What were the courses (and other college-related resources, including your PS-1) which helped you with the same? Were there any courses that companies look at extensively while selecting people?
A.5. One thing I would like to suggest, especially to non-CS people, is that your focus shouldn't be on only completing those "key" courses. Doing the course itself is not mandatory; just knowing is sufficient. I hadn't done DSA, OOPS, OS and all, but I'd learned those independently. However, in terms of courses, I think some important course concepts are DSA, OOPS, OS, and optionally computer networking and DBMS.
Q.6. Could you tell us a bit about your profile (including your projects and research experiences) and what you thought the spike helped you in the selection process? How important did you think those aspects of your profile were?
A.6. So the first thing is that for interviews at Mathworks, your resume is vital. It would be best if you were very thorough with your resume. Secondly, they asked me some questions about what is written on the superset portal. So I would say that you should do good company research. And knowing Matlab is an additional bonus point that they usually consider. Apart from that, they were very particular about my projects. I had five projects out of which one was related to electronics that I did in my PS-I. The interviewer asked me in-depth details and drilled me a lot on my projects. He also asked many behavioral questions like, what my strengths were, my weaknesses, what were times someone gave me constructive feedback, and many such questions. I'm the branch topper of Electronics and Instrumentation, and I put that in my resume, he was impressed by that. Unlike other technical interviews, he looked at my co-curricular activities. I am the vice-captain of duathlon and a district-level badminton player, so he was impressed by that.
Before my SI, I had completed three internships, including my PS1, and another WFH internship I had done for a startup in Switzerland. I think that stood out to the interviewer. I also had a good number of CS projects, which wasn't generally the case for a student from an electronics background. I had a minor in data science, so I think these points gave me an edge. So I would suggest the Information Retrieval course to everyone; it's an opportunity to get good projects.
Q.7. Did you participate in any non-academic activities (like Hackathons or coding challenges), and how did it help you?
A.7. In terms of non-academic technical activities - no, I didn't participate in any hackathons or contests or anything. But coming to some clubs and other departments, I was a part of the Wall Street Club. I was also active in sports; I was part of the athletics team.
Q.8. How heavily do you weigh the role of soft-skills, CGPA, technical skills in your SI process, and the SI to PPO conversion?
A.8. I would say technical skills come first. The second one would be your soft skills, and the third would be your CGPA. I say so because CGPA is usually just a cutoff criterion. Most companies only need you to be above a cutoff CG. I would say an 8+ CGPA, and you're good to go; you will be eligible for 95-100% of companies that visit our campus for SI or placements. It's self-evident why technical skills, what would be the most useful, and soft skills, I'd say that they don't expect you to be very fluent in English. Still, you should be able to express your views and to be able to make the interviewer and your colleagues at the company understand your ideas.
Q.9. How did the WFH aspect of your SI affect the general nature of the job?
A.9. I would say that there are various aspects to it. If I am asked to take a stand, I would say that I would prefer the offline mode. One of the difficulties that we generally face with the online mode is that you don't have a sense of physical touch. Being physically present and talking to your managers and mentors, that is a different thing. But here, to speak with your mentor or your manager, you have to schedule your meetings, which takes more time, and communicating in person is more comfortable than explaining over a call or by screen-sharing. Secondly, I would say another disadvantage was connectivity issues. At MathWorks, we were asked to work using remote desktops, and we would face frequent disconnections. To set up the remote environment was inconvenient too; we had to use VPN and remote desktops.
There were perks too though, you could do anything you wanted, have flexible work hours, and you didn't have to travel to the location, find a room to stay in, and that saved a lot of time.
Q.10. How did you find working with your team at MathWorks? How big of a role did the senior colleagues there play in guiding you?
A.10. My managers and mentors put in a lot of effort to make sure I felt right; they organized activities from time to time and hosted some fun meetings and celebrations.
I worked with a small team, around 8-10 people. In Mathworks, you're given not only a mentor and a manager but also a sponsor and a buddy. A buddy is someone you can consider as a friend, and he coordinates your day to day activities, like onboarding, he'll help you out with connection issues, all that. A mentor is someone who guides you in your project. A sponsor is someone senior to the mentor, and he/she overlooks the entire project, while the manager overlooks all activities. You meet with your mentor daily and have weekly meetings with your sponsor, who you can reach out to in case of more significant issues, and your manager maintains a sort of feedback overview from everyone in your team.
My mentor, manager, and sponsor were beneficial and very considerate. My mentor guided me through every step of the process and had a thorough understanding of the codebase. My initial difficulty was understanding the huge codebase of MATLAB, but my mentor was helpful in that aspect.
My project required me to develop the API and test it, and it was something I was able to finish one week earlier. They dedicated the last week to presentations and other formalities. I had to present it to the US team.
Q.11. Could you tell us more about the SI-PPO conversion process? What made you stand out apart from all your colleagues that led to your PPO conversion? How easy would you say it is to convert the SI to a PPO?
A.11. One central point in my favor was that I could finish the project a week in advance. I also understood the initial part of my project well, so I completed a 2-3 week-long part in one week itself. That impressed my mentor and my sponsor. Another thing that impressed my manager was that I could use my PC and other resources to get the project done despite having many remote desktop issues. I was also pretty good with my communication skills. I was able to express my ideas and the difficulties I was facing clearly.
There aren't any rules coming to the SI to PPO conversion, but I know they follow a specific process. After 4-5 weeks, your manager takes feedback from your mentor and your sponsor, which he conveys to both you and the upper management, and they decide based on this feedback, your work, and your resume. They usually let you know their final decision while you're doing the SI, but it got delayed in my case because of the Corona problem.
Q.12. How important do you think doing an SI is for a single-degree student?
A.12. I would say SI plays a significant role in developing your skills. I was not very confident in my communication skills, which is something I improvised a lot. I also learned how to behave professionally in front of your team and upper management. Apart from that, the skills that you gain working on a project are also very valuable. Overall, I'd say that even though getting an SI is a significant achievement, it's not the end of the world if you don't. I've seen people who haven't gotten an SI but still get decent placements. Of course, the option of off-campus SIs and placemats is always there.
Single degree students should try to get internships because we don't have any disadvantages, we don't miss out on a dual semester PS. A drawback I faced, and I think a lot of electronics students will face, is that since you haven't done a lot of CS courses, and an SI takes up most of your summer before placements, you don't get time to prepare for placements.
Q.13. What are your plans for the upcoming placement cycle, as well as the PS-2/TS process? Do you have any off-campus placement/internship plans?
A.13. I have the first semester placement cycle, so the placement cycle for me is over. Since my PPO came out before placements started, I was eligible for placements in only two companies. The Placement Unit restricted me. For now, I'm not preparing for any off-campus placements either. I'm delighted with the placement I've gotten. I'll go for PS; I don't plan on going for a thesis.
Q.14. Do you have any suggestions for the juniors appearing for the SI cycle this year or appearing for it next year?
A.14. Firstly, for people sitting for MathWorks, please be very thorough about what you write on your resume, and try doing a good number of projects. These will help keep your conversations smooth, and skillfully answer questions the interviewer asks you and enable you to change the Interview from an interrogation to a discussion. Also, do research the company, and learn some MATLAB if possible. You don't have to learn a lot of competitive programming; basic knowledge of DSA will suffice.
And secondly, some advice for the electronics people, don't worry about blindly completing the courses; focus more on gaining knowledge. Do some good CS courses, decide between IT and Electronics placements early on, and start coding before PS1.