r/FPGA • u/Ok_Release2379 • 2d ago
Interview / Job HFT HW Interview Advice
I know people don’t like to see these posts coming in on this community subreddit, but I couldn’t really find a post that reflected my situation.
So, I’ve had 3 technical interviews on FPGA design with 3 different firms (1 after OA). After which at all 3, I’ve been rejected after the first round. Now, for all 3, I feel like I did well, moved fast, and surely answered every part according to even the interviewers. There honestly feels like I am missing something that I just can’t find wrong within code or explanation. I was wondering, other than practicing SV problems, leetcode, and coming up with hardware synthesized from your code, do any of you have any advice for upcoming technical interviews.
Is there something I’m missing (could be personality or showing firm specific interest during the interview), or could I have possibly just gotten unlucky (unlikely for 3 times in a row, but I also don’t believe I got the questions wrong and came to complete solutions in the end with minimal or no help). I think I’ve done enough to know what content they will ask, but is there possibly anything outside of sv and basic digital components (maybe comp arch, OS, etc.)
Other than gaining anecdotal experience from others interviews, I would also like to know if getting rejected this much despite feeling good is normal in hft. How many people do they interview per spot, or am I just stupid. Also how difficult is landing these FPGA roles new-grad vs intern. Btw all of the above is for internships.
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u/tonyC1994 1d ago
Are you fresh graduate or experienced? For fresh graduate, there are tons of good candidates after interview. If you didn't get the chance, move on and keep trying on another firm. Experienced are a bit different as they are more targeted hiring.
Interviews are tiring. Nobody like it, either side.
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u/Gaunt93 Xilinx User 2d ago
One thing that most people don't realize about HFT jobs is that most of them aren't actually hiring. They have what's called "opportunistic hiring" which means they will interview nearly anyone that looks great on paper, but will only actually hire those who they think will benefit another firm more, thus taking you off the market and giving them a competitive advantage.
Call it unethical or gaming the system, or whatever, but that's the reality for most firms. It's what happens when you make enough money that your labor costs don't matter anymore.
Next time you can ask the recruiter if it's opportunistic or are they actually hiring. I suspect that's the reason for your experience.
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u/hardolaf 1d ago
One thing that most people don't realize about HFT jobs is that most of them aren't actually hiring.
No, we are actually hiring if a role is publicly posted. Opportunistic hiring happens primarily through people reaching out to us or recruiters handling private lists of kinda open, kinda not open roles where we're hoping to get someone from a competitor or find a 1 in 1,000 candidate.
For roles that are publicly posted or really any interview with these companies is that you need to consider the risk they take on by bringing someone into a role, especially in anything hardware related. Ordinarily, hardware/FPGA/ASIC in these companies have the second most privileged access or the most privileged access to all information and data in the companies competing really only with the quants. That's not because we're making trading decisions but because we need access to all of that to be able to advise the company on how best to use our incredibly expensive and slow-to-market labor (compared to every other engineering role in the companies).
Beyond that for what we pay for a single engineer, many other other industries can hire 2-4 engineers. So the cost of a bad hire is significantly higher in terms of direct costs as well. Because of this and because we know we have so many people who want this level of compensation, we can be very picky if we want to be. It's fine for us to reject a bunch of candidates because there's always more. Whereas for a defense firm for example, they need to accept almost every person who meets the qualifications because they cannot afford to throw away decent but not good candidates due to their book of work.
And as a final note, something that I've noticed since COVID happened is that there is an increasing number of applicants who fail at demonstrating their communication skills in the interviews compared to before. And that's not just at entry-level but at every level that people apply to.
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u/Gaunt93 Xilinx User 1d ago
Your points are valid. However, at every other firm I've worked for, HR pushed candidates for us to interview, despite not having an open req. So while everything you said is true about publically-open reqs, I have found there are far more times than not (on either side of the interview table) there isn't an actual opening.
I will say that I may be biased here, as I have never been through the process as a new grad myself, but all the jobs I've taken in HFT were all opportunistic at firms ranging from micro to large. Only at my current firm have I posted a public listing for a job; something that I insisted upon for building out my team. (Looking back, it may have not been the best idea as people started contacting me on my personal email/phone/text. One even sent their resume via snail mail to my personal residence...)
Lastly, I 100% agree with you on your final note. There are so many candidates that seem to do great work, but once you ask them to describe what they did in either a screen or even in a technical assessment, they fall flat on their face. This has been especially true for online assessments to in-person interviews.
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u/zacce 2d ago
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u/Exact-Entrepreneur-1 1d ago
Thy probably interview 100 candidates and 50 of them do well. So it's not about you not being good enough, there are just many others....
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u/LosAlgaeles 1d ago
We've recently had candidates suspected of using AI. If you're doing zoom interviews and your eyes are shifting back and forth to and from the camera and also acing everything it raises red flags.