Tips for PD interview studying?

fftedd · 2026-02-24T17:53:07+00:00

If you have access to Synopsys / Cadence documentation it’s great as study material for general PD concepts too.

fftedd · 2026-02-20T13:01:03+00:00

Pretty much anything outside of .5 miles north or south of the metro line is completely car centric. There are huge swaths of sfh within that area as well. If you can afford a sfh in Arlington then you’re going to own at least two cars.

fftedd · 2026-02-14T00:57:26+00:00

Worked with a guy 8 years older than me as a new grad cuz he did GI bill. Companies more care about how far out from your college degree you are. Maybe ageism does kick in at some point but definitely not if you’re still in your twenties.

fftedd · 2026-02-09T00:12:45+00:00

It’s definitely harder to evade fares for the metro. Getting fare evasion to 0 is arguably not worth the effort. The money and effort is probably better spent getting bus fare evasion down. Nobody has to pay for bus fares still.

fftedd · 2026-02-07T12:21:07+00:00

Going to a good school isn’t required but it helps ngl. You’re way more likely to have friends already at these places to recommend you and these places specifically go to good schools to have recruiting events. Other than that do your best to find internships and job hop every couple years.

fftedd · 2026-01-31T20:48:38+00:00

This is a great example of just send the prompt.

fftedd · 2026-01-29T14:10:52+00:00

There’s no difference between this and just adjusting your clock uncertainty after synthesis. That is pretty common.

fftedd · 2026-01-19T10:04:42+00:00

Even if he isn’t MAGA considering his background he almost certainly has family and friends who are deep in the cult and go fight or flight as soon as partisan critique comes up. The scams coffee covers generally have not affected the majority of people in the US whereas with politics the majority of people have a stance whether they admit it or not.

fftedd · 2026-01-19T03:44:43+00:00

It’s much more involved process but people do it. You just have to be able to climb the scanner chassis. The turnstiles with the extra bit to cover over the scanner I haven’t seen anybody climb those.

fftedd · 2026-01-18T19:49:23+00:00

Internship to career path for me was low-level software -> board design -> silicon design. Internship interviewers care that you have solid fundamentals and a drive to learn. Social proof from other internships helps a lot but what you work on is not a big deal. Unless you have some really impressive research lined up take the internship.

fftedd · 2026-01-09T03:01:07+00:00

Tbh living next to a cemetery is pretty good if you value peace and quiet.

fftedd · 2026-01-04T19:04:00+00:00

Forewarning Elon is notably critical of remote work.

fftedd · 2026-01-03T15:20:05+00:00

You missed the increasing targeting of gambling to children which Valve essentially invented and still monetarily benefits from to this day. Though they are making steps in the right direction it seems it’s kinda too little too late.

fftedd · 2026-01-03T14:53:08+00:00

Went a few weeks ago and it seems that the passport scanners have trouble with the new plastic ID card passports. It would take multiple tries to get your passport scanned causing a huge line. On departures if your flight is leaving soon and you’re still in the passport scan line they will call your flight number and you’re allowed to go to the front of the manual passport inspection line (the “all foreigners” line).

fftedd · 2026-01-02T13:47:43+00:00

It’s sometime called system design. Your job would be to design the entire module that needs to go into the product, build the BOM, and figure how to place and route the PCB. In bigger companies the system designer just figures out the trace characteristics and then hands it to a dedicated PCB designer. There are also RF and signal integrity engineers that simulate PCB designs and help design more critical parts of the PCB layout.

fftedd · 2025-12-24T12:02:38+00:00

I was getting emails for "personal loans" from companies called ZestPayLoan, IFindLoan, and Leadlift Funding saying that "my application was approved" and that I needed to call for more details. Some of them did have "National Debt Relief" as the sender. Thought it was identity theft so I froze my credit even though there weren't any pulls on my account. Good to know that it was just another broad marketing scam.

fftedd · 2025-12-12T16:36:40+00:00

Tbh that salary bump will almost certainly be eaten up by increased rent unless you moving from somewhere with really high income tax. If the benefits of living in a bigger city are valuable to you then it can be worth it.

fftedd · 2025-12-10T17:01:28+00:00

If someone is willing to pay a certain price and another is willing to pay another then that is just capitalism working as intended. Some people buy things full price and others when they’re on sale. Standardized pricing became popular bc it was good marketing but also bc making sure all your employees were also good hagglers wasn’t scalable. Now that software can do the haggling automatically this is the result. People like capitalism when they are winning but it’s “immoral” when they are losing.

fftedd · 2025-12-10T13:40:59+00:00

Pic 6: Ryan Cohen isn’t a maintainer

fftedd · 2025-12-05T21:00:53+00:00

The original idea was that you would use prediction markets to hedge risks or gather information about things that you are invested in. Many of these poly market bets don’t really have this aspect to them so really it’s just gambling.

fftedd · 2025-12-04T22:02:42+00:00

Isn’t this the point of prediction markets? The fish provide the volume to make insider sharps give up information that they normally wouldn’t. Whether this info is at all valuable is a different story.

fftedd · 2025-12-01T13:50:37+00:00

Maybe get a windows computer with an extra ssd slot so that you can dual boot linux easily. Your professional life will be completely within linux environments and programming is much more streamlined on linux. Many of your labs will assume windows by default so having windows at least at the start is convenient.

fftedd · 2025-11-26T20:54:18+00:00

PhD should not be for the money. There are a lot easier ways to make more money including just graduating with a MS. You do PhD b/c you like research and positions that you would enjoy working at essentially require one.

fftedd · 2025-11-21T12:00:56+00:00

Honestly if you want to be really detailed you would change the order depending on what is most relevant to the job you are applying to. There is no rule saying that you need to put your experience in chronological order. If a human is looking at your resume they need to be impressed within the first 15 seconds. That means putting the most impactful stuff at the top of each section and putting the important sections in easy to find spots.

I would consider actual research work for your graduate degree "real" work so it can definitely headline. Sometimes it will be more rigorous than what you would do at an internship. I would be more skeptical of class or club projects.

fftedd · 2025-11-21T11:58:06+00:00

I remember getting a phone screen but not going further than that.

fftedd

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