Kernel Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process was straightforward and efficient, with the interviewers clearly knowing what they were looking for. They were very direct in their questioning and super flexible with scheduling.

This was a long interview process with four interviews. The first two were with project managers, then an in-person one with the engineering and technician team, and finally with the CTO. There was a lot of repeated technical questions, which suggests poor communication between the interviewers. The process also dragged on for weeks, and it seemed like the job requirements kept changing, with no one agreeing on the role. I even got caught in the middle of an argument between two teammates about the technician's duties, which was uncomfortable. The interview style was a tough test of knowledge and character, which got tiring and felt condescending after a while. The soldering test was also thrown together quickly, with no proper tools like a wet sponge or cleaning pad for the iron. The solder tip was too big, and the engineer pointed to a tiny, hard-to-reach component, asking if I knew what it was. I identified it as an 0402 resistor, and he seemed impressed. Then he asked me to desolder and replace it, but the solder roll was too thick for fine-pitch work. I tried my best with the provided materials, but I should have spoken up about the unsuitable equipment. In the end, the five hours of interviews and thirty emails for this position felt inefficient, disorganized, and disrespectful of my time.

Had a chat with a recruiter and then went on to a technical interview. It was supposed to be for an HTML/CSS/JS role, but they asked me to build an app using React. I pointed out that React wasn't mentioned in the job description, and they replied, "yeah that's on us". Then, they actually updated the job description right there on the call while I was still talking to them.

The interviewer was 7 minutes late for our 15-minute chat, leaving only 8 minutes for me to talk about myself. They kept cutting me off while I was describing my projects, seemingly to brag. The interviewer seemed to have no clue about what they were looking for, even asking about reconstructing brain activities from signals without understanding inverse scattering. It really makes you wonder about the company culture - all talk about high-level concepts to impress investors, but no real drive for research.