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      Principal Embedded Linux Engineer Interview

      18 Aug 2014
      Anonymous interview candidate
      San Francisco, CA
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Fitbit (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2014

      Interview

      Phone screen with HR, followed by phone screen with hiring manager, followed by "at home" coding project, followed by on-site interview in San Francisco. The interview with the hiring manager wasn't very difficult. The at-home coding project seemed easy enough to me. They were fairly flexible in terms of scheduling the on-site (hiring manager mentioned that he "wasn't in any hurry" to fill this position). Interview in S.F. wasn't quite what I'd expected. The job description was for an embedded Linux generalist, but it seemed to me that what they were looking for was more of a low-level firmware specialist who could do Linux if necessary. It wasn't really clear to me why they were looking for an embedded Linux person… the Fitbit devices of today are nowhere near being capable of running Linux (even very experimental stripped down versions), and the power envelope that these devices must run in lead me to believe that will continue to be true for a long time (it may _eventually_ be possible to run a Linux system on a button-cell battery, but the state of things isn't very close to that right now). It was clear from talking to the people there that they weren't quite sure what this position was all about either. After talking to about 6 people, the hiring manager came in and told me that they'd decided that I wasn't what they were looking for, so I had the whole afternoon and evening to wander around San Francisco before going home. Not a terrible deal, but I wish I could have gotten more out of it. I somewhat expected that the interview might be a little strange, since they told me that I was the first person that they'd ever brought in for this position. I noticed that both of the "embedded Linux" positions posted on their website remained for about 5 months after I interviewed and then disappeared. I don't know if that's because they found someone who they thought was a fit, or if they just decided that the position didn't make sense at all for them.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Someone asked how to count the number of bits in a 32 bit integer.
      1 Answer
      2

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