I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Synopsys (Calgary, AB)
Interview
The interviews were informal, very subjective, and didn’t actually test if you knew very much. I think I had 6 interviews total; only the first one was interesting/challenging enough that it could give the company any information about me (asked about language specific C++ issues and bugs). The rest of the interviews were either painfully easy where it was hard to take an interviewer seriously when they are asking these sorts of questions, or just so subjective that there is hardly any way to distinguish a fantastic candidate from a terrible one that is just good at talking to people.
Interview questions [5]
Question 1
Write Fizz-Buzz in C++. Now make all the stupid constant-time optimizations you can think of to it.
Formally: given an int, return “fizz” if it’s a multiple of 3, “buzz” if it’s a multiple of 5, or “fizz buzz” if it’s a multiple of both. It it isn’t a multiple of 3 or 5, return “”. Then find stupid ways to over-optimize it, such as using no if-statements.
I applied online. I interviewed at Synopsys in Feb 2026
Interview
I had two interviews, one with HR, one technical. Both interviews happened on Teams. It's was ok. . Got rejected after that.
They asked some simple C++ questions and coding problems.
The interview was pretty good, but I wasn't prepared for the EDA specific question since I haven't worked in that industry before. Plus points for using Rust, I really like that
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What would you do if I held you at gunpoint and told you to write unsafe C++ code with memory leaks?
Networking Basics:
What is Wi-Fi?
What does a router do?
What is the difference between download and upload speed?
Software/Hardware Troubleshooting:
What steps would you take if your computer won’t connect to the internet?
How would you troubleshoot a software crash?
What is the first thing you would check if your phone won’t turn on?
