wow ok what a smorgasbord of interviews. just got out of yet another interview i was vastly underprepared for

so far the technical-ish interviews i’ve had are

• r&d engineer
• machine learning engineer
• data engineer
• mechanical engineer

data engineer – sql and python questions over a virtual session. speed important. simple ones (1st round)
machine learning engineer – transformers architectures and layers
r&d engineer – mix of computer vision / image processing, simple physics, mechanical debugging questions
mechanical engineering – high school physics, stress strain, mechanism design questions

going from like drawing the cross-sectional free body diagram to describing how to use isnull() on sql queries to find duplicate records is like

a lot

and i don’t get the chance to build on each interview since they’re so different in format and topic. i swear i can re-learn the stuff and am open to learning / re-learning but jeez what a way to feel like i don’t know anything in particular and i’ll be that worst-case coworker who doesn’t know what a for loop is

a common thing at least in hardware i’m realizing is the whole idea of going from first principles rather than trying to be a little more creative. the goal is to show you know the basics rather than that you are some shiny candidate

more thoughts later, but for now, onwards