FORESIGHT(2020): Summer Internship Mathworks| Tanmay Das

Brief Introduction:

My name is Tanmay Das and I am pursuing B.Tech in Instrumentation Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. I did my summer internship at Mathworks (Hyderabad Campus). Mathworks is basically a product-based multinational company whose major product is MATLAB. The internship was for 2 months and I worked under Hardware-Software Codesign team on HDL Coder toolbox of MATLAB.

Selection Procedure:

Last year, Mathworks was open for all departments. There were two rounds for selections. First was the coding round where questions related to programming were asked. There were MCQ as well as coding questions. 12 people were shortlisted in the first round. The second round was a Video Call interview. The interviewer asked a few questions on CV and then provided a hackerrank interactive platform where I was asked to write and run certain codes. Then I was asked a few questions on C++ STL library and whether I want to go for higher studies or not. Out of 12, 5 were selected for the internship and three of us chose Hyderabad campus.

How to prepare for them:

For the coding round, one should have proper knowledge of data structures and time complexity of different algorithms(like sorting, searching etc). One can study all the relevant theories from GeeksforGeeks. Everything is pretty well explained there. For practice, one can refer to InterviewBit or Leetcode. One needs to understand that there is cut-throat competition in all the online tests so cutoffs are generally quite high and one needs to solve most of the questions in order to qualify to the next round. In such a situation speed really matters along with problem-solving skills.

Your Project Details:

As I mentioned above, I worked under the Hardware Software codesign team. My work was to build a feature in HDL Workflow Advisor of HDL Coder toolbox. It may sound like some hardware stuff but the work was completely on software development. All the basic knowledge related to hardware was quite easy to understand and was learnt parallelly during the course of my project. I did not have any prior knowledge of the toolbox I was working on and had the least experience of working in MATLAB but I did not face any difficulty. Mathworks provides lots of online training to all its new joinees so that no faces any problem while onboarding.

How was your experience working from home? What difficulties did you face?

My experience was quite good. Mathworks organised a smooth onboarding process. They allocated me a buddy who helped me with setting up a remote PC in my laptop and explained to me the basic rules and terminologies at Mathworks. The working hours were completely flexible and it all depended on the timing of the meetings. All the meetings were organised in Microsoft Teams. The project was also nice and did not involve any compromise because of pandemic. Everything was well-managed and according to the schedule. Apart from working on the project, we had one complete day called Bash Day when we were given a chance to explore all the features of the latest version of MATLAB that is yet to be released. Also, two days were reserved for MATLAB Answers where we interacted with MATLAB customers to know more about their interests.

What effect could COVID have in the upcoming internship process?

Mathworks is still hiring students for their internship program. However, it may happen that they take less number of people as compared to last year. But this is just an assumption from my end. I do not have any clear idea of how many interns they are willing to hire this year.

According to you, who should ideally apply for this internship?

Mathworks works on a variety of fields. There are a huge number of toolboxes present in MATLAB. Anyone who is interested in any of hardware, software, image processing, computer vision, deep learning can consider Mathworks for an internship.

And what advice will you give to them?

To the Mathworks internship aspirants:

The selections are purely based on coding skills and do not involve any other knowledge. The questions are not that tough. Be confident and fluent during the interview. The people who are willing to go for higher studies in future are generally not preferred by interviewers because they invest a lot of resources and time during the internship and won’t like someone to quit the company after the internship or after working for one or two years.

To the people who get selected:

There is a lot of scope to learn at Mathworks. They have a separate portal which consists of all kinds of interactive online training that you need to know. At first, one joins the Engineering Development Group Department in Mathworks where the basic aim is to groom the individual so that he/she can explore all the options, know more about the company and then finally settle into one of key areas at Mathworks. There are a lot of career options open for the future within Mathworks. The amount of career growth will be huge. Regarding the evaluation for PPO, apart from work on the project, one is also evaluated on the basis of soft skills such as communication skills, presentation skills, leadership skills, ability to take initiative, time management, willingness to participate etc. So make sure you pay attention to these things too.

At last, to all the internship aspirants, I would say, be calm and patient. There will be times when things will not happen according to your plan even if you are putting a lot of efforts but everything will fall into place as the time will pass. Never lose hope and keep doing hard work. Try to learn as much as you can. It will help you grow as an individual.

All the best,

Tanmay Das