Logic Fruit — FPGA Designer
Name: Aditya Pathak
- Which company have you been placed in and what’s the job description?
>> I have been placed in Logic fruit Technologies as an FPGA designer. It’s based in Gurgaon and I’m currently an intern in this company with the role of research and development.
2. Tell us something about your college life and experiences. Were you the part of any club or society throughout your college life and how did they help you?
>> It has been great excluding those one and a half years of pandemic. I was a part of Team Srijan since 2018 and currently I’m leading the electrical sub team. Being a part of this team has taught me a lot of things including hard work, discipline and how to interact with others. When you make a mistake in academics it can only affect you but when you are in a team, making a mistake affects the whole team. So to take the team with you as far as you go is a very good experience along with doing other things that you want.
3. What message would you give to the first-year and second-year undergraduates on effectively using their time and maintaining their academic as well as social life?
>> I think it should be balanced, not too much weight on either of the sides. They should enjoy but should not completely forget about their academics because during the placement interviews, some of the important concepts learnt in first and second year are also asked.
4. How did you discover that “this particular sector” is suitable for me or I have interest in this? How did you carry forward in this?
>> As far as discovering, I didn’t actually think that I would be going into this job profile. When Logic Fruit came for recruitment, I just applied without thinking much about job profile. Actually I was preparing for electrical companies while I was manufacturing an EV but I thought I should apply to it because I also had knowledge of electronics. When I actually cleared the test and it was the time for interview, I started studying electronics more in the digital part and after three rounds of interviews which took place in course of one month I finally got selected. FPGA is the kind of role that suits me because in EV design I had experience of motor controllers, battery management system design and field programmable gate array that is used for further fine-tuning and optimizing the controller.
5. Many of the students have interest in both core and software, what would you suggest to them?
>> It depends on person to person. Some can manage both the core as well as software domains but others have to choose one and they have to prioritize it based upon their skills and strengths. The most important thing is that you should decide it according to your interest and you must enjoy it.
6. What are the technical skills that are important for EEE graduates?
>> Regarding technical skills, first of all MATLAB is the most important and most extensively used software in EEE core, so you must have a good command over it. The major topics of EEE which any core company can ask in a test or in an interview are power systems, power electronics and electrical machines. For software companies or consultancies, you need to start by preparing for certain languages like Python and C or C++.
7. How early one should start preparing for internships and how important an internship is? Where did you pursue your internship?
>> During your first year, you need to find your interest by continuing to explore. You should start preparing for your particular sector in the 2nd year since companies start coming to college from the start of the 3rd year for internships. However, my perspective is that you shouldn’t give yourself too much stress about it as many of my batch mates didn’t get any internship but got placed in good companies. I did my internship at ElectricFish Energy Inc. It’s a start-up based in California, USA.
8. What are the projects you have done in 4 years and how did they help in your placement and internship?
>> First and foremost my biggest and most favourite project was TSE-21, the first electric formula prototype race car of Team Srijan. It is the best by far. I am the Electrical Lead of the Team. This project gave me a lot of insightful ideas, skills and amplified my knowledge. Once you are into something that is in your field of interest, then you come out more improved and developed. Along with this I’ve also done projects like LQR based speed control of Induction Motor, SVPWM based control of 3-phase VSI. The projects that you do definitely help you during your internship and placement provided that you stay in the same domain as your projects. Even if your domain has changed it helps you in the way you manage things, deadlines, and documentation as well as communication skills.
9. What is your advice to the juniors who want to get placed in the field you’ve chosen?
>> For getting placed in the field of electronics, one should thoroughly study digital electronics from A-Z, they should know everything but not in much detail. Few basic things that you should know in detail are multiplexer-demultiplexer, encoders-decoders, number systems, finite state machines, static timing analysis, block domain crossings and FIFO buffers like asynchronous and synchronous FIFO are very important. These are the basic and most important things that a student looking for a FPGA job profile must look into and also he/she should be well versed with a hardware descriptive language like Verilog/VHDL, then they would make themselves a strong contender for a good placement.
10. Apart from a good CGPA, what are the other skills required in cracking the interviews of core companies?
>> Other than CGPA, core companies basically look for your projects done and the skills that you possess. If you haven’t done an internship then I don’t think there’s any problem but you should do couple of projects in core domain because they expect some good achievements in core domain and they will hire you on the basis of your knowledge only. So, do some good projects which are also kind of unique.
11.How did you prepare for the interviews? What was the toughest part for you while giving the interviews?
>> The toughest part for me while giving my interview was that this was an electronics company but I was prepared more for electrical core. I didn’t prepare for it much as I wasn’t expecting to be interviewed by an electronics domain company so I did selective study and prepared the most important topics that I had told earlier. I prepared for interview questions that were asked in previous years. I had made notes of that and revised from that only, which was enough. While giving an interview, you shouldn’t stutter and you should be confident in what you’re saying.
12.How important are LinkedIn outreaches? Who should I mostly reach out to?
>> If you are interested in some job profiles or some particular areas, you should first research on the net what all companies are there which work on those areas and then start following those companies on LinkedIn as sometimes they may offer job openings on LinkedIn also. So, outreaches on LinkedIn are really helpful.
13.What do you think about free lancing as many students also do free lancing along with their academics?
>> You can do freelancing jobs if you are good at time management as you will be able to get good exposure in the corporate world. You can settle up in what you are doing or basically it may provide you a backup plan like if someone wouldn’t get a good placement but are good in freelancing then it’s really beneficial for them.