Duality

(interviewed on Friday, March 25th)

My interview was at 9 AM, so I left the house at 7:20 AM (actually planned to leave at 7). I figured that I’d run into rush-hour traffic. An hour later, however, I pulled into the parking lot of SST’s Sunnyvale office (Emosyn leases office space from SST; Emosyn is a subsidiary of SST). I was way early, again.

The wait was a little longer this time, but I had a couple forms to fill out and was given a folder with SST company info (which I was later told not to read too much into).

You know those images of offices with rows and rows of cubicles? SST’s building is like that. Rows and rows and rows and rows of cubicles. You’d think it would be in their best interest to create a more-pleasant and more-inspiring work environment for their employees. Well, guess not. I could have easily gotten lost there. I made an effort not to stray from the interview room without an Emosyn or SST employee guiding me.

The interview itself was much more relaxed than I thought it would be. I was only given a few technical questions. The rest were behavioral questions and questions about classes, projects and research. I brought that up during lunch (yes, they got me lunch! =)) with Shane (my on-campus interviewer) and he said they were looking for a personality fit as much as or more than a technical fit. Makes sense for a company of about 40 people (half working in Sunnyvale).

Comparing Power Integrations and Emosyn, Power Integrations feels much more distant. Their office is in a new development area at the southern tip of San José. It’s up the hill and overlooks a valley. The place is very quiet—on the outside and inside. Emosyn is the exact opposite. Their office is in the middle of Sunnyvale; there’s a Costco a block away. Looking out the window of the interview room, I constantly saw people walking by. There was a continual hustle and bustle. Reminds me of BWRC, except for the whole cubicle-crazy theme they have.