I gave my onsite interviews at square last Friday, I had 2 pair programming rounds, 1 system design, 1 past technical experience, 1 QA leadership and 1 manager chat. I personally feel I did good in the pair programming, completed 2 parts for each and verbally talked about part 3 ( interviewer hinted he had enough data points around coding) For system design i didn't do well, I got stuck on a central part of a design in data modelling and the interviewer helped me to figure that out, couldn't talk about the individual components and how I would scale those. Does Square downgrade? Will it be a reject considering did not do well on system design? YOE : 6.5 TC : 300K Edit : just wanted to thank all the Square engineers, by far this was the most enjoyable interview I have given this year ( I have given 8 phone screens and 2 onsites until now) I wish more companies adopt squares s methodology of interviewing candidates. The questions were not Leet code style but very practical and required common ds knowledge and also knowledge around class design and oop Update (06/18): recruiter got back confirming what i thought, everything else positive except system design. Waiting on hm to see if they have enough to go to hiring committee. 90% I think it's a reject as my previous experience says people error on side of caution but nonetheless thank you folks for all the help, will add the final update once I get it. Update (06/22) : recruiter said they want to do a system design redo. Feeling good that I ll get another chance to prove myself, she also mentioned other rounds were super strong. Update (07/01) : gave the second design review, received positive feedback, was team matched a day later and got the offer. Negotiated hard with a couple of other offers. Final numbers : 190k/590k/15k Recruiter said I ll be eligible for base salary increase and rsu refresh come January but not counting too much on that. If I didn't screw up the first design would have got the L6 offer. Anyways still happy that I don't have to do fu**ing leetcode any more. #swe #onsite #interview #square
I also interviewed with Square. I thought it went fairly well … the feedback was that I was a little slow to get started, but once I did, my code was clean and well thought out… I was still rejected.
Understood, yaa I think I am getting a feeling they require perfection in all rounds. It's very hard to predict what went well and what not, I think we can just guess and ultimately it's upto the team to take the call. I am not keeping any hopes now, will move on and try to concentrate more on system design.
System design is the one that can be retried if you're borderline.
These days perfection is expected in all the rounds to get a passing score in all popular tech companies. Down level happens only in rare cases. Good luck and keep us posted!
Understood. Thanks for the confirmation, will update the results once I hear back.
Absolutely not the case at G - our rubric leaves plenty of room for solutions that are largely correct or strong in some ways but not in others. Also, the whole reason we have several interviews in a loop is to make it so that you have several chances to do well.
I'm having onsite with them soon as well for L5, feeling a bit out of my depth tbh but oh well. Best of luck OP fingers crossed for you!
What's your YOE if you don't mind me asking?
Downlevel is unlikely unless you're right on the border of the YOE guidance. It's not impossible though.
What's the YOE guidance for l5, I think I was interviewed for L6
If you had the Q/A Leadership round then it was probably L6.
I finished 3, 4 and 5 stages (the round that I completed all 5 stages was frontend related) with test cases written out to iterate quickly. Did OK on sys design. I spent a long time on perfecting schema and query patterns and didn't get too far into components. Did mediocre on QA past experience. I wasn't getting much live feedback during this interview so didn't realize they probably wanted this to go in a different direction that I took it. Ended up with a L5 offer. Good luck!
Update (06/22) : recruiter said they want to do a system design redo. Feeling good that I ll get another chance to prove myself, she also mentioned other rounds were super strong Can anyone from Square comment what kind of question can i expect for redo?
What ques you got in first sys design round ? Was it system design or OO design ?
how did past experience/leadership go for you ?
It was strong for me, I gave examples about how I mentored folks, how I lead projects and drove them to completion while keeping my stakeholders upto date , how I helped my SDM and tpm during the course of the project. Finally I topped it off with the impact of the projects. I also talked about various decisions I took to solve the various issues that came up and in retrospect what could I have had done better
wow, thats comprehensive.. thanks .. i interviewed with Sq but my Q/A and leadership round did not go well..
Was the initial System Design question the hotel one I hear that everyone gets? I'm about to do an on-site for a platform team too.
Did you give your interview ?
I did
I personally did pretty well in all parts except in one coding part that I got very nervous and went blanked (had a very hard time understanding the interviewer). In the end I got rejected because of that, that’s what the recruiter said. I had an amazing time and I would consider interviewing again but in don’t think I can until early next year. Tbh I was pretty sad afterwards I think square is a great fit for me given my background and I really like the company culture
Sorry to hear that, but thank you for reply. I won't get my hopes up then. I also feel the same the team was doing exciting work and people seemed super nice. Fingers crossed 🤞
You'll do great next time!