I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Block in Nov 2020
Interview
I was reached on LinkedIn by the recruiter. The next round was supposed to be a phone interview but instead they changed it to take home assignment which I submitted before time but they apparently missed it. I sent again the solution and the next round was pair programming for back end. The interviewer was good , questions were not difficult and we even completed before time. The interviewer even helped me in the beginning when I got a little blank by prompting me in right direction. 2 weeks and no reply, so I emailed the recruiter and she answered saying coding was not strong enough. I saw so many negative comments on Glassdoor before the interview, I was skeptical and then they replied exactly the way other people have described. I don't really know what kind of code are they expecting and the recruiters are kind of unprofessional- they lose emails, don't reply for weeks on their own.
Inital take home, followed by extension interview, followed by a coding challenge, followed by system design interview.
The whole process took 3 months!
The interviewers are usually really nice and want you to do your best.
The interviewer was nice, and he is friendly and willing to give hint, the question has 2 follow-ups, it was hard to complete in time. The question was not a typical LeetCode
Phone screen and then a full day of interviews. 3 pair programming challenges, a system design review and a prior experience interview. There was also an onsite lunch with a person from the company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
To design a hotel booking system. Pick any part (backend, frontend, database, api etc) and deepdive into that, explaining the decisions along the way.