I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Block (Atlanta, GA) in Dec 2021
Interview
I had a phone screen with the recruiter and two pair programming sessions done via CoderPad.
The pair programming problems I got weren't from leetcode, but they were very much in that style. They weren't very difficult, but there were multiple steps so it does take a bit of time to complete.
Feedback from the pair programming sessions leaned negative, which surprised me since I thought I did well and I was able to demonstrate that I clearly knew how to code. My coding style is to code a rough skeleton of he solution, then run the program with some fixture data and make adjustments until it's working, a bit like TDD.
However the interviewers didn't seem to like that approach and the feedback largely focused on how when I ran my program, it had bugs. Not that the program had bugs and I couldn't get it working by the time the interview ended, but that it had any bugs at all when I ran it, and fixing those bugs was seen as me "struggling" to get the program working.
If I were to have the opportunity to interview at Square again, I honestly have no idea how I could do better other than to code out a near-perfect solution that worked on the first try. Making it past this stage of Square's interview process seems like a complete roll of the dice. When the goal of the pair programming session doesn't seem to be to solve the problem, and even small errors are enough to doom your candidacy, it's difficult to see what the point of this exercise is or how you're being evaluated.
I applied online. I interviewed at Block in Oct 2025
Interview
I had a call with their recruiter first, talked about my past experience and what I'm look in for in my next role. Then had a technical front-end screening with two engineers where I needed to build an application. I thought I did well, I was able to implement a working app, but I did not pass. Not further feedback was given.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a memory game in any JS framework or vanilla JS. You need to implement this game based on some demo app that you can play around with before hand. You need to implement the HTML/CSS and JS all from scratch. The game has the following behavior: you need to display N x N cards in a grid lay out. The number of N should be configurable by the user through a slider. When the user clicks a "start" button, N cards a highlighted for 2-3 seconds. Then the user needs to click on the cards that were highlighted. If the user clicks on the correct card, it changes the color to green, otherwise it changes to red. If all the initially highlighted cards are clicked the game is over. What to watch out for: you need to track the cards that were clicked in the grid, you need pick N random cards to be highlighted for each round of the game. You need to make sure the gird of N cards can be increased and reduced. It's not enough that the app works, you also need to write clean/readable code. You have about 40 minutes to implement this, and you need to talk through your work.
Long process. System design felt like I aced it but they didn't pass me. It was the classic design a hotel booking platform question. They put you through a lot of rounds up front.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Block in Feb 2025
Interview
Two rounds: the first was a technical screen and hiring manager interview, and the second round was 5 interviews (2 coding, 1 system design, 1 technical project review, 1 leadership interview)
