Square Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Square (San Francisco, CA (US)) in January 2018.

Interview

I had a phone interview with the hiring manager after my initial phone interview with one of their recruiters. This was by far the worst phone interview experience of my life. The hiring manager was late (no big deal), he was abrupt, he didn't let me finish answering his questions, and he was quite rude. What really striked me was his comment, and I quote: "I am sitting here scratching my head as to why you applied for this position", in the sense that I was overqualified and I didn't understand why I applied. I ended up not being called in for an in-person interview which probably is a blessing, since I don't know how anyone could work on a day-to-day basis which such a manager.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. I interviewed at Square (San Francisco, CA (US)) in March 2015.

Interview

I was rescheduled 3 times and when they did arrive they were 15 minutes late for a 30 minute interview. Very junior person interviewing for senior role that had very little experience. Also for a senior role - the HR person did not even meet with me or provide any guidance as to how the role and my fit were relevant. Terrible process never seen anything like it.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took a week. I interviewed at Square in July 2015.

Interview

Was very nervous at first about what I would be asked seeing as I hadn't interviewed in the past 3 years. I applied through a recruiter that then helped me schedule a Skype call with an engineer at square. I was afraid of the question I would be asked because I have read that the interview was very difficult. When presented with the question I was surprised because I was capable of solving it. There was a 45 min time limit and you were allotted 15 min at the end for questions. I was capable of solving the question but I took too long doing so and for this reason I failed. By the way I am a decent programmer and I think the question asked was very fair. Just make sure you do many practice problems so that you are quick on your toes when coding the solution.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through college or university. The process took 4+ weeks. I interviewed at Square (San Francisco, CA (US)) in January 2015.

Interview

I was first sent a HackerRank challenge (one hour timed); all it wanted was to simulate a game (rules were explained) by reading inputs and determining who won, who lost, or if there was a tie. Passed 4/6 test cases.

The next two interviews were pair programming on coderpad and Skype. Both were one hour long, and the interviewers were interested in not just solving the problem, but in having you talk the whole time. I have the feeling they gave major bonus points for using object-oriented principles in your solution (they always started typing when I used inner classes), and they let you choose your language.

I was only asked about run-time once.

The final interview was on-site in San Francisco, they covered all transportation/food costs. I came in with a group of six or seven other potential interns, and the first hour or two was a tour, history of Square, and lunch. Then they led us to a set of open desks where we had our last two technical interviews back-to-back (each one hour long -- I spaced out on the last one, that disqualified me).

After that we had coffee, a sit-down chat with some engineers, and then a send-off with swag. Overall, it's been my favorite interviewing experience (no whiteboards at all, just coding and chatting).

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through college or university. I interviewed at Square.

Interview

sign up through university online and then get called in for an on site interview. before the on site interview, had to do a test online to code for certain functions. 1 hour long test of pure coding knowledge. can be coded in any language. then went to the on site interview. 2 hours long coding session

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Square (San Francisco, CA (US)).

Interview

First, I applied online and then talked to a recruiter at a career fair. Next, I was led through an online coding challenge which led to two Skype interviews with current Square engineers. These Skype interviews were done through a shared coding environment and were expected to run by the end of the 45 minute/1 hour interview which was a bit daunting at first, but definitely doable. Next, I went into the headquarters in SF for two in person pair-programming interviews which were difficult and were also expected to run by the end of the interview. Overall, it was a very different interview process, but I really enjoyed it

Interview

Started with a phone screen in which an engineer asked the typical questions. Spent a day on-site working on pair coding problems and some design questions. Most of the people were fairly friendly and I liked the pair coding format. They let you use whatever language you are most comfortable programming in.

Interview Questions

Negotiation

They didn't budge a lot on the negotiation side.

Application

I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Square (San Francisco, CA (US)) in October 2013.

Interview

I submitted my resume to my university's career website, after which I received an email to complete a coding challenge online. This was used to determine whether I got an on-campus interview. There were two questions, both of which I put below. I finished the first and got halfway through the second one.

After that I got the on-campus interview, which was pair-coding style. We implemented a least-recently-used cache in Java. It was fun, and I was able to Google syntax I didn't know, and we ended up getting it to run.

A bit later, I got an email to set up an on-site interview at Square in SF. This consisted of breakfast, three pair coding interviews, lunch, a few talks, coffee at Sightglass, and then that was it.

The three questions I got were:
1. find all prime numbers under a given number
2. Fraud detection: if two merchants have swiped the same card, they are part of the same component. Find the size of the component.
3. parse TVL bytes and return cardholder name.

I struggled with the last one in particular. I was notified of no offer after a week.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Square in October 2014.

Interview

Applied via college/university. Recruiter reached out with a coding exam, which was pretty easy to solve. Next, a phone screen was scheduled, but I did not make it past this stage. The phone screen consisted of some resume questions and a programming question based on CoderPad, so the interviewer can watch you write your solution, though you are also free to implement your solution on an IDE first.

It does seem that they want people who can think of a good solution and code pretty quickly, and if you use API docs, that you use them properly by making the correct calls that are appropriate for what you want to do and that provide the best theoretical performance. The technical questions themselves weren't too bad, but they set the bar at a pretty high level for the solution that you deliver. So in this case, simply being able to deliver a workable solution isn't enough.

Interview Questions

Application

I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Square.

Interview

Applied online. First step was completing a coding challenge on HackerRank. Next was a one-hour phone screen. Interviewer seemed genuinely interested in my past projects. Spent first 10 minutes talking about current and past projects. Then did a coding question on a shared coding environment. The environment compiled and ran code so the code you write has to work. Unfortunately I didn't do so well during the phone screen and didn't make it past this stage.

Interview Questions