I applied to a job opening on the Developer APIs team in Seattle via LinkedIn Jobs. A recruiter reached out a day or two afterward and scheduled me for a phone screening on CoderPad.io, which went fairly smoothly. However, it seemed I didn't leave a strong impression on the interviewer, so I was scheduled for a second phone screening that went very well. I was then promptly invited for a full day of on-site interviews at Square's HQ in San Francisco.

The on-site interviews were very well organized. An interview coordinator was at reception, showed me around, and ensured my interviewers arrived on time and stayed on schedule. The interviewers were very friendly and helpful. The interviews comprised:

• 3 peer programming sessions
• 1 design/architecture session
• 1 in-depth walkthrough of previous project work on my resume

During the coding sessions, I worked with my interviewers on computers equipped with a pair of keyboards and mice to solve questions broken down into multiple parts with increasing difficulty. The computers had dev tools for a wide variety of programming languages, but we used CoderPad.io because the language I chose didn't have an installed toolset. The interviews were truly collaborative; interviewers actually helped me write logging code, corrected minor mistakes, and made suggestions to simplify tasks.

The coding questions were not algorithmic. I was not asked about the time or space complexities of my solutions. My interviewers seemed most interested in code cleanliness, API simplicity, good organization, and sound functionality. I loved how well organized and thought-out the questions were, but was a little concerned they seemed solely focused on modeling data (e.g., representing entities or rules of a simple game) and did not assess CS fundamentals as much.

The recruiter, who was very prompt and punctual throughout the process, reached out immediately the following day, and an offer was made very promptly. I tried negotiating but was told 'no.' The offered compensation was a little less than I'd hoped for in terms of base pay and sign-on bonus, but RSUs were acceptable. I wasn't sure I liked the work the team I applied for was doing and had another slightly better offer with more interesting work elsewhere.

I liked most of the people I met at Square, and I think it is definitely a unique place.

I was under an NDA.