Pros: I met some great coworkers here.

Cons: Compared to their peers, Block pays below average. Their refreshers are roughly around 5-15% instead of the standard 25% of your initial offer. I know people who got a $6k/yr grant as a refresher versus the expected $20k+/yr grant as a refresher (for their respective level). Block's culture is rampant with alcoholism and cliques. When we were still in the office, they had a weekly meeting on the rooftop where all the "old guard" (actually what they called themselves) would grab a beer and drink. They were all white males and not very inclusive of others. Managers were also especially bad about this; they would regularly skip meetings with people to go out to the Market for a beer run and drink with one another during company hours. Register and Cash are fighting with one another internally. Cash keeps cannibalizing the rest of Block by literally poaching other Block employees (sometimes to the point of starting the poaching right after someone joins Block). The company also has a history of rewarding nepotism. People who have tenure or have special connections continue to be rewarded despite not delivering results. Managers are able to make up metrics and lie about their directs. They also do not undergo training, and several managers contribute to an abusive culture. HR isn't there to help you; they will only cover for the manager.

Pros: Square is growing tremendously as a team and a company. It's an exciting, dynamic place to work with tons of interesting problems to solve. The people are top-notch, and it's impossible not to learn while working with such talented people across many disciplines. The culture is super open, transparent, and collaborative. It's really easy to reach across what would at other companies be barriers to get things done. The food is also amazing, which doesn't hurt!

Cons: The fast growth and dynamism can sometimes feel like churn. There's so much going on; it's sometimes hard to keep track of all the projects that are being worked on.

Pros: Square is a technology company that sells a "real" product. Our many merchants depend on us to help them run and grow their businesses. When our merchants grow, we also grow with them. The incentives are perfectly aligned for us to help them do well. We don't need to sell ads based on their information, and we're not selling acorn points or whatever. I work with incredibly talented people who have a wide range of experiences. We have a lot of fun at work, but we get our work done. Since Square has such a broad spectrum of engineering work, from hardware, to firmware, to back-end services, to security, to infrastructure, to front-end (think Ember/JS/CS), to mobile (Android and iOS), there are so many opportunities to learn and to try new things.

Cons: It's taken us a while to get our product vision/roadmap in place, but I think we're now in a good place. We're not as extravagant with our perks as other, more cash-rich tech companies, and the (free) dinner can be a bit hit or miss. The company has almost doubled while I was here, but that's simply necessary for us to grow our business.