The interview process began with a recruiter phone screen, followed by a technical phone interview. Unfortunately, the interviewer was from a different team and seemed unaware of the role's requirements, which was discouraging. Additionally, the interviewer presented as arrogant and uptight, further diminishing the experience.

The first five minutes were dedicated to the interviewer discussing their experience at Square. They then spent another ten minutes describing the problem, leaving approximately 35-40 minutes to solve a four-part challenge.

The final five minutes were reserved for my questions.

During the one-hour interview, candidates are evaluated on code neatness, speed of solution development, and the clarity of their thought process. The grading felt unfair, with unrealistic expectations for the given problem. It made me question the efficiency of their internal codebase if such rapid problem-solving is demanded from their engineers.

The problem itself was an original creation by the interviewer, adapted from a book. It involved shuffling a deck of cards according to four specific rules. I managed to implement two of these rules within the allotted time. The difficulty was compounded by the interviewer spending fifteen minutes on the problem's backstory and inspiration, rather than presenting the challenge directly and without extraneous details.

Overall, this was a very negative experience.

Shuffle a deck of cards based on a given set of rules.