I applied for the internship online. A recruiter sent me a link to a technical screening: two questions of difficulty on par with the "medium" problems on LeetCode. Not too difficult, and within a week I was contacted to set up a paired programming interview.

The paired programming interview is a 45-minute exercise where you are given a problem a little more difficult than the technical assessment. The premise is that you will be working on it alongside your interviewer – hence the "pair" part. However, unless my interview was atypical, it instead felt like any other coding interview. The interviewer watches your progress and may offer a few tips if you get truly stuck, but otherwise, they are there to assess and little else.

That may be my only complaint. Square makes a big deal about these "pair programming interviews" being a revolutionary new concept, but they seem to be identical to other coding interviews. Worse, they are identical in the worst way. The interviewer did not seem interested in my ability to methodically solve the problem logically or to accurately assess the algorithms I was employing. Instead, he was interested in whether I could solve it quickly and with little thought. In other words, like most coding interviewers, he wanted a LeetCode champion, not the result of four years of well-marked schooling.

I knew I had failed the interview less than 20 minutes in by the sound of his disappointment. To be fair, that's on me. I should have put more practice into LeetCode parlor tricks because that's just what the business is about, but it was disappointing to see from Square.

All of that said, everyone I talked to was very friendly, and I am likely to apply again in the future. I will also give them props for sending me a rejection less than 3 days after the interview, because the wait for these things can be agonizing.

Simulate animals on campus