There is room for improvement; otherwise, Squarespace will slowly but surely give a bad impression. I'll go into the process and talk about what was good and bad at each step.

1. The recruiter was nice/informative, as most recruiters are. That's their job.
2. The tech screen was fun. You're given a few hours to do a problem that requires design and standard DS&A. They want you to do it in 1 hour.

The bad stuff happens at the onsite.

1. Everyone at greeting was in a bad mood. Why? This is my first impression, and it's sour.

2. You're thrown into DS&A questions almost first thing in the morning. It's one of those interviews where you know you're only getting assessed on whiteboarding because the intros are rushed to give you more time on the DS&A. That's standard for west-coast tech companies. The problem is that this isn't a west-coast tech company, and it's always annoying seeing a wannabe Google asking Google questions. The bulk of my problem is when the interviewers don't have any strategy and you feel split trying to address both. A lot of companies simply have one active interviewer with one passive interviewer listening; this was not the case. It didn't feel like collaboration; it felt like interrogation.

3. Next, system design. You start to sense a pattern: why is everyone young? Why am I 20-something but feel old? Why is this young'n asking me to system design when they have less than a year of experience? I try to reserve judgment and continue. It's a fun problem, and I answer based on years of system design experience and hope for the best.

4. You are paired with a lunch buddy; this is when the puzzle starts forming. Why does everyone look like a new grad dressed in their dad's button-down? Why does this look like happy hour in the Bay, all dudes in Allbirds? Why haven't I talked to a single woman, URM, or older person? Maybe it's just a coincidence. They then feed you mediocre food that makes you realize you'd probably eat out often, even if the line wasn't so long.

5. Your next interviewer is... could it be? Another baby-face! It's starting to feel like Pleasantville and that this isn't a coincidence anymore. The interview is a code review, and you give feedback like you normally would.

Then the recruiter meets you, escorts you out, and you're done.

Ok, let's do a retro on why any of this matters.

1. Age doesn't matter, but experience does, and you could tell right away that it was bleeding into the interview process:

• If you have experience, you know readability matters more than conciseness. Your interviews will nitpick you to the point where they almost want something that's as unreadable but as "cool" as some of the highly-rated 1-liners from the Leetcode discussion section, because they only see the small picture instead of the big picture. There's a correlation between an experienced engineer and caring less about the details during assessment, but Squarespace acts like they have a Google bar and will pass if you get one semi-colon wrong.
• Your interviewers have maybe a year of system design exp. and will be asking you to design systems. Because they haven't built the repertoire to see things differently, they will be looking for their predetermined answer.
• And that about sums it up: your interviewers don't have enough experience, so they will not be able to have open discourse or actively listen to your solutions, but they will throw an arrow and expect you to paint the target around it.

1. Company Preaching Diversity, Lacking Diversity - I currently work at a company that practices what they preach: we have more female than male engineers on my team, more URMs than not, and plenty of people from bootcamps. That should be easy in NYC. But to see a common demographic of 20-something males from a target school and not talk to a single female/URM all day is jarring. Especially after getting emailed about diversity, inclusion, non-binary pronouns, etc., and generally having huge expectations set up. If you don't have the diversity, don't boast about it. I don't know a single other company in NYC where you could encounter such homogeneity.

2. General Attitude was Phlegmatic - Self-explanatory in above anecdotes.

3. During the entire loop, I got ~10 minutes to ask questions. I didn't know what my role would be. I didn't meet with any managers. I didn't see the office. In short, I didn't really get a fair opportunity to interview them as much as they interviewed me. And because there were only 3 interviews, you can be sure there's no weight to culture fit/business instinct that you might have with a PM, so you know they're just grading you on the tech side of things (which explains the Bay Area stereotypes and phlegmaticness).

Overall, I would recommend using Squarespace for no more than interview practice. There are other companies in NYC who have properly adopted the west coast/Google style interviews with fewer drawbacks.

1. Tech Screen on Hacker Rank
2. System Design
3. Coding Review
4. DS&A