I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Block (San Francisco, CA) in Sept 2022
Interview
On one hand, I really love the way Block evaluates employees and I think the process really mimics the skills you need on the job, especially around collaboration and communication. All my interviewers were very good and really reflect the collaborative culture of the company. On the other hand, I had a horrible experience with my recruiter. Square was my top choice when I started interviewing and I had an offer that was higher than I was aiming for (although all my offers did come in higher than expected) and if I had any other recruiter I would probably be working here. My recruiter kept making mistakes with my availability, was rude over email and text, sending stuff to wrong email addresses, etc. But the most frustrating part was that I had flagged that I didn't like the team he was matching me to 4-5 times over the process both verbally and through email, and even sent him a list of 6-7 open roles that I was interested in. He ignored all these messages and focused on getting me comp, before I even brought up comp. Anyways he got me a great comp package but when I declined due to team match he was somehow surprised. Felt like every step of the way he didn't listen to anything I said, even when I repeated information over and over. Also gave me so much inaccurate information about different teams to dissuade me from joining (assuming that he only recruits for the specific team he wanted me to join) that the trust was very damaged and I had a hard time even believing him when he was telling about the team / offer. Definitely was really disappointed since I really liked Square and had a bunch of teams I would've been super excited about, and now I probably won't have another chance :(
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Hotel booking system design (this is no secret, they let you prep in advance) Some medium difficulty coding questions (no DP) Behavioral round (felt like my interviewer didn't really know what to ask so I ended up driving this interview, which I didn't mind) They focus a lot on soft skills and collaboration so if your interview gives you a hint in a direction try to take it, even if you have an idea for a solution in another direction
I applied online. I interviewed at Block in Oct 2025
Interview
I had a call with their recruiter first, talked about my past experience and what I'm look in for in my next role. Then had a technical front-end screening with two engineers where I needed to build an application. I thought I did well, I was able to implement a working app, but I did not pass. Not further feedback was given.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a memory game in any JS framework or vanilla JS. You need to implement this game based on some demo app that you can play around with before hand. You need to implement the HTML/CSS and JS all from scratch. The game has the following behavior: you need to display N x N cards in a grid lay out. The number of N should be configurable by the user through a slider. When the user clicks a "start" button, N cards a highlighted for 2-3 seconds. Then the user needs to click on the cards that were highlighted. If the user clicks on the correct card, it changes the color to green, otherwise it changes to red. If all the initially highlighted cards are clicked the game is over. What to watch out for: you need to track the cards that were clicked in the grid, you need pick N random cards to be highlighted for each round of the game. You need to make sure the gird of N cards can be increased and reduced. It's not enough that the app works, you also need to write clean/readable code. You have about 40 minutes to implement this, and you need to talk through your work.
Long process. System design felt like I aced it but they didn't pass me. It was the classic design a hotel booking platform question. They put you through a lot of rounds up front.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Block in Feb 2025
Interview
Two rounds: the first was a technical screen and hiring manager interview, and the second round was 5 interviews (2 coding, 1 system design, 1 technical project review, 1 leadership interview)
