I applied through an employee referral. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Block in Jun 2021
Interview
Technical phone screen with an engineer was as far as I got. It's intended to be a "pair programming" session, but I'll just say it didn't feel very collaborative.
The first layer of it was an LC easy/medium style problem. Once I got a working solution for that, he added a 2nd layer of complexity. I described my approach, but he seemed resistant to it, but did not clearly articulate what the problem was. I couldn't tell if he actually saw a flaw or was testing my ability to defend my decisions. Either way, his pushback threw me off, and maybe that was enough for a rejection. I tried to explore his reasons more to see if I should consider a different approach (trying to be collaborative) but maybe this came off as indecisive. I did not get any feedback on what I should do differently, and I couldn't think of anything on my own, so decided to go with my idea. Ran out of time implementing it.
Inital take home, followed by extension interview, followed by a coding challenge, followed by system design interview.
The whole process took 3 months!
The interviewers are usually really nice and want you to do your best.
The interviewer was nice, and he is friendly and willing to give hint, the question has 2 follow-ups, it was hard to complete in time. The question was not a typical LeetCode
Phone screen and then a full day of interviews. 3 pair programming challenges, a system design review and a prior experience interview. There was also an onsite lunch with a person from the company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
To design a hotel booking system. Pick any part (backend, frontend, database, api etc) and deepdive into that, explaining the decisions along the way.
