I got the square on site coming up (split into two days) - 3 Pair Programming Interviews (via CodeSignal again) These should be the same as the phone screens so i think i’ll be okay here - 2 Q&A Sessions (Past experience as well as Architecture/Design) Kind of nervous for system design, i don’t build complex systems at work but i have been going through grokking and systemdesignthinking courses, hoping that’s enough to clear these Any advice for the design rounds? - Hiring Manager I assume this is just a behavioral round with the HM? anything i should prepare for here? #square TC 100k
Does "pair programing" mean Square doesn't ask LC?
They don’t but they fail you for stupid things still
No LC, it’s usually multipart question focused on OOP
I have square on-site in a couple weeks, DM me if you wanna talk about prep a bit together
Why do you have 3 codings, are you targeting L4?
I applied for a senior role but i’m not sure what level im interviewing for, honestly idk if i could pass L5 assuming system design is harder
L5 is also 3 coding rounds.
Hey, can anyone let me know what to expect for the past experience portion? I did really good on the coding rounds today and im practicing for the design round but i’m not sure what to expect for the past experience round Is it just Q/A or should i expect them to ask me how to make a more complex system? I’ve only ever designed very simple systems Any advice is appreciated
Just talking about 1 past project you worked on.
you'll be asked about a project and your contributions to that project. think of a relevant project example that exemplifies a wide scope and deep expertise, as well as high degree of responsibility on your current team.
The recruiter should have either explicitly told you the prompt for the system design round, or given you a pdf guide which strongly hints what that prompt will be. You can pre-optimize your approach with the numerous examples online for this very prompt. I haven’t used the system design resources you listed there, but a good general approach is to first list out the API endpoints the service and the client would need access to, then define the DB tables you would need to store the data, and then tie them together with whatever cloud resource makes sense. Address scaling bottlenecks along the way (eg caching, load balancing). Briefly mention how you would handle AuthN/AuthZ. Oh yeah make sure you do enough research to be able to justify why you choose the architecture components you do, trade offs and what not.
Okay thanks 🙏 i did get a PDF she wasn’t explicit but based on what people have said i assumed it was going to be about the example she gave
The sys design interview question is going to be related to hotel booking system. I was told that by my recruiter and it was correct