3 coding rounds, 1 round of talk about your project 1 of system design. Did pretty good on 2 of 3 coding rounds, struggled a bit on the 3rd did not get to optimal solution but had a brute force. But all 3 had working compiled code which square seemed to care more about. 1 hard and 2 easy questions I'd say. The talk round nothing came off as bad. The system design is the problem here. Got a half baked solution. For whatever reason pub/sub architecture didnt come up in my head at all. What are my chances? Does failing system design screw you completely? Some new grads skip system design for square's interview. I have 3 YOE.
It's all about how you did relative to others, so who knows? Just relax, don't give a fuck about the result, and move on to the next onsite.
There's no right answer to the system design question. It's very open ended and you can mold its requirements, assume components are available etc. It's designed to see how you will do IRL, you don't need to end up with a pub sub answer.
Does it matter? Is there anything you can do about it now?
Honestly it entirely depends. It depends what level we're considering you for and how you did compared to other candidates at that level. You may think the coding questions went well but maybe they didn't. I've had candidates that think their Q&A round went well but they actually failed it. Similarly, I've had candidates think they aced the coding question without realizing they only did the first part of the question and didn't get to the third part. On a surface level, one bad round doesn't disqualify you. But that's assuming you did well in all the other rounds.
What if you did two hard and medium question but over complicated an easy question?
While that's taken into account a little bit by each interviewer, what matters more at the end of the day is what rating your interviewers gave you. Our hiring committee doesn't nitpick on candidates getting 2 hard 1 easy vs 2 easy 1 medium. It looks at the scores of each of your interviews. Each interviewer should calibrate their expectations to the level you're being considered for. Thinking about it as: I solved 2 hard questions is the wrong mindset. It's more like: did I get to a point where my interviewer thought I did a good enough job? If yes, then you get an offer. If no, then you don't.
What was system design qs?
+1 what's the system design question?
We only have one question and the recruiter mentions it several times (including in the email explaining how the on-site will unfold): how would you build an hotel booking platform?
I'd prefer us not explicitly listing it out here as it's a simple enough question already and the email literally states it. They should be able to do it without being told, and even if they can't, they should be able to read an email.
Is it a booking platform for a single hotel? Are we designing a client application or back end?
Unfortunately, you aren’t the only one who took an onsite for this position. Chances are, another candidate did better. Failing at one coding out of 3 is probably fine but when there’s only one system design interview, better not messup