“I started using Square at my Coffee shop when it first came out over 5 years ago now and I honestly couldn't be a bigger supporter of the company. They're constantly releasing new updates and products that keep surprising me and show how innovative of a company Square really is.
The main reason I love Square is how much they engage with us as a small business. Maybe it's because I was one of the beginning companies, but the account executive that is in charge of my account has always been extremely nice and constantly has asked me for feedback on the products. He's become a friend that I know will always share my thoughts with the company, and it makes me feel like I've played a part of making Square help more businesses over time.
The Square product itself (the little white Square that takes credit card payments) is first of all really cheap compared to the standard replacements, but it's also just as reliable if not more reliable. It's small and easy to move around, and I've had a lot of people ask about it because it looks so clean.
Then they released the point-of-sale service that gives me the ability to track my inventory and sales and I've been able to order more efficiently and increase my bottom line without paying the huge costs that usually come with these types of services.
I'm extremely indebted to Square for making my company succeed without big capital costs. They've been very nice every time I've called up customer service and have always made sure that any bugs I was experiencing were solved quickly.”
“The interview process at Square is one of the most complete, interesting, and difficult interviews I've ever gone through. They start you off with a standard phone interview with some behavioral questions, then they bring you in for an in person interview that for me lasted a whole day. I met 5 different people and was asked a range of interesting technical and behavioral questions that balanced perfectly for being interesting and difficult, while also not seeming too off track.”
“Square is a workplace that really cares about both output and overall teamwork. If you're able to both be supportive and collaborative, and gain a position of leadership in your team, Square management will value that over just being a high performer. There's definitely a focus on building teams instead of just output.”
“The benefits and perks at Square are so good I sometimes feel like it's too much (not really but you know). We get unlimited vacation time, a wellness program that offers things like physio and gym reimbursement, a commuting reimbursement. We get 3 free meals a day + we have a stocked fridge with every good snack available. On top of these boosted startup perks, we get really cheap and good health, vision, and dental insurance which is better than most corporate companies.”
“The office environment at Square is positive but it's very driven and ambitious. It's not like many of the workplaces I've been where people fake a bubbly persona that's about playing politics and being liked. Square is about performance and about building things that make a difference for their customers.
The best part about working for Square is definitely the people that you get to work with. There are so many highly intelligent and driven people that you can't help but become driven and highly motivated yourself. The people at Square come into work with the goal of working on a project and delivering results. To be around such goal-driven people makes coming into Square something I look forward to.
With such a focus towards our customers, there's nothing more positive than the overarching drive to truly help people build their companies. Square is a product focused company, working with customers constantly to make sure we're building something that's valuable to them and to future businesses. It's very motivating to be a part of a team that wants to make a difference.
It's definitely not an easy job. We often work long hours and you have to be proactive at taking time off for yourself, but in the end Square is a company that is making a difference, and the people who work here know it. That's why the office environment is so positive.”
Historically I've found that Square is definitely a workplace that pushes you to your limits, but in a good way. You have to proactively take time for yourself, no-one will really encourage you to do it for you because there's just so much work to do. The good thing is though that it's definitely not negatively looked down on to take days for mental health etc..
Jack is one of the most down to earth CEO's I've ever had a chance to work for. He's the perfect example of someone with a revolutionary vision that can completely change an industry, but also a down to earth guy who you can talk to and not feel overwhelmed. He's efficient, intelligent, hard-working, and genuinely nice.
Overall the work we do at Square has a good mix of highly technical and complex projects mixed with some more standard work. It may not be revolutionary work day in day out, but the great thing about being an engineer at Square is because the engineers and team leads are so good, we work at building scale-able and well made solutions. We'll definitely hack something together once in awhile but we don't let technical debt linger for too long.
“When any company is going through phases of hyper growth there are going to be challenges. Square has been one of the fastest growing companies of recent times, and so it's natural that these problems are going to be very present. The great thing about Square is that the executives and upper management teams are filled with people who are personable and real, and they're addressing these problems head on.
As we become a company with many different layers of management there are always going to be a certain percent who aren't nearly as good as others. Some of these managers are scared of losing their position and being found out as being not efficient, so they push good people down and don't support growth. The good thing is that Square has extremely talented internal mobility staff that will listen to your concerns and give you lots of opportunity to move around the company.
The one thing that I've been the most surprised of is how focused the company still is towards it's customers and not towards the bottom line. We're still working towards building products that in the long run can help small independent businesses be as efficient as large scale companies, and we're not just pushing for quarterly wins.
As with any larger company there has been a bigger push towards creating standard processes and this is making there be more red tape we have to cross to get things done, but Square upper management is actively doing everything they can to staying a agile and fast moving company that isn't hindered by the normal bureaucracy.
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Square is a financial services company that gives people and businesses the opportunity to take payments easier. With a host of products ranging from credit card readers that link to phones, to in-app cash transfers, to inventory and PoS management, Square makes setting up payment processing easy for anyone. With a goal of making commerce easier and more accessible to everyone, Square has made it easier for companies to get payments on their products and services.
Founded in 2009 by current CEO and Director Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square has it's headquarters based in San Francisco, California. Square grew extremely quickly year over year, receiving 5 rounds of financing from 2009 to 2014 totaling over $590.5 million, Square IPO'd in 2015 raising over $243 million at a $2.9 billion evaluation. With over 3000 employees across 22 offices world wide, Square has been recognized as one of the unicorn startups coming out of the bay area.
With Square constant year over year growth and constant innovation, the company is constantly hiring for new positions. The majority of roles in square are in customer service and sales, however there are also opportunities for engineers, product managers, human resources, and management positions. With over 400 jobs posted on glassdoor, there are many opportunities to join the growing team.
Positive reviews from employees report enjoying: the great brand equity of the company, the very nice and hard working team, the high quality of products and designs done by the team, the great perks, the strong and personable executive team, and the strong emphasis towards customer satisfaction.
Negative reviews from employees report being frustrated with: the transition from startup environment to more process oriented corporate environment, the high turnover, the long and hard hours, the constantly changing roles and environment, the highly competitive environment, and the unclear career trajectory.
Square has 4 core values that drive how they interact with both their employees and their consumers to keep the company to continue to grow into the future. These 4 core values are:
- Bonded by Love for Product. The core mission behind Square is to make commerce easier and more accessible, and the stories that Square blogs tell about how the company has changed peoples lives keeps the team bonded with the product.
- Risk-Taking > Stability. Square has been able to grow so quickly because the team moves quickly and the employees are expected to take risks in development and ideas to bring the company to the next step.
- Customer Comes First. The underpinning part of Square is its ability to help business owners run their businesses more efficiently, and Square is ruthless at making sure that their customers come first so they can run their businesses more efficiently.
- High Quality Code Base. Square is a development centered team that has a strong software application component that gives their products their true value. Square hires only the best engineers and makes sure they have an environment they feel comfortable in to contribute and provide their best work.
*Interviews at Square are recognized as difficult and highly technical - make sure you read up on the company, prepare for personal questions, and refresh your technical skills!*
Why are you interested in working for Square?
What do you feel you do better then other people?
Generate all combinations of M given N different items then find the all the valid pairs in a subset of the generated set.
Clients come in with different priority levels. There are clients with the same priority levels, and a client can leave at anytime. Design a data structure that always returns the client with the highest priority value. Give the complexity of each of the methods.
Square was founded in 2009 when Jim McKelvey was unable to complete a sale of a high end glass faucet he had made from glass blowing for $2,000 dollars because the customer didn't have enough cash and he was unable to accept credit cards at the time. Jim called his friend Jack Dorsey and they both agreed that this type of thing should never happen again. They started Square with the mission to make commerce easier and more accessible.
From its early beginnings in 2009, Square quickly received it's first round of funding through a Series A investment of $10 million led by Khosla Ventures and 19 other parties. The first product that square released was a square reader that linked to a mobile device's audio jack and gave anyone the ability to accept credit card payments.
In 2013 Square released the Square Stand that turns an Apple iPad into a complete point of sale system. This was the beginning of Squares push into standalone point-of-sale systems, where Square released the Square Register in 2017 for small to medium sized businesses to help companies understand their sales and inventory levels.