Squarepoint HR went silent after final round
So I just wrapped up the full Squarepoint loop and I've been staring at my inbox for two weeks.
Background: 4 YOE, SWE at a fintech. Recruiter reached out. Heard they pay well, didn't know much else.
OA was 75 minutes, two sections. Stats and probability: t-test vs z-test, estimator bias stuff, time complexity questions. Went through those fine, not bad if you've had a stats class at some point ngl. Then two coding problems. First was heap-based, knocked it out in about 15 minutes. Second was a completely different beast, some DP combinatorics thing that felt like it came from a math olympiad. Spent 30 minutes on it and barely made a dent. Submitted a partial and figured I was done.
Got an invite for phone screens a week later. Genuinely have no idea how I passed that OA.
First call was pretty intense. Python deep dive: decorators, context managers, generators, how they actually work under the hood. Linux commands too (ssh, ps, find). Then live coding, implement a KV store with extra constraints. Blanked on the decorator part for a bit but got through the coding fine. Walked away unsure.
Second one was nothing by comparison. Generators again, then a JSON parsing and stats thing. Felt good.
Third though, back to hard mode. Advanced Python, multithreading vs multiprocessing, then the live coding was a stream buffering problem: nested lists of varying sizes, yield fixed-size chunks using a generator. Got something working, no idea if it was what they wanted.
Last was just a resume grilling. They grilled me on every tech decision in my past projects, framework choices, architecture tradeoffs. Then out of nowhere: why is Python list access slower than Java's from a paging standpoint. Had an answer, wasn't super confident tbh.
That was three weeks ago. HR said results in a week. I've followed up twice with nothing back. Three weeks and no response, like what's the point of following up at this point. Back to grinding I guess.
Anyone else been ghosted like this after final round? Feels like a rejection but idk.
Replies (5)
the paging question is something they seem to dig into. i'd brush up on OS memory concepts if you're interviewing there
how many total rounds was it? OA + 3 phone screens + final = 5? that's a lot
yeah 5 total including the OA. the whole thing took like 2 months
yeah squarepoint HR communication is rough. i went through a similar thing, just silence after the final. got an email like 5 weeks later with a rejection.
3 weeks with no response is basically a rejection in my experience. sorry man, onto the next one
that OA math olympiad problem is no joke. i couldn't finish it either. didn't even think i'd make it to screens.
yeah the OA second problem was wild, had no idea what algorithm they were expecting. still don't honestly