Nice people, good products, but confused leadership - Software Engineer Block Employee Review

4.0
Jan 5, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are always very nice, friendly, and helpful. As an engineer, I have a great work-life-balance. When it comes to delivering on new features, Square's tooling is a bit esoteric but usually gets the job done with minimal waiting (and when it doesn't, the nice/friendly/helpful people I just mentioned will unblock you really fast).

Cons

C-Suite leadership makes bizarre decisions (e.g. renaming to Block) that somehow promises to make *them* a lot of money, but doesn't contribute towards better products for users (e.g. Jack's obsession with crypto). There's a mixture of new and pleasant technology, and old legacy stuff that has to continue to be supported. This would not be so bad, except there is a surprising amount of resistance if you decide not to build *new* things with the old legacy technology. "Software architecture" isn't a priority for Block's microservices - so while everything works and individual services have unit tests, creating usable APIs for cross-team boundaries is usually an afterthought that makes it a pain to ever make new connections.

Explore other reviews about Block

5.0
Jun 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Strong eng. culture, although that was partly in decline. Great coworkers.

Cons

Wants to feels like a startup, but functions like big corp.

5.0
Sep 26, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of benefits. Gym, free food, showers, Close to transit Good food Good software practices Is this twenty words yet

Cons

I would say that there aren't any cons really. I'm just trying to fill this space with 20 words

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