As much as the no squad joining is stupid, the squad thing ended up not working in BF3 once custom servers came into the mix.
Everyone put on auto balance (ok, in itself that's fine) but their auto balance is way too strict. One more person on a team and the game would be ready to bring down the hammer at a moments notice. My friend and I would never get into a game together, it always split us up even though we joined as a squad and the game even knows were XBL friends. So then it was a process, which really came down to luck sometimes, of one of us trying to switch to the others team....and I can't count how many times we got auto balanced back after doing so, because the game couldn't handle one team having two more than the other.
Anyway, for two people in BF4, I've found that joining the same team isn't a problem. I just join my friend and were on the same team. I can see larger groups being a problem though.