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I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

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Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#141

Post by st3v3r »

manarth wrote: post #124
nstj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorporated entities enjoy the benefit of "limited liability"[0], ie: if your company does something "bad" you can't be liable beyond your share capital contributions. For example, if you make a self driving car and sell it, and it results in harm, and someone sues the company, you can't lose any of your personal assets; rather your only loss can be the capital which you put into the company. tl;dr: if you do someth…

> ie: if your company does something "bad" In most jurisdictions, if you have control of a company (e.g. as the majority shareholder and director), and the company does something "bad" to the extent that it's illegal, the liability protection can be waived. Selling a self-driving car, in the knowledge that its behaviour is inadequate and would cause harm, may well result in loss of liability protection. In short, ins…

Yeah, but in practice, it almost never happens.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#142

Post by k-mcgrady »

nicky0 wrote: post #135
basisword wrote: post #48

First time I've seen Atlas. I'm immediately worried. If someone starts a company using this I presume it's subject to US laws? What does this mean: 1. For taxes? If I live in the UK and start my business with Atlas does the US get the corporation tax revenue or the UK (or a split of the two)? 2. For data security/privacy? Is the data I store now subject to access by the US government through National Security letters…

I think if you had left off "I'm immediately worried" you might not have got the downvotes. It comes off as kneejerk criticism, event though you didn't mean it that way.

Possibly. As you've said it wasn't intended as a criticism. It was a feeling, hence why I posted to seek clarification.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#143

Post by JamesBarney »

angersock wrote: post #116
tptacek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out --- I'm speaking for at least Erin and I, but I suspect to an extent Patrick too --- we don't have the stomach for the contingency recruiting model. Referring someone for an interview and watching them get turned down was, for me at least, about 80% of the psychic cost of applying myself and getting turned down. Fuck that. It's a job that is possible to do and possible to do well and my life is too short…

Was there a pattern in them getting turned down, like that applicants were too expensive or had the wrong skillset or something? I stopped referring people to a former employer because I saw how much they jerked around people during the pipeline. Good luck on the new news, and thanks for getting Starfighter as far as you did. :)

Totally Speculating but I bet it was that software companies have enormously high false negative rates. Each company has it's own set of weird totally random interview biases. So Thomas kept on finding awesome recruits who were getting turned down for totally dumb reasons.

I imagine it's like the HomeBrew situation every day except 10 times worse because you recommended the candidate and the interviewer is your client. And unfortunately it's hard to make a business of telling your client they're doing it wrong.

This is all compounded by the fact that the devs who benefited most from their service were not Christopher Hemsworth looking Phd, ex-googlers who could get an interview with a phone call. Then come in with so much positive bias that as long as they didn't poo themselves during the interview they'd get hired. It was for people who were extremely skilled, but lacked the right pedigree or interviewing skills to be able to get the jobs they were very qualified for.

Curious to see what the real answer is.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#144

Post by SEJeff »

tptacek wrote: post #78
simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wanting to do the concept for Starfighter any injustice but I get the feeling it's as simple as they spent too much time on the tech and not enough on the business. A very easy mistake when the co-founders are technically minded.

It turns out --- I'm speaking for at least Erin and I, but I suspect to an extent Patrick too --- we don't have the stomach for the contingency recruiting model. Referring someone for an interview and watching them get turned down was, for me at least, about 80% of the psychic cost of applying myself and getting turned down. Fuck that. It's a job that is possible to do and possible to do well and my life is too short…

Well keep the HN conversations and ESR snark coming. I for one am rooting for you, Erin, and Patrick!

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#145

Post by gknoy »

tptacek wrote: post #78
simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wanting to do the concept for Starfighter any injustice but I get the feeling it's as simple as they spent too much time on the tech and not enough on the business. A very easy mistake when the co-founders are technically minded.

It turns out --- I'm speaking for at least Erin and I, but I suspect to an extent Patrick too --- we don't have the stomach for the contingency recruiting model. Referring someone for an interview and watching them get turned down was, for me at least, about 80% of the psychic cost of applying myself and getting turned down. Fuck that. It's a job that is possible to do and possible to do well and my life is too short…

I realize this is a completely selfish request, but is there a chance that the challenges and games you made will continue to be available, or self-hostable? :-D I now regret not having participated in the CTFs that you three built.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#146

Post by tom_b »

tptacek wrote: post #78
simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wanting to do the concept for Starfighter any injustice but I get the feeling it's as simple as they spent too much time on the tech and not enough on the business. A very easy mistake when the co-founders are technically minded.

It turns out --- I'm speaking for at least Erin and I, but I suspect to an extent Patrick too --- we don't have the stomach for the contingency recruiting model. Referring someone for an interview and watching them get turned down was, for me at least, about 80% of the psychic cost of applying myself and getting turned down. Fuck that. It's a job that is possible to do and possible to do well and my life is too short…

Thomas, were many starfighters you referred not getting offers? I love the idea of a (properly scoped) project/challenge in the hiring process and find myself profoundly worried when no code gets discussed in tech interviews.

I also really enjoyed stockfighter challenges. Between those six and my university's copy of Harris' Trading and Exchanges, I learned quite a bit. I bailed out on the AVR challenges though.

From a purely selfish viewpoint, I also want to work at places where the hiring process isn't really just whiteboard or gotcha questions, but instead actually has some consideration that, you know, demonstrating the ability to produce working useful code matters. Maybe I'm just nuts. The last interview I was in (for what people here would say is data science/engineering) involved a couple of big-O questions and two ill-specified SQL queries . . . sigh.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#147

Post by infinite8s »

basisword wrote: post #48

First time I've seen Atlas. I'm immediately worried. If someone starts a company using this I presume it's subject to US laws? What does this mean: 1. For taxes? If I live in the UK and start my business with Atlas does the US get the corporation tax revenue or the UK (or a split of the two)? 2. For data security/privacy? Is the data I store now subject to access by the US government through National Security letters…

I think the idea is that as Atlas rolls out to each country, it will be run by the respective Stripe team in that country (ergo patio11 joining Stripe Japan) and be responsible for building Atlas's business-as-a-service model respective of that country's laws and customs.

It's similar to their rollout of payment processing across the globe - they've done it slowly as they've had to incorporate each jurisdiction's regulations.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#148

Post by antoinevg »

basisword wrote: post #48

First time I've seen Atlas. I'm immediately worried. If someone starts a company using this I presume it's subject to US laws? What does this mean: 1. For taxes? If I live in the UK and start my business with Atlas does the US get the corporation tax revenue or the UK (or a split of the two)? 2. For data security/privacy? Is the data I store now subject to access by the US government through National Security letters…

We're based in South Africa and joined the Stripe Atlas beta earlier this year.

Solving the incorporation problem is only the first of many problems.

---

Please understand that none of the following is a criticism of Stripe. If we hadn't been accepted to the beta we'd be dead in the water right now and our customers would have been screwed. I also expect the solutions to become easier as more people in more countries face the same problems.

(Btw… one small suggestion for the Stripe Atlas team if anyone there is reading this… how about a forum where Atlas users in the same countries can swap information?)

---

So, the questions you asked are completely legitimate.

Trying to answer them ourselves has cost us an inordinate amount of money on legal & tax advice so far and we're still no closer to answers.

The problem is this:

The moment you're operating in two countries you are subject to the same legal, tax & accounting rules that multi-national corporations have to conform to.

There _are_ existing services that are geared towards tackling the insane levels of complexity involved but the pricing also assumes that you are a large multi-national corporation.

So, to give you an idea: Several reputable firms all quoted us the equivalent of an engineer's salary for a month just to _estimate_ the price of getting our ducks in a row.

For my company this is a LOT of money. We're bootstrapping and are barely ramen profitable.

Also, and I'm sure this happens to everyone at least once, at the time I did not understand that what they were quoting for was to prepare an estimate for what it would cost to answer our questions. I thought this was the quote to answer our questions!

When the estimate itself arrived it was for the equivalent to an engineer's salary for a year, with _no_ guarantee that further complexities (and costs) would not come up during or after the process.

An expensive lesson.

Currently we're trying to navigate the process ourselves by interacting directly with the .za & USA revenue services and the .za Reserve Bank.

Needless to say, this is hell on trying to get any actual work done in the meantime :-)

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#149

Post by afarrell »

afarrell wrote: post #15
simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wanting to do the concept for Starfighter any injustice but I get the feeling it's as simple as they spent too much time on the tech and not enough on the business. A very easy mistake when the co-founders are technically minded.

But strange for this developer whom I wouldn't consider to be naive in regards to business.

On second thought, s/strange/interesting/. Failure happens. I would be interested in reading a retrospective.

Re: I’m Joining Stripe to Work on Atlas

#150

Post by fecak »

tptacek wrote: post #78
simonswords82 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wanting to do the concept for Starfighter any injustice but I get the feeling it's as simple as they spent too much time on the tech and not enough on the business. A very easy mistake when the co-founders are technically minded.

It turns out --- I'm speaking for at least Erin and I, but I suspect to an extent Patrick too --- we don't have the stomach for the contingency recruiting model. Referring someone for an interview and watching them get turned down was, for me at least, about 80% of the psychic cost of applying myself and getting turned down. Fuck that. It's a job that is possible to do and possible to do well and my life is too short…

I met with Patrick for a couple hours this spring to talk about Starfighter and recruiting and such (I've been in recruiting for almost 20 years), and I shared some of the challenges the industry has faced. Patrick shared some anecdotes about his brief experience (at the time) on the recruiting side of the business, and it does take some time to get to the point where you don't take rejection personally. Recruiting is hard for a lot of reasons, and you do need to have a certain stomach for the industry. I'm not a huge fan of it either.

The advantage Starfighter had was that the most painful rejections for recruiters aren't necessarily the "no offer" at the end of an interview, but the "no response" to outreach - even when highly targeted.

Starfighter was designed to have a pipeline of qualified candidates who would conceivably be much more approachable than those who are cold-called/emailed by agency recruiters, not to mention the benefit of the names. Getting approached by Patrick or Thomas & Erin is much different for a candidate than getting approached by a recruiter with no name recognition. Even recruiters with a bit of name recognition don't get high response rates all the time.

I was personally rooting for Starfighter for several reasons, most of which to try and take recruiting in a bit of a different direction. I still hope the idea can be salvaged in some way, and wish Patrick and Thomas & Erin the best in the new endeavors.

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