What Working At Stripe Has Been Like • Hacker News Board

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#101

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:57 PM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #85

mytailorisrich wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that they ran out of headcount is both telling that they won't offer and offering a reason, which is exactly as your example: they filled all the positions. It's a polite and somewhat sugar-coated reason instead of bluntly saying that they thought the person was not good enough, but it's standard to be polite when rejecting candidates.

Going back to nsenifty: > A week later, instead of the offer, they just said they ran out of headcount. Never heard back from them again (even though they said they'll reach out when they get headcount back). Saying you'll get back to a candidate, especially when that candidate has already been told to expect an offer, and then ghosting is not polite. Any framing of this as acceptable behavior, be it polite or impoli…

[deleted]

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#102

Post by jariel » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:58 PM UTC

ionwake wrote: post #89

ryanSrich wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man. I have a juicy Stripe story from a friend, but I'd rather not share all of the details in case anyone from Stripe is here listening. The gist is that I had a friend apply, go through a few interviews, and then just get completely ghosted. After several emails and attempts to reach out, the hiring manager replied to his email with a two word reply when my friend asked about his application status. That reply w…

Lol the worst job application turn down I ever received was from Spotify. They said “ we don’t want you in our band “ It was oddly personal and upsetting. Lol How tone deaf is hr sometimes

The level of unprofessionalism is just ridiculous - all these 'great companies' with 'billions' can't fing manage to tell someone what time it is. So much ghosting, don't know what's going on, left in the lurch etc.

Is there literally not a single HR Portal that tracks status? That flags 'pending'? Notifications for '2 weeks no reply'?

The HR person can't grab the hiring manager and hand-hold the response?

An automated response would be just fine.

And just cordial as a minimum you know 'Thanks so much for turning out, but we can't move forward at this time'.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#103

Post by gonehome » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

Ashanmaril wrote: post #96

gonehome wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's like most companies, really hard to get attention unless: - You have a referral - You went to MIT, Stanford, Caltech, CMU, Cal - You're coming from FAANG or similar The frontdoor is a waste of time. Even with the above odds are against you, but at least you have someone to ask about progress/move things along for you.

I don't know about "most companies." Maybe most really big tech companies, places that are constantly getting crazy amounts of applications. And if you're living in a heavily populated city. I live in a place with a fairly small population, and I got offers at 3/3 programming jobs I've applied for since my first in 2017.

Yeah - you're right.

I should have said 'most bay area software companies' and even that could probably be qualified by 'competitive' or 'famous'.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#104

Post by superfrank » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

_corym wrote: post #12

Kind of crazy how all these articles come out about what it's like working at Stripe and how to apply. Everyone I've talked to who has applied has not received a response from their application. Even in my most recent experience I wrote a cover letter, reached out to multiple Stripe recruiters. Most of them either ignored me, or said that they were not working on that role and said my status is still "pending". I ima…

I do mainly frontend work and am just shy of 10 years experience. My resume is solid and I can at least get my foot in the door at well known companies including FAANG. I'm not saying I'm going to get the job, but I feel like I can at least get a response.

I was job hunting earlier this year due to my last company (a fintech start up) shutting down and Stripe was the only company that just handed me an immediate "No" without even a recruiter call. I know one other engineer who is more mid level and she said she had applied and never even got a response.

I harbor no ill will toward them, but I'm really curious what their hiring criteria is and why it seems so different that most of the other major companies out there.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#105

Post by room500 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

ping_pong wrote: post #87

One of my friends worked at Stripe but left because she said that management is made up of young OGs that don't know how to manage but they've been at Stripe for so long they are rich and think they know what they're doing. It's hard to get real work done because of this from what I've heard.

To be fair, this can apply to a lot of young companies.

Fundamentally, the job to work in a startup is different from the job to work at a large company. The people that grew a company when it was small might not be the best people to grow a company when it becomes bigger.

I saw this at a previous company where the OGs were convinced they were untouchable because they created the entire technical solution with a handful of engineers. To their credit, it was an amazing accomplishment. Unfortunately, as the company grew, their solution ran into scalability and reliability concerns that couldn't be easily fixed. In every architecture meeting, there was always the disagreements between team "ten years ago, this product would have already been shipped with half the engineers" and team "but that product wouldn't work with the scale we need - it is an exponentially harder problem now"

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#106

Post by ffggvv » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

ivalm wrote: post #95

ffggvv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the equity is worthless. I just think an engineer can work at Facebook with a monthly vest and their equity is as good as cash. An engineer at stripe has illiquid shares that they hope they can convert to cash in 3+ years. Usually the hope of a large return would offset that (time value of money) but thats cancelled by the fact that stripe's private valuation is 30B+.

Not patio11 but you can still evaluate something like net preset value by doing discount to the eventual liquidity event. In reality this is complicated as you need to assign probabilities to (1) when liquidity event can occur (2) real value of your equity at the event (3) discount rate. While estimating probability distributions is probably beyond what one can do without detailed inside knowledge (and even then), it…

that makes sense. though it seems like many companies these days such as uber, palantir etc are actually worth less after IPO than before.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#107

Post by AA-BA-94-2A-56 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

ionwake wrote: post #89

ryanSrich wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man. I have a juicy Stripe story from a friend, but I'd rather not share all of the details in case anyone from Stripe is here listening. The gist is that I had a friend apply, go through a few interviews, and then just get completely ghosted. After several emails and attempts to reach out, the hiring manager replied to his email with a two word reply when my friend asked about his application status. That reply w…

Lol the worst job application turn down I ever received was from Spotify. They said “ we don’t want you in our band “ It was oddly personal and upsetting. Lol How tone deaf is hr sometimes

I'd become an apple music or google music user for life after that

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#108

Post by koltzu » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #102

ionwake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol the worst job application turn down I ever received was from Spotify. They said “ we don’t want you in our band “ It was oddly personal and upsetting. Lol How tone deaf is hr sometimes

The level of unprofessionalism is just ridiculous - all these 'great companies' with 'billions' can't f ing manage to tell someone what time it is. So much ghosting, don't know what's going on, left in the lurch etc. Is there literally not a single HR Portal that tracks status? That flags 'pending'? Notifications for '2 weeks no reply'? The HR person can't grab the hiring manager and hand-hold the response? An automa…

>Is there literally not a single HR Portal that tracks status? That flags 'pending'? Notifications for '2 weeks no reply'?

As a hiring manager, absolutely all portals/HR management software I have used up to this moment have this feature. Most of them highlight the application and put them in a visible 'No progress for X time' category; some even send separate e-mails for each long overdue candidate.

The truth is that - at least in the orgs I've been part of - the trend for HR is to be apathetic to the needs of the team they're hiring for and tone deaf in communication. Recruitment has been the least favourite bit of their job.

Over the years I have received Linkedin messages from a number of candidates whom I have referred to other teams/department after they interviewed for a position in mine. HR should've followed up with them; they didn't.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#109

Post by rochester46 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

pc wrote: post #21

_corym wrote: post #12

Kind of crazy how all these articles come out about what it's like working at Stripe and how to apply. Everyone I've talked to who has applied has not received a response from their application. Even in my most recent experience I wrote a cover letter, reached out to multiple Stripe recruiters. Most of them either ignored me, or said that they were not working on that role and said my status is still "pending". I ima…

I'm sorry to hear this and apologize. We're definitely still a comparatively small team wishing we had more efficient ways to handle our inbound funnel. (We do have some ideas here.) But this is good feedback and we should absolutely have provided a better experience.

This is such an insulting excuse.

Ironically, this is almost the exact same attitude I got in my poor experience interviewing with Stripe. Interviewers were constantly late to our calls and mixed up who would be interviewing me more than once. Despite that, I still was told I was going to receive an offer... only to be ghosted for weeks. Once the recruiter finally reached back out, they said the position had been cancelled but they would find me another position. Spoiler: I never heard back from them, and they ignored all of my further communications.

Throughout all of this, I was apologized to several times (credit is due there, I guess) and each time the excuse was "ha ha sorry things are such a mess, that's just how things are when you work at a start up!" First of all, "haha we're a startup" is not a valid excuse for being late to meetings and ignoring communication.

Second: you're a company worth tens of billions of dollars, have thousands of employees in offices around the globe, and were founded a decade ago. You are not a startup. You are not a "small team". Stop using it as an excuse.

Re: What Working At Stripe Has Been Like

#110

Post by PragmaticPulp » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

rochester46 wrote: post #109

pc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear this and apologize. We're definitely still a comparatively small team wishing we had more efficient ways to handle our inbound funnel. (We do have some ideas here.) But this is good feedback and we should absolutely have provided a better experience.

This is such an insulting excuse. Ironically, this is almost the exact same attitude I got in my poor experience interviewing with Stripe. Interviewers were constantly late to our calls and mixed up who would be interviewing me more than once. Despite that, I still was told I was going to receive an offer... only to be ghosted for weeks. Once the recruiter finally reached back out, they said the position had been can…

> each time the excuse was "ha ha sorry things are such a mess, that's just how things are when you work at a start up!" First of all, "haha we're a startup" is not a valid excuse for being late to meetings and ignoring communication.

Pretending to act like a startup has become a cover for being sloppy at big companies. People want to pick and choose what it means to work like a startup, and usually they choose the aspects that give them flimsy excuses for bad behavior.

In reality, my experience with actual small startups has been that people are better at arriving to meetings on time and following through with commitments because small teams mean everyone knows each other. If you don't show up to the meeting, we can see you across the small office and hold you accountable.

It's the big companies where accountability starts to disintegrate. People know they can get away with dropping balls all over the place as long as they get their OKRs finished for quarterly review. Things start to slip through the cracks because that person you're dealing with is just another e-mail address, not your close coworker who sits on the other side of the room.